On January 23, 1933, Pipkov—along with Pancho Vladigerov, Petko Staynov, and a number of other composers—became one of the founding members of the Contemporary Music Society, an organization which would eventually become the Union of Bulgarian Composers (SBK).
[2] Despite his success, he also incurred the dislike and criticism of officialdom in the postwar People's Republic of Bulgaria, which forced his removal from these positions.
[8] Aside from his work as a composer and teacher, Pipkov was also active as a poet, critic,[8] and representative for Bulgaria at international conferences of music educators.
[4] For his services to Bulgarian music, Pipkov was made a Hero of Socialist Labor and People's Artist of Bulgaria, and was thrice awarded the Dmitrov Prize.
[2][4][8] Shortly after Pipkov returned to Bulgaria from France, Petko Staynov praised his colleague's "expressive" language, with its "bracing, heartfelt, sincere melodies" and "violent and unrestrained rhythms".
[14] In the early 1940s, Tamara Yankova held up his work as an example of an artist who resisted the "modernomania" of the times, instead reaching into the "Bulgarian spirit" to create original music.
Reviewing a performance of a Pipkov work for string quartet at the 1953 Prague Spring Festival, Malcolm Rayment called the unidentified score "attractive" and "light".
[16] Boris Yarustovsky praised the "daring musico-dramaturgic innovation" and "democratic quality" of the composer's final opera, Antigone '43.
[17] The "jaunty, lyrical, somewhat Frenchified" Clarinet Concerto was appraised warmly by Claire Polin, who focused on the composer's handling of the "complex rhtyhmic problems" in the score.
[19] Speaking to American interviewers in 1973, Dmitri Shostakovich named Pipkov, along with Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten, as among those who contributed "excellent" symphonic works in the later 20th century.