Христо Недялков

Hristo Nedyalkov founded the Bulgarian National Radio Children's Choir in 1960 and conducted it for more than fifty years. He had graduated from the State Academy of Music in Sofia in 1956, studying composition with Parashkev Hadjiev and choral conducting with Georgi Dimitrov, and worked as a music editor at Bulgarian National Radio and with amateur vocal ensembles. The choir toured widely, including in Japan. He wrote choral and solo songs for children and women’s voices. He died in 2013, at eighty-one. He worked as a musical designer of the children's department of Radio Sofia from 1956 to 1960, conducted the choir of the medical students of Sofia until 1960; accounts of his starting year differ, with the Sofia Philharmonic giving 1955 and the BNR Archive 1957. He conducted the Sofia Maidens' choir from 1966 to 1970 and from 1989 was a professor of choral conducting at Sofia University and an honorary guest professor abroad; he was born in Dryanovo on 1 September 1932 and died on 29 October 2013. Tokai University appointed him an honorary guest professor in 1996, and among his distinctions were the Japanese Order of the Holy Treasure, Golden Rays with rosette, the Hungarian Zoltán Kodály medal and, in 2002, the Marin Drinov insignia of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His songs entered Bulgarian, German and Japanese school textbooks and were recorded by Balkanton and by German, Finnish, Russian and Japanese companies, and he sat on the juries of international choral competitions.