Fridrich Bruk: Orchestral Music, Vol. 5

Album review

Ukrainian-born composer Fridrich Bruk has been living in Finland since 1974 but continues, as in the symphonic depiction of Ukrainian artist Kazimir Malevich recorded here, to connect with his homeland culturally. Late in life, Bruk began writing works he designated as symphonies; these tightened up his formally free tonal style a bit, although he continued to base the symphonies on programmatic content and rarely used classical four-movement symphonic form. Bruk has found his champion in conductor Imants Resnis and the Lithuanian State Symphony, here on a fifth volume of Bruk's symphonies. These recordings were made in Lithuania in 2014 but not issued until 2024, when the idea of Russian repression of Ukrainian culture once again reached the headlines. Both of the symphonies here depict artists and artworks, and the album might make a good introduction to Bruk's style; although the forms remain very free, one feels that the music is recognizably appropriate to the subject. The Symphony No. 13 ("The Artist Kazimir Malevich") begins with material close but not identical to the theme of the original Star Trek television series, and listeners are invited to speculate on whether this was intentional. Malevich (1879-1935) was a Ukrainian artist who ran afoul of Soviet authorities. The title of the second movement, "The Two Squares, Black and Red," might lead the listener to expect an abstract construction, but instead, Bruk divides the movement into two contrasting moods, one of them playful. The first movement is also based on an artwork, a self-portrait by Malevich, and the entire 30-minutes-plus Symphony No. 14 is inspired by Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream," which Bruk takes to be representative of the artist's inner turmoil. This work might be a bit more difficult to follow in a narrative sense, but it lacks for nothing in terms of heated atmosphere, and Resnis and the Lithuanian State Symphony convey this atmosphere in full, in richly frenetic performances. Bruk is a contemporary symphonist whom most listeners will not know and who is difficult to classify with precision. It is important that he is getting his due here.

© James Manheim /TiVo