Revol Bunin
| Revol Bunin | |
|---|---|
Revol Bunin (right) with Rudolf Barshai, c. 1968
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| Background information | |
| Native name | Револь Самойлович Бунин |
| Born |
6 April 1924 Moscow, USSR |
| Died | 3 July 1976 (aged 52) Moscow, USSR |
| Genres | classical music |
| Occupation(s) | composer |
| Labels | Melodiya, others |
Revol Samoilovich Bunin (Russian: Револь Самойлович Бунин; 6 April 1924 in Moscow – 3 July 1976 in Moscow), was a Russian composer.
Bunin's father, Samuil Markovich, was a bolshevik, a member of the Communist Party from before the 1917 revolution and worked as a professor of social economics at one of the Moscow Institutes. Bunin was named "Revol" after the October revolution.
Volik was 6 when he started to write music and he started by writing scores. In the 1930s in Soviet Union score paper was hard to find, so young Bunin would draw lines on a plain paper for his compositions. He wrote marches, waltzes, minuets and Polkas.
Bunin’s mother was always very ill, and died when he was 14, leaving his upbringing was entirely in the hands of his father. When Bunin’s mother was dying, she asked him to play a piano. He played Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky through the night. Next morning he had his first attack of asthma, a disease that would in the end kill him.
In 1938 Revol started his compositions studies at the Music School of the Moscow Conservatory under Professor Ilya Litinsky. During his third year of studies he was admitted to the Conservatory and continued his studies under Professor Vissarion Shebalin, who was, at the time, the Conservatory’s director. In 1941, he was summoned first to work at the military factory in Moscow and then was drafted to an active duty. Taking into account his musical gift, so he could continue to attend the classes, he was stationed near Moscow. He was decommissioned due to ill health in March 1943. In June 1943 Shostakovich started to teach at the Moscow Conservatory and Bunin was the first student he selected to be his pupil. In his article “With great appreciation” in “The Soviet Music” Magazine (September 1976), Bunin wrote “... We were more and more conquered by Shostakovich’s works. Secretly, I was dreaming to become his student. Finally, this happy day came on June 7th, 1943, class room number 31... At the piano a friendly man, dressed in a gray-colored modest suit, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked very young, nothing like the old eminent scholars of the Conservatory. He asked me in details how old I was, when I started to compose, who were my teachers, if I studied polyphony and so on; he subjected me to a small exam - I had to read a score of Haydn symphony, to tell him what was the difference between a Passacaglia and Chaconne, to give examples, known to me, of a mirror reprise in symphonic allegro and give examples for use of French horns and trumpets in a rare formation (H, Fis). Shostakovich was interested if I read a lot and if I liked Chekhov and Leskov...”
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