Ruben Radica

condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (minimal sticker removal residue and light ring wear on front)

Born in Split in 1931, Ruben Radica (1931-2021) came to composition through an unusually rich set of teachers: he studied with Milko Kelemen in Zagreb, with Frazzi in Siena, and - decisively - with René Leibowitz in Paris. Leibowitz was the principal transmitter of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method to France, the teacher of Boulez and the central figure through whom serial technique reached an entire generation of European composers after the war. Radica adopted twelve-tone writing in 1961, becoming one of the first Croatian composers to work systematically within the method, and spent the following decades teaching at the Zagreb Academy of Music, where he served as dean from 1981 to 1985.

This LP, issued in 1976 in Jugoton's series of Contemporary Croatian Composers, presents five works that span his mature output. Formacije (Formations, 1963) for orchestra is among his most substantial contributions to the Zagreb new music scene of the early 1960s. Sustajarnje (1967) pairs electric organ with orchestra - a chromatic, electronically inflected texture that anticipates the more overtly technological phase of Yugoslav experimental music. Extensio (1973) for piano and orchestra, the most recent work here, consolidates the serial language into a more condensed and concentrated form. The LP also includes chamber pieces for wind quintet and synthesizer that show the range of his interests across two decades.

One of the quieter monuments in the Jugoton contemporary series - a composer who worked with consistency and without much international recognition, in a language he had assembled from Paris and then made genuinely his own. Original 1976 pressing.