Roman Pavlovych Rubinger (7 April 1893, Sniatyn - 19 May 1964, Kolomyia) was a Ukrainian violinist and teacher, founder and director of the Kolomyia Music School.
Biography.
Roman Rubinger and his brother Lev were born into the family of Pavlo Rubinger, a clerk, in the town of Sniatyn in the Stanislavivshchyna (now Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine). Their father was of German descent, but their mother was Ukrainian and raised her sons in the Ukrainian spirit. Lev Rubinger writes in his memoirs:
"...our whole family was connected to the Ukrainian people and we all felt Ukrainian.
people and we all felt Ukrainian, considering it
it was a dishonour to renounce our people for the sake of dubious
legal or material privileges..."
"
Roman Rubinger graduated from a local school in 1902, studied at the Kolomyia and then Lviv Academic Gymnasiums, and the Lviv Private Music School. He graduated from the Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute in Lviv.
Now the Yosafat Kobrynsky National Museum of Folk Art of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttya.
The First World War found Roman Rubinger as an officer of the Austrian army, he fought on the Italian front, and was wounded in the left arm. When the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen was created, he joined this formation as a lieutenant - the 1st Brigade of the Osyp Bukshovanyi Ukrainian Sich Riflemen.
During the hostilities in the "triangle of death", he contracted typhus and was sheltered by the Dunaysky family for the duration of his treatment. The owner's daughter Raisa fell in love with the young Roman and they got married.
In 1920, the family was forced to move to Kolomyia in Galicia, where they became actively involved in the cultural and artistic life of the city.
Here, Roman Rubinger was hired as a violin teacher at the teachers' seminar of the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society "Native School" opened in the premises of the "People's House". In addition to the violin, he taught the viola, cello, and double bass, and created a chamber orchestra from the seminar students, which later grew into a symphony orchestra, which also included students from male and female gymnasiums. At the same time, he directed a choir accompanied by the orchestra. Every Sunday the choir sang the Liturgy in the Ukrainian church, which was also attended by Poles.
He was not paid for conducting, and once he gave his monthly salary to buy a bassoon for the symphony orchestra, so he had to earn extra money in the city's Mars cinema, accompanying 2 silent film screenings by playing the violin to the piano of Maria Kichura.
In 1928, on the initiative of the composer Stanislav Liudkevych, a branch of the Mykola Lysenko Higher Music Institute in Lviv was opened in Kolomyia. Roman Rubinger was its first director, he taught the violin class and theoretical disciplines. In 1930, at Rubinger's invitation, Halyna Lahodynska moved to Kolomyia to teach. The students of the branch studied music from Bach to the music of 20th century composers, including Ukrainian composers Stanislav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky, and Nestor Nyzhankivsky. In addition to his work at the branch, Roman Rubinger worked with the choir of the men's gymnasium and the Kolomyia Boyan choir. In Kolomyia Boyan, he met Roman Stavnychyi - Rubinger became the conductor of the orchestra, and Stavnychyi became the conductor of the choir. The musical groups gave many concerts, performing works by Grieg, Beethoven, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Bizet, Lysenko's cantatas "The Thresholds Are Breaking", "Rejoice, Unwatched Field" and other works. Mykola Lysenko's opera Nocturne was staged. In 1931, he conducted Mykhailo Holynskyi during his tour in Kolomyia. In 1937, he conducted an evening dedicated to the 40th anniversary of Olha Kobylianska's writing with her participation, and the Kolomyia Tobilevych Theatre staged the performance "Screaming Souls" based on the novel "The Apostle of the Blacks" directed by Oleksa Skalozub. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the orchestra under his direction accompanied the opera Zaporozhets Beyond the Danube by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, directed by Anton Rudnytskyi.
Rubinger made great efforts to open the first Ukrainian music school in Kolomyia in 1929. He worked there until his death, and later the branch was closed, leaving only the music school. In Soviet times, Rubinger worked first as the director of the music school, and after N. Kybkal was appointed to this position, as a head teacher and violin teacher.
In 1945, he conducted Semen Tkachenko's production of Ostrovsky's The Tempest. He conducted the school symphony orchestra even after suffering a heart attack. He worked at the music school until his last days.
Roman Rubinger died in 1964 a few weeks after conducting the symphony orchestra at a competition in Ivano-Frankivsk. He was buried at the old Monastyrok cemetery in Kolomyia.
Honouring him
In May 2014, a memorial plaque was unveiled in his memory on the facade of the Music School No. 1, created by Yaroslav Loburak.
