UPCOMING CONCERTS
11/12/2024 - Paris: Prélude et Solitude, extracts from Trois Pièces op. 38 - Read
29/01/2025 - Montreal (Canada): 5 Préludes op. 22 - Read
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.
The American Festival of Microtonal Music in New-York made a compilation of several Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s works they had published in CDs during the last 30 years: https://johnnyreinhard.bandcamp.com/album/ivan-wyschnegradsky-pierce-jonas-tom-chiu-johnny-reinhard-dan-auerbach-soldier-string-quartet-american-festival-of-microtonal-music
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.
Sylvaine Billier – personal collection
On December 11, a Tribute to the pianist SYLVAINE BILLIER will take place at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris – 209 Avenue Jean-Jaures 75019 Paris at 7pm in the Salon Vinteuil, Level – 1.
Booking ESSENTIAL with Philippe Giros: philippe.giros@orange.fr
Nine pianists, former colleagues, students and friends of Sylvaine will take part, as well as a clarinettist, three singers and an actor. To honor her memory, we will hear works by composers she loved and played, including Schubert, Berg, Ravel, Strauss, Zemlinski, Markeas and Wyschnegradsky.
Sylvaine Billier sadly passed away a few months ago. She was an exceptional musician, teacher and personality. Extremely generous and open-minded, she played and premiered many works by her contemporaries, including virtually the complete works for 1, 2, 3 and 4 pianos by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. Three discs and CDs bear witness to this: a live double-disc of the 1977 monographic concert at Radio-France, published by René Block/Berlin – the first CD in the 2e2m collection, works for 2 pianos with 4 and 8 hands – a CD on the Col legno label with the 24 Preludes for 2 pianos and the Etude sur les Mouvements rotatoires for 2 pianos 8 hands. Sylvaine also contributed to the CD devoted to the Carrillo piano in 1/16th tone (Zeitlang edition).
As a soloist, she has created works by Claude Ballif, Alain Louvier, Nicolas Obouhow, Pascale Criton, Alain Bancquart, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, among others… She recorded the Anneaux de lumière by Alain Louvier, playing alone on 2 pianos arranged at right angles and tuned at a quarter-tone distance.
I personally had the great joy of being her friend. Together we formed a piano duo (4 hands and 2 pianos) and performed multiple concerts and tours, both in Paris and the Paris region, as well as in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Monaco. For about 20 years we played works from the repertoire, by Schubert, Weber, Satie, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartok, Debussy, as well as works by Ives, Boulez, Kurtag, Zimmermann, Ferneyhough, Pousseur, Gorecki, and created works by Bussotti, Cage, Bancquart, Roquin, Flammer, Haas, Marietan, Savouret, Staude, Wyschnegradsky, Kaczinsky, Vandenbogaerde, Mâche, Decoust, Mather, Marie… during Festivals dedicated to contemporary music.
Sylvaine had formed a duo with the violinist Clara Bonaldi and several records that have been well-received by critics were published with their complete sonatas of Schubert, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Bartok, Ballif…
She was the accompanying pianist of Janine Micheau’s singing class at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris and was a very sought First sight-reading Professor in this institution. In this field, Sylvaine Billier wrote a book: The first sight reading or the art of the first interpretation edited by Leduc, which remains a reference.
Her deep musicality, professional conscience and love of one’s neighbor remain for all those who have known her a unique and unalterable model.
Martine Joste – november 2024
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).