Revol Bunin was a Soviet Russian composer, born in Moscow on April 6, 1924. He graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory in 1945, studying composition with Dmitri Shostakovich after earlier studies with Genrikh Litinsky and Vissarion Shebalin. In 1947 he served as Shostakovich’s composition assistant at the Leningrad State Conservatory. Bunin moved to Moscow in 1948 and worked from 1948 to 1953 as an editor at the State Music Publishing House.
Bunin composed nine symphonies, an opera, orchestral and chamber works, vocal music, and music for radio and film. His instrumental works include a concert symphony, three symphonic poems, concertos for organ and orchestra, viola and orchestra, chamber orchestra, and piano and chamber orchestra, as well as a piano quintet, two string quartets, sonatas for viola and piano and for piano, and a Children's Album.
His vocal works include the opera The Masquerade, based on a play by Mikhail Lermontov; the cantata Lead Us, Road, set to words by Shakespeare; a choral poem cycle based on Nikolay Nekrasov; and songs for voice and piano using poems by Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Blok, Sergei Yesenin, Sándor Petőfi, and English poets. His film work included scores for Sakhalin Island, Two Lives, and The Postal Romance.
Musicologist Levon Hakobyan described Bunin as especially effective in slow music, citing his melodic gift, thematic work, colorful orchestration, and writing for solo instruments. Hakobyan also observed that Bunin’s faster music could rely too heavily on ostinato repetition and lack thematic invention. Bunin died in Moscow in 1976, aged 52, while working on the unfinished opera The People's Will. He was named an honorary citizen of Ruse, Bulgaria.