Bruno Vlahek is a prominent
young multitalented musician whose constantly growing versatile career is
being successfully divided between piano playing and composing. He was
born 1986 in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where he received his first
musical education at the age of 9. Just two years later, he already won
the first prize at the Pinerolo International Piano Competition in Italy
and became subsequently an absolute winner of his native country's
national competitions held in Dubrovnik in 1999 and 2001.
At the
age of 14, he got under guidance of Vladimir Krpan in whose class he
graduated piano as one of the youngest students in history of the Zagreb
Music Academy. Having won the scholarships of Swiss
Confederation and later of the German DAAD, he moved abroad and finished
postgraduate studies at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne with
Jean-François Antonioli and at the Cologne University of Music where his
teachers were Vassily Lobanov (piano), Tilmann Claus and Johannes Fritsch
(composition and improvisation). From 2010/11, he is studying with
legendary Russian pianist and pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov at the Queen
Sofía College of Music in Madrid as a scholarship holder of the Spanish
Foundation Albéniz. In June 2011 he received an award for the best student
of Piano catedra from the hands of Her Majesty Queen Sofía
of Spain.
He also
received master classes from artists such as Homero Francesch, Felix
Gottlieb, Emanuel Krasovsky, Alexander Mndoyants, Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Jean-Bernard Pommier
and Jerome Rose.
Vlahek
is a 1st prize winner of the international piano competitions „Alexander
Scriabin“ in Paris 2010 and „Ricard Viñes“ in Lleida 2008, a laureate of
the EPTA-Svetislav Stanèiæ Competition in Zagreb 2007, winner of the Swiss
prizes "Paderewski" and "Max D. Jost", and a finalist of the Busoni
Competition in Bolzano 2009. In his native country he received a
prestigious title of the Young Musician of The Year 2010. Both in 2011, he
won the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe's Award in Madrid and Pnina
Salzman Memorial Award of the Tel-Hai International Piano Master Classes
(Israel).
He performed in prestigious concert venues such as Palau de la Música in Barcelona,
Liszt Academy in Budapest, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Gasteig in Munich,
Mozarteum in Salzburg, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
and many other musical centres and festivals (Dubrovnik Summer Festival,
Music Biennale Zagreb, Festival Busoni etc.) in Austria, Croatia, Czech
Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy,
Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and
Switzerland. He appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as Orchestre de Chambre de
Lausanne, Sinfonietta de Genève, I Solisti di Zagreb, Symphony
Orchestra of Croatian Radiotelevision, Toruñ Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra
Simfônica del Vallés, Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and many others. He
played a concert series for Vladimir Spivakov Foundation which brought him
also on the stage of Moscow's Kremlin. His concert appearances were
broadcasted on national TV and radio stations in several European
countries, while in 2008 he recorded Saint-Saëns' 2nd Piano Concerto with
Lausanne Chamber Orchestra for Radio Suisse Romande.
He has
so far composed around 40 orchestral, chamber, solo and choral works of
various genres which are mostly characterized by neoclassical form and
expression, often combined with idiom of jazz and popular music. His music
has been performed in European music centres (Berlin, Munich, Riga,
Lisbon, Ljubljana, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna), at the contemporary music festivals in
Pula and Belgrade, in the North and South America and at the ISCM’s World
New Music Days 2010 in Sydney (Australia). In 2008 his Mass was premiered
by the Choir and Symphony State Orchestra Zulia in Maracaibo (Venezuela).
His works have been awarded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of
Croatia and have been published in United Kingdom and USA.
