Alexander Kuzmich Vustin (24 April 1943 – 19 April 2020) was a Soviet and Russian composer. He was born in Moscow and began composing in 1952, though he regarded 1972 as the year in which he found his individual compositional voice.
From 1957 to 1961, Vustin studied composition with Grigory Frid. He later dedicated Slovo for winds and percussion (1975) to Frid. In 1969, he graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory, where he studied with Vladimir Fere. He subsequently worked as an editor in radio and at the Soviet Composer publishing house.
Vustin took part in the new Association for Contemporary Music (ACM-2), founded and led by Edison Denisov in 1989. His film work included music for Rustam Khamdamov’s 1991 film Anna Karamazoff.
From 2016 he was composer-in-residence with the Russian State Orchestra, in a project led by Vladimir Jurowski. This collaboration brought wider recognition during Vustin’s final years. On 15 February 2019, Jurowski conducted the world premiere of Vustin’s opera The Devil in Love at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Music Theatre.
His music was characterized by extreme restraint, inward concentration, and a compressed sense of meaning, with time experienced as a shared space of musical action for composer, performer, and listener. In this respect, he was described as an heir to the traditions of Anton Webern. His works were performed by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductors Vladimir Jurowski, Lev Markiz, Alexander Lazarev, Igor Dronov and Reinbert de Leeuw, violinist Gidon Kremer, percussionist Mark Pekarsky, saxophonist Claude Delangle, and singers Svetlana Savenko, Aida Garifullina, and Elena Vasilyeva.
Vustin’s output included the String Quartet (1966), Symphony for orchestra (1969), Three Toropets Songs for piano (1972), Nocturnes for chamber ensemble and high voice (1972–1982), Sonata for Six (1973), Lamento for piano (1974), Memoria-2, a concerto for percussion, keyboards and strings (1978), and The Devil in Love, an opera composed between 1975 and 1989 after the novella by Jacques Cazotte. Later works included Agnus Dei for mixed choir, percussion and organ (1993), Fantasy, dedicated to Gidon Kremer, for violin and orchestra (1996), Sine Nomine for orchestra (2000), Canticum canticorum for voices and ensemble (2010), Litany for percussion, voices and organ (2011), Song of Ascent for orchestra and voices (2016), and Three Poems by Olga Sedakova for bass and orchestra (2017).
He was married to Marina Elyanova, a music editor. Their son, Yuri Vustin, born in 1968, was a singer and a soloist with the early-music ensemble Volkonsky Consort. Alexander Vustin died in Moscow on 19 April 2020 from coronavirus infection. His ashes were interred at Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow on 15 August 2020.