“Playing a choir” is one of Prof. Vassil Arnaudov's favourite sayings which his students remember well. Prof. Arnaudov is among the foremost and most remarkable choir conductors in Bulgaria's history, founder and leader of highly successful choirs, mentor of several generations of conductors. In our day they are outstanding musicians in their own right - in this country and abroad - Prof. Miroslav Popsavov, Prof. Teodora Pavlovich, Yovcho Petrov, Dragomir Yossifov, Darena Popova, Mihail Delchev and many, many more. And they have all cherished the memory of their tutor who passed away 25 years ago. Vanya Moneva and her Cosmic Voices choir dedicate their concert tonight, 10 May to his memory; the concert is one of the fringe events of the Salon of Arts at the National Palace of Culture.

“This concert is a great responsibility,” Vanya Moneva.“My tutor Vassil Arnaudov was the reason why I turned to female folklore choir singing. I myself have a classical musical education, I studied choir conducting with him and I had never imagined I would ever be conducting a folklore choir. But he was a man with a vision. He probably sensed my deep love of Bulgarian folk music, he saw the passion I put into conducting folklore-based songs. He turned my attention to the Female Folklore Choir of the Bulgarian National Radio and for one season I was assistant conductor of the choir. In that time I came to realize I had a true passion for this kind of work and I am deeply grateful to him. I approached tonight's event devoted to his memory with deep respect and admiration. I endeavoured to include songs my tutor liked, some he performed with the choirs he has conducted, others he turned my own attention to. We shall start with two church chants. Though he loved this music, he did not live long enough to have been able to interpret it as he would have liked.”

“Prof. Arnaudov inspired Bulgarian composers to write music especially for his choirs. I am proud to say that quite a few works have been composed specifically for the choir I founded and which I am conductor of. Two of them have been included in tonight's programme - Swan Song by Julia Tsenova and a piece by Dimitar Hristov we shall be performing to an audience for the first time. The entire concert is planned so as to present the Cosmic Voices as a choir ensemble independent of the folklore sound it is associated with. Most of the songs are in the repertoire of well-schooled choirs and are gems by authors like Krassimir Kyurchiiski, Nikolay Kaufman, Petar Lyondev, Ivan Spassov, Stefan Mutafchiev and others. Albeit symbolically, I would like to demonstrate to my mentor how far we have come in performing arts. I would somehow like to reach out to him and show him there are people who remember him, who follow his advice, who respect him. I hope we shall be able to do so with our performances, with our positive energy. There is good reason why we selected the title - “Playing a choir”, because he “played choirs” in a brilliant way. It was an expression he used often - to play the choir,” Vanya Moneva says.

Prof. Vassil Arnaudov has truly blazed a trail in music as important and vivid today as it was in his own lifetime. Together with the Sofia Chamber Choir and the Rodina choir from Rousse, he has won close to 40 first prizes and grand prix at international competitions and has given concerts all over the world. He even has a record to his name, a record in Bulgarian choir singing - five first prizes and the Choir of the World title at the Llagollen International Competition, Great Britain, all of them won by the Rodina choir in 1988.

Prof. Arnaudov was the first chairman of the Bulgarian Choir Union after it resumed work in 1990. He was singled out Musician of the Year by the listeners of the Bulgarian National Radio in 1991 - the last acknowledgement of his enormous contribution to music.

Audio contains the following songs:

- Pretty lass Mara,by Kosta Kolev, based on authentic musical folklore;

- Dragana and the nightingale, by Philip Koutev, based on authentic musical folklore;

- In Thy Kingdom;

- Mehmeta, my love, by Ivan Spassov.

English version: Milena Daynova