UPCOMING CONCERT(S)
14/03/2026 - Les Lilas (near Paris): improvisation by drummer Simon Goubert on extracts of Wyschnegradsky’s works - Read
News
Publication by Shiiin of a CD including all the Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s works for piano solo in semitones played by Martine Joste.
To order it, see Shiiin label: www.shiiin.com.
At the top of the website page bibliography, you’ll find a new text of remembrances which the american dancer and choregraph Margaret Fisher recently wrote on our request upon her meeting with Ivan Wyschnegradsky in Paris in 1977.
New publication to be seen on the website page videos: the Méditation sur deux thèmes de La Journée de l’Existence op. 7, with Katharina Gohl Moser, cello and Anton Kernjak, piano, produced by La Pataconera in february 2024 in Basle.
If you are able to communicate the details of a concert, research or an event concerning Ivan Wyschnegradsky, we would be grateful for your informing us.
EDITO
NB Previous editos are available by clicking here.
It is with great pleasure that I announce the release on the Shiiin label of the latest CD dedicated to Ivan Wyschnegradsky. It contains the complete works for solo piano in semitones, recorded by me last year. Several of these works were previously unreleased and are therefore presented here in their first performance and recording.
They are arranged in reverse chronological order, beginning with the mature works, the Study on the Magic Square of Sound, Op. 40, and the Three Pieces, Op. 38, and ending with the Early Preludes, composed in 1916 while the composer was still living in his native Russia and reconstructed by him from memory in 1949.
The recording was made at La Tour de Guet/La Beaudelie by Jean-Marc Chouvel, then mastered by Lucas Derode, all under the artistic direction of Fernand Vandenbogaerde. This is the third CD of works by Ivan Wyschnegradsky released on the Shiiin label in co-production with the Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky. The first was La Journée de l’Existence in 2009, followed in 2017 by the CD Pianos en quart-de-ton, which includes, alongside Wyschnegradsky’s works for Ondes Martenot, cello, and four pianos, new compositions by Alain Bancquart and Alain Moëne.
The Ivan Wyschnegradsky solo piano CD that I recorded and which has just been released contains:
Study on the Magic Sound Square, Op. 40 (1957)
Di-Ra-Te-Lo-Tu (1918) (based on the notation of Nikolai Obouhov)
Three Pieces, Op. 38 (Prelude, composed in 1957 – Elevation, composed in 1964 – Solitude, composed in 1959)
Four Fragments, Op. 5 (1918) 1) Wild, quadrangular 2) Perfectly free 3) Whimsical 4) With an iron necessity
Shadows (1916) 1) Fluid, imprecise 2)Transparent 3)Lento, lugubrious (Vision of nothingness)
Two Preludes, Op. 2 (1916) 1) Grandioso 2) Allegro irato
Early Preludes (18 Preludes reconstructed from memory by the composer in 1949 out of the 24 conceived in 1916)
These works are followed by two short interviews with the composer:
Wyschnegradsky’s Conversations on the Early Preludes (interview with René Misslin, 1970)
Presentation by Ivan Wyschnegradsky of the Study on the Magic Sound Square (excerpt from interviews with Robert Pfeiffer, 1977)
The booklet is enhanced with photos, manuscripts, and notes on the works.
It can be ordered for €20 from the Shiiin label.
I hope you will enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed playing and recording these mostly unknown works by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. Regarding the Early Preludes, the composer himself said that he in no way disowned these early pieces in his work (see the interview with René Misslin), while specifying that listening to them would only be worthwhile in a « retrospective. » This is what we have undertaken, hoping that the life of this composer/researcher/philosopher/poet will be illuminated, if not « brought to light, » in a new and unexpected way.
Martine Joste, november 2025
IVAN WYSCHNEGRADSKY
‘I could have been a poet, a philosopher or a musician. I chose music: I am therefore a composer.’
Ivan Wyschnegradsky, born in Saint Petersburg in 1893, lived in Paris from 1920 until his death in 1979. Admired by numerous composers, amongst whom we can mention Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux, Bruce Mather, Alain Bancquart and Claude Ballif, Ivan Wyschnegradsky is recognized by the musical world as one of the pioneers in 20th century music.
Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s 1/4 tone piano, which in 1927 he had ordered from the August Förster manufacture, first was in the home of Claude Ballif, to whom he had bequeathed it. Since 2009 it belongs to the Paul-Sacher Foundation in Basel. Photo René Block (1979).