Mladen Tarbuk, one of the most versatile composers and conductors of his generation, has developed his music career in many directions.
He has conducted many prestigious symphony orchestras and opera companies, such as Teatro Verdi Trieste, the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia, Sinfonietta Pori, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra,the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, the Mexican State Symphony Orchestra, Opera Lyra Ottawa and the Prague State Opera, just to name a few. He has also conducted in the United States at the National Music Festival in Chestertown, Maryland.
Between 2004 and 2009, he worked regularly at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf as a guest conductor.
Sincehis debut at the Hungarian State Opera with Miklos Zrinyi, in 2000, hehas continued to work intensively in Hungary. He appeared at the Budapest Spring Festival in 2006 and then twice conducted the Kodaly Philharmonic Debrecen. Later on, he opened the Bartok Plus Festival in Miskolc in 2014 and conducted the Hungarian State Opera’s 2018 concert performance of Eugen D’Albert’s opera Tiefland.
Hisrich repertoire includes masterpieces by Hungarian composers like Liszt, Bartókand Ligeti.
Appointedmusic director of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival for the 2013 and 2014 seasons, he then went on to serve as general artistic director until 2017.
Between 2002 and 2005, he worked as the general director of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.
He is also a full-time professor at the Zagreb Music Academy, where he teaches subjects like composition, symphonic conducting and symphonic orchestra.
Finally,he has written about 90 compositions, ranging from chamber music to large symphonic pieces and works for the musical stage. Many of these have been performed at prestigious contemporary music festivals, such as the ISCM World Music Days (in Manchester in 1997, Zagreb in 2005 and Beijing in 2018), the Enescu Festival Bucharest, Wien Modern, the Bregenzer Festspiele, the Gaudeamus Festival Amsterdam, Musicora Paris, Europamusicale München, Trieste Prima, Moscow Autumn and the Music Biennale Zagreb, and have been recorded or published by HoneyRock, Doblinger and Cantus.
He has been honoured with several international prizes for his conducting and compositions, receiving Austria’s Dr. E. Vogel Award, the Basque Tolosa Award Prize in 1993 and the Czech Republic’s Janaček Prize in Olomouc in 1992. In his native Croatia, he has been presented with the Šulek and Slavenski awards (four times each) and the Trnina and Papandopulo awards (twice each).
