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Roman Berger

From Unearthing The Music

Roman Berger (photo by: Robert Nemecek)

Roman Berger (born August 9, 1930 in Cieszyn, on the Czech-Polish border) is a Slovak composer, music educator and scientist.

Berger, who came from a Lutheran pastor family, studied piano and music theory at the Katowice Music Academy. Following the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, Berger’s father was put under pressure to move his family to the Slovak capital Bratislava, where he continued his education at the University of Music Arts (VŠMU), and attended the piano classes of Frico Kafenda and Štefan Németh-Šamorínsky, and then began to teach. After he was denied a degree with Bolesław Woytowicz in Katowice, he became a composition student of Dezider Kardoš.

He completed his studies with distinction in 1965 with the cycle "Transformations, 4 Pieces for Large Orchestra". After a successful performance at the ISCM Festival in Prague in 1967, Transformations was to be included in the programme for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. However, on hearing of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the so-called Warsaw Pact armies (Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland), Berger refused to send the score of his work to Warsaw, in protest.

From the late 1970s onward, Berger's works were also performed internationally. He also wrote numerous articles on music theory and philosophy, music analysis and interpretation. Among other things, he was awarded the Herder Prize by the University of Vienna (1988), the Gloria Artis Medal for Cultural Merit (2006), the Order Polonia Restituta , Officer (2011), the Prize of the Polish Composers' Association (2012) and the diploma of the Pontifical Council for Culture (2013).

Discography

Includes records in collaboration with or featuring tracks by other artists, or with works interpreted by other artists.

  • DEZIDER KARDOS - ROMAN BERGER (1968)
  • ROMAN BERGER - Sonáta "da camera" (1983)
  • JOSEF BULVA SPIELT MARTINU, BERGER, SKRIABIN. BERÜHMTE KLAVIERWERKE DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS (1991)
  • Electroacoustic Music CD - Radio Bratislava (1992)
  • CHAMBER MUSIC 1 (1993)
  • DE PROFUNDIS I (1993)
  • ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC MUSIC: SLOVAKIA 1989 - 94 (1994)
  • ROMAN BERGER: CONVERGENCE I, II, III: TRANSGRESSUS (2002)
  • ROMAN BERGER: EXODUS, ADAGIO II, ADAGIO II (2003)
  • Dual (2008)
  • SLOVAK PIANO SONATAS - LADISLAV FANZOWITZ (2009)
  • SLOVAK ORGAN MUSIC - JAN VLADIMIR MICHALKO (2010)
  • MEMENTO: ROMAN BERGER (2010)
  • ARTMUSFAIR WARSAW 2010 (2010)
  • QUINT VARIATIONS OF SLOVAK COMPOSERS (2011)
  • SERGEJ KOPČÁK - LAST WORKS (2012)
  • VIOLIN SOLO 5 - MILAN PAĽA (2013)
  • ELENA LETNANOVA PLAYS WORKS BY SLOVAK COMPOSERS (2014)
  • EXPERIMENTAL STUDIO BRATISLAVA SERIES 1 (2015)
  • MOYZES QUARTET - STRING QUARTETS (2015)
  • ROMAN BERGER: PATHETIQUE (2015)

Related Content

Experimental Studio Bratislava: An interview with Juraj Ďuriš

Organized Sound and Experiments in Slovak Music

The East of the West: The context for electroacoustic music in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1992

References

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