Ivan Brkljačić (1977, Serbia) holds a BA (the class of Srđan Hofman) and MA (the class of Zoran Erić) degrees in composition from the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. In 2012, he successfully defended his doctoral project, Istar (supervised by Srđan Hofman) and obtained the title of Doctor of Arts. Since 2005, he has taught as an assistant professor (docent) at the Music Theory Department of the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. He has served as the programme selector of the Review of Composers since 2007.

His works have been performed in France, Hungary, Romania, Macedonia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Brazil, Sweden, and Australia (his piece Jinx was performed at the opening of the 2010 World New Music Days in Sydney). He has also composed incidental music for theatre (Atelje 212, Raša PlaovićStage of the National Theatre in Belgrade, Bitef teatar, Duško Radović Theatre, Boško Buha Theatre, theatres in Zrenjanin, Vršac, Subotica, Banja Luka, Podgorica, Budapest, and Erlangen, Germany). He composed music for the feature film Ustanička ulica (official English title: Redemption Street, 2012; dir. Miroslav Terzić). In 2004, he won the Mokranjac Award for his piece Kad se SEDAM puta digne zavesa (When the Curtain Rises SEVEN Times) for symphony orchestra and his film score for Redemption Street won the best original music award at the 41st Sofest festival, as well as the Annual Award of the magazine Muzika klasika in the category of applied music.

Brkljačić composed his Impromptu, Solo Piano Suite in 1995, during his first year in the undergraduate composition programme at the Faculty of Music. It comprises four movements: I Lento, II Allegretto, III Vivo, and IV Presto. The opening movement begins with a low-register cluster, generating an atmosphere of mystique. This is followed by a perpetuum mobile, which turns into the musical core that takes the work to its sonic culmination. The second movement is short and energetic, emloying repetition in the musical material. The third movement is the suite’s scherzo. The final movement, Presto, again as a sort of perpetuum mobile, commands a relentless charge, like a finale.