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The composer of Croatian origin, Rudolf Bruči, was born in in Zagreb, where he finished Secondary School of Music (the violin). He started out his musical career as a viola player in different orchestras ranging from cabaret ensembles to symphony orchestras. After his moving to Belgrade, Bruči as a thirty years old musician, rather lately, began to study composition and conduction at Academy of Music in Belgrade. He was the only composition student of the probably most erudite Serbian composer ever, Petar Bingulac (himself a student of well known French composer Vincent D'Indy).
Later (in the period of 1954-1955) Rudolf Bruči continued his studies with the Viennese dodecaphonic composer Alfred Uhl. The definite turning point in the life of this composer was without any doubt the unexpected first prize in 1965 (or 1966) at the Queen Elisabeth's international composer's competition in Brussels, where his Symphony Lesta was awarded with the first prize.The concurrence was particularly tough as more than 250 composers applied from 26 countries.
Rudolf Bruči was member of JNA (Yugoslav National Army) Culture Club Orchestra in Belgrade, of the Opera of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad and of Novi Sad Philharmonic Orchestra. He worked as a teacher, and later as the headmaster of “Isidor Bajić” School of Music. From 1962 to 1965, he was director of the Opera of the Serbian National Theatre.
In the 1970’s Rudolf Bruči was personally responsible for the uprising of the Novi Sad Academy of Arts, where he taught composition and was its first dean, with the finest musicdepartment in ex-Yugoslavia (even Alfred Schnittke signed the contract with that institution). In 1979, he became the Director of the Music Centre in Novi Sad. He was also the president of Association of Composers and Music Writers of Vojvodina and the president of Association of Composers and Music Writers of Yugoslavia (SOKOJ). As a musical organiser Bruči made a tremendous impact on the musical life of the city of Novi Sad, establishing institutions as the new opera house, philharmonic and the music high school.In the centre of the compositional work of this composer almost always stood the full symphonic orchestra and he wrote his best pages for this performing medium.
Rudolf Bruči is especially valuable in his comprehensive opus are large symphonic, concert/intended and vocal-instrumental works: cantatas, operas, ballets, concertoes and symphonies. Beside the above mentioned Symphony Lesta his Third Symphony should be pointed out at the first place as his most likely best composition ever, followed by masterpieces as the symphonic poem Mascal, Metamorphoses B-A-C-H for strings, ballets Katharine Ismailova, The Demon of the Gold, Kirka, cantata Vojvodina and his two operas Prometheus and Gilgamesh. Bruči's musical language rooted deeply in the soil of the rich musical traditions of the music of Balkans in its broadest sense - from the unique Istrian scale system to be heard in the Third Symphony to the omnipresent Bulgarian rhythm structures in his symphonic poem Mascal. Next to this background, one can notice a successful fusion with the experiences of the achievements of new musical languages. He he employs polytonal and atonal devices which culminate in free dodecaphony, as well as compositional techniques and aesthetics employed by the composers of New Polish School.
Rudolf Bruči in his compositions always stood out as a great connoisseur of the symphony orchestra and repeatedly gained high acknowledgements for his outstanding orchestrations. At the end of his life, which conformed to the outburst of the civil war, Bruči shared the destiny of many artists with mixed background. As a Croat composer in Vojvodina, at that time occupied by Milosevic's nationalistic forces,he was sitting in the middle of the nowhere and slowly but surely pushed out from the public life. In the last twenty years, Bruči abandoned from his environment, descended more and more in to the dark abyss of oblivion.
Rudolf Bruči received many high awards and medals. He died died in Novi Sad on October 31, 2002 at the age of 85. |
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Maskal , symphonic suite (1955)
Concerto for Orchestra (Belgrade, November 25, 1959)
Čovek je vidik bez kraja, cantata (Belgrade, December 21, 1961)
Srbija, cantata (Belgrade, May 24, 1962)
Sinfonia lesta (1965)
Sinfonietta for Strings (1965)
Salut au monde, oratorio (1967)
Symphony No. 3 (1969)
Concerto for Clarinet and Strings (1970)
Concertino for Orchestra (1970) |
