Fridrich Bruk: Orchestral Music, Volume Five
This fifth instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two large canvases inspired by painters: Symphony No. 13 (2014) by the revolutionary Polish-Ukrainian Soviet artist Kazimir Malevich, and No. 14 (2015) by Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream. Bruk may seem to write in a kind of stream of consciousness, but his works are subtly bound together through a network of motifs and details of scoring. Even so, the orchestral writing in both pieces is wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of colour and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance, with hints here and there of Prokofiev and Szymanowski.
Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra
Imantis Resnis, conductor
Listen To This Recording:
Symphony No. 13, The Artist Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) (2014) (34:12)
- I. Kazimir (15:04)
- II. The Two Squares, Black and Red (1915) (6:46)
- III. The Revolution (12:22)
- Symphony No. 14, The Scream (2015) (31:35)
First Recordings
Fanfare Magazine :
‘The two performances by the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, led with conviction by Imants Resnis, are all a composer could ask for, as is the clear recorded sound.’
—Henry Fogel, Fanfare Magazine, July/Aug 2024
La Folia :
‘Bruk’s programmatic symphonies offer atonal easy listening, vigorous and angular but not difficult.’
—Ethelbert Nevin, La Folia