Victor Bruns


Victor Bruns was a German composer and bassoonist. He played with the Leningrad Opera, the Volksoper Berlin and the Staatskapelle Berlin. As a composer, he is known for his ballets and for bassoon concertos and sonatas.

Career

Victor Bruns was born to German parents in their summer house in Ollila near St Petersburg. He attended a German school where he received his first piano lessons. After brief studies of science at the Technical University, he studied at the Petrograd State Conservatory. Here he studied the bassoon with Alexander Vasilyev from 1924 to 1927 and composition with Vladimir Shcherbakov from 1927 to 1931. He graduated with his first Bassoon Concerto, Op. 5, which he premiered in 1933 with the Leningrad Philharmonic. From 1927 to 1938, he was second bassoonist at the Leningrad Opera. When he was expelled from the Soviet Union for being a German citizen, he took the same position from 1940 to 1944 at the Berlin Volksoper. When Volksoper building was destroyed in 1944 by bombing, the orchestra moved to Hirschberg in Silesia. Bruns was drafted into the army, came into Soviet captivity, and returned to Berlin in December 1945. He studied composition with Boris Blacher from 1946 to 1949. From 1946 to 1969 was second bassoonist with the Staatskapelle Berlin, which premiered many of his works, and became its honorary member in 1969. In 1960 he was awarded the Art Prize of the German Democratic Republic. The International Double Reed Society named him its 16th Honorary Member in 1986, on a nomination by William Waterhouse. In 1994 he became seriously ill and spent the last two years of his life in a Berlin Senior nursing home, where he died.

Works

The focus of his work is instrumental concertos and chamber music while there was wide appreciation of his ballets, such as Das Recht des Herrn by Daisy Spies and Neue Odyssee by Albert Burkat.
Stage
Orchestral
Concertante
Chamber music
Vocal
Bassoonist Eric Stomberg and friends recorded chamber music, two bassoon sonatas and two suites for three bassoons and contrabassoon.