THE MIXED CHOIR OF THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL RADIO was founded in 1952. The formation was among the few professional choirs in Bulgaria. Its repertoire covers works of music – from cantatas and oratorios to the opera genre, from Baroque to contemporary pieces. Top achievements are the recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Stabat Mater by Poulenc, Requiem by Verdi, Stabat Mater by Rossini, Symphony of Psalms and Les noces (The Wedding) by Stravinsky, the oratorio Le roi David by Honegger, Requiem by Mozart and a.o. Along with the numerous recordings for the Sound Archives of BNR the Mixed Choir has been repeatedly invited to record for the Bavarian Radio and classic music labels like Decca, His Master’s Voice etc.
The choir has undertaken tours in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Israel, Greece and former Yugoslavia and worked with eminent conductors like Georges Pretre, Serge Baudo, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Arena.
For more than 40 years the Mixed Choir of BNR has been managed by Mihail Milkov (1923 – 2003) who paved the way of contemporary choral art. Following 1994 the Mixed Choir of BNR worked with conductors Andrei Andreev, Nikola Lipov, Methodi Matakiev, Dragomir Yossifov, and Rumen Raychev. Since 2016 principal conductor is Lyubomira Alexandrova.