At the end of 1935 the management of the radio invited Parashkev Hadjiev to enrich and diversify the existing children's programs in which actor Nicola Balabanov presented tales to the youngest listeners. The young composer, who had just graduated, started work with a good deal of enthusiasm. It all started in a makeshift studio on Moskovska Street before the radio moved to the building in Dragan Tsankov blvd, which is still used today. Broadcasts were live from studio No. 2 of the radio. "That was when we started work on drama for children on an impressive scale. I wrote most of the scripts, the lyrics and the music to the plays we performed." - Parashkev Hadjiev remembers. Twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday afternoon, performances by the band created by the composer were aired. The band was called "childhood Happiness" and included 6-7 girls, one of whom was his sister and the others were classmates from high school. One of these girls was the future vocal pedagogue - Prof.Elena Kiselova. Another was Mara Hinova who subsequently became an opera singer and the composer's first wife. The program was called "Children’s Hour", it started with stories and fables and continued with songs. 

"To begin with, actor Nicola Balabanov would read a children's story, and then we would sing," Parashkev Hadjiev says in an interview preserved at the Golden Fund of the Radio. "However, this practice got to be boring and we started selecting dialogue songs: Cricket and the Ant, Stork and Frogs and others. Then I started composing children’s pieces - short radio operettas. A friend of mine, Stoyan Bahchevandjhiev suggested a libretto, which was a great success. This was the play The Rescuer-Cricket broadcast in June 1937. He wrote more lyrics for the children’s radio operettas, a series of eight pieces - "The Adventures of Tomcho Thumb" which attracted great interest. Listeners were calling the radio asking when the next adventure would be aired. I was in charge of everything in these programs. I wrote the music then rehearsed it - music and lyrics - together with the band. I played the piano and when we needed a male voice I also took part. This made me an expert at playing old ladies with no teeth and giants. In the 1936-1944 period we created more than 120 children’s radio plays. Many of the scripts that I wrote were based on famous Bulgarian tales and the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Hauff, Pushkin… We included Bulgarian writers such as Leda Mileva. There was no was to make recordings back then and everything was live. Unfortunately, nothing has been preserved as everything was kept in Studio No. I and during the war, a bomb fell and destroyed our radio plays and a number of other things.”

The opening and closing signature tune of the first children’s shows remained the same, but each time the tonality changed depending on what the first and the last song was. Today we can well call them small "musicals for children" with singing, dialogues and jests. 

Today, the children's songs by Parashkev Hadjiev are part of the repertoire of a number of choirs and vocal groups.

The audio file contains the following works:

 - Singing clock - piano play; performed by Parashkev Hadjiev

- Theme song from the operetta "The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats" 

- Tink-Tink

- Goodnight - choir, soloist Vanina Ivanova, music P.Hadjhiev, lyrics Georgi Avgarski

English: Alexander Markov