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Written in fRoots issue 346, 2012


THE LONDON BULGARIAN CHOIR
Goro Le Goro
Own label, no number

Choirs are a wonderful thing for the people involved in all sorts of ways, as he Gareth Malone TV programmes convince. And there’s no doubt of the cultural and musical value of the Bulgarian choir that former Koutev Ensemble singer Dessislava Stefanova has been putting enormous energy and dedication into building and inspiring since she came to London in 2000.
     Commercial release, and submission for review, of a recording, though, is another thing, moving from one’s community to cast it on the waters of the world and subject it to critical comparison.
     Would one buy this when one can also buy CD or digital releases of at least some of the old Bulgarian records by the regional ensembles and radio choirs? The Balkanton LPs of choirs from Bulgarian festivals in the early 1970s, or a little later  Marcel Cellier’s “Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares” French releases of recordings by the Bulgarian State Radio and Television choir directed by Filip Koutev, the finest of the composer-arrangers. Or field recordings of the village music from which their raw material and singers were drawn.
     In the pre-EU 1970s those voices, and instrumentalists too, with their mighty skill, exciting asymmetric rhythms, soaring melodies and goosebump-raising harmonisations, were indeed magic from a mysterious land locked behind the dark Iron Curtain. In Bulgaria there’s still an Ensemble named after Koutev, but there’s now also a worldwide diaspora of Bulgarian singers and musicians, and Bulgarian-style choirs have sprung up in the USA, Australia, Denmark or wherever people have been seduced by the sound and want to learn to make it themselves. So, on record, does the London Bulgarian Choir have something of its own to offer?
     On the CD it comprises thirty-six female singers of a variety of national origins including Bulgarian plus, unlike the majority of such choirs, six men. Eight of the sixteen tracks are new compositions or arrangements for this choir by Bulgarian composer Kiril Todorov (responsible for the misbegotten cocktail-swing of Folk Scat, but it seems now with regained dignity), the result of a commission paid from the BBC Performing Arts Fund. In two of these the choir is accompanied by an eight-piece largely Bulgarian band, of kaval, soprano sax, tambura, violin, guitar, tupan and darbuka.
     The singing, while it doesn’t achieve the heights of the classic Bulgarian sound, is strong, with Dessislava’s the most striking among the solo voices. The material works well too, though on the whole it goes for wider harmonic intervals than the thrilling close seconds and less that made the ‘mystery of the Bulgarian voices’ such a revelation to non-Balkan listeners.
     There’s a characteristic sound to most of the radio choir recordings, a spacious glow that seems to come from the mic-ing and acoustics in the concert hall used by Radio Sofia. The recording quality of the London choir’s album is OK, though the reverb on the final track is unconvincing and the birdsong samples superfluous.
     So are the LBC making a distinctive statement, or are they just enthusiasts singing in a foreign language dressed up in clothes derived from someone else’s traditional costume? Well, while provenance shapes perception, you don’t have to be German to play Mozart, and a record mainly comes down to what comes out of the speakers, which in this case is music from one of most impressive of the Bulgarian folk-chorale diaspora.

     www.londonbulgarianchoir.co.uk


© 2012 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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