Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who guested on Kate Bush’s classic Eighties album The Sensual World.
Soprano Gergana Dimitrova, mezzo-soprano Sofia Yaneva, alto Evelina Christova and contralto Daniela Stoitchkova began performing as a quartet in 1995, and are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year with this, their first concert in the UK since 2008’s Balkan Fever festival, at St Cyprian’s, a High Gothic revival church between Baker Street and Regent’s Park.
They perform in full traditional costume, taking their positions on separate raised platforms in front of the church’s notable Rood Screen. Gorgana Dimitrova leads off on the first song, “Kojilio”, one of several drawn, she says, from the beginning of their career as a quartet. She and mezzo-soprano Sofia Yaneva’s diaphonic part-singing merges and reshapes itself with the introduction of the lower vocal registers of Evelina Christova and Daniela Stoitchkova, the four of them then rising together in vocal unison before separating again in polyphonic cascades of great beauty.
Their repertoire ranges from traditional folk song and sacred music to original compositions and interpretations of the tradition from contemporary composers such as Ivan Spassov, whose “Pripevki ot Pirina” and “Balno li ti e Sino Lio” are centrepieces of the concert’s second half. There are sacred songs from the Orthodox church that sink back to the 14th century, alongside folkloric delights from the Rhodope Mountains, home to the Eva Quartet’s founding inspirations, the pioneering Kushleva sisters, who were the first vocal quartet in Bulgaria to perform the old songs. They include “Kunda Kuchka” and “Minka”, the title track from their latest album on World Network, and both concert standouts.
Theirs are songs that feel like depth charges one moment, then soaring, sweeping airborne auras of polyphonic bliss the other. And theirs are the voices you’d imagine Odysseus hearing as he passes the island of the sirens. And while there are lighter, more humorous songs in the set – cross-talking diaphonic dramas of overlapping conversations, exhortations and exclamations in a kind of Thracian scat style – it’s the more exultant, enveloping and sacred forms of traditional polyphony that have the deepest impact.
One of them will take the lead at the start of a song, around which the other voices coalesce and separate again, each part in perpetual motion, tapping deep and ancient roots with voices trained to draw those roots up to the light, conjuring richly chromatic soundscapes before plunging down together again. Theirs is an infinity pool of song.
Add to the evening the best wines ever served at a gig – courtesy concert pianist and vintner Ivo Varbanov with his range of Bulgarian beauties – and you have an intoxicating concert experience with few peers, no equals. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 17 years to have them back.
