Poem by F. Nietzsche (Russian translation by E.K. Guerzyk). Text in Russian and French.

Playing time: 4’30

Publisher: Belaïeff.

Composer’s note: The music of this piece was composed directly on the Russian text. It then turned out that the rhythm of the original text did not match the music, for ‘L’Automne’ was written by Nietzsche in prose with a free rhythm, and the translator, wishing above all to preserve the spirit of the work, translated it in the same free style without copying the rhythm of the original. This explains the absence of the original text in the vocal part. The same thing applies to the 3 Chants sur Nietzsche (‘Le soleil décline’, Op. 3, for bass-baritone and piano) and to the 2 Poèmes de Nietzsche (‘Après un orage nocturne’ and ‘Le signe de feu’), for bass-baritone and piano in quarter-tones. (English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Poems by F. Nietzsche (Russian translation by E.K. Guerzyk)

Playing time: 11′45 (3′ + 4′15 + 4′30)

Publisher: Belaïeff.

Poem in Russian by Sophie Savitch Wyschnegradsky, the composer’s mother.

Playing time: 1’30

Unpublished

Text: Vassily Kniasev

Playing time: 11’30

Unpublished

First performance of version b: 1st September 1983 in Berlin, by Boris Carmeli, bass-baritone, Aloys and Bernhard Kontarsky, pianos.

Poems by F. Nietzsche (Russian translation by E.K. Guerzyk)

Playing time: 12′10 (4′40 + 7′30)

Unpublished

First performance: 28 February 1991 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, by Jacques Bona, bass-baritone, Sylvaine Billier and Martine Joste, pianos.

In the old Wyschnegradsky catalogue published in 1972 by La Revue Musicale (no. 290-291), Opus 9 was a Chant funèbre for string orchestra and two harps (1922). It would seem that that score was destroyed; at that time, the Deux Chants sur Nietzsche bore the opus number 11 (Franck Jedrzejewski – English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Poem by A. Pomorsky.

Playing time: 10’30 (4’20 + 6’10)

Unpublished

First performance:

– December 1927 in Paris, at the USSR Commercial Representation Club, Ivan Wyschnegradsky and the singer Tzvetiaev performed Le Palais des travailleurs in an adaptation for solo bass and harmonium.

– 20 October 1988, Graz (Austria) for the whole work, by the Pro Arte Ensemble of Graz.

Composer’s note on the score: The four pianos are divided into two groups. Each group includes a piano tuned to the normal diapason and a piano tuned a quarter-tone lower, so that the two together achieve the complete quarter-tone scale (24 notes per octave) in the expanse of the audible musical space. Each group must be considered one instrumental unit, within which the two pianos complement one another. Consequently, it is indispensable that these two pianos have the same timbre and sound to the listener like a single instrument. (English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Playing time: 13′

Unpublished

First performance: 10 November 1945, at Salle Chopin-Pleyel, Paris, by Gisèle Perron and Mady Sauvageot, sopranos, Lili Fabrègue, alto, Yvette Grimaud, Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Boulez and Serge Nigg, pianos, under the composer’s direction.

Ivan Wyschnegradsky wrote in his journal: ‘About 15 September 1945, I phone Messiaen and invite him to my home. On Thursday 27 September, he comes for dinner; after dinner Yvonne Loriod comes. They recommend the singer Mme Sauvageot to me and, as lecturer, Mr Bernard Delapierre. As second and third singers, I already have Mme Fabrègue and Mlle Talansier. Two days later, Messiaen and Loriod come for dinner at our home. She plays some of Messiaen’s Regards sur l’enfant Jésus on my piano. On 12 October, I receive a letter from Mlle Talansier who refuses to participate in the concert. Mme Sauvageot recommends Mme Peyron to me as third singer.’ (Note by Franck Jedrzejewski – English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Playing time: 4′

Unpublished

First performance: 28 March 1938, at the ‘Le Russe à l’étranger’ Musical Society, 26 Avenue de Tokio, Paris, by Michel Benois, baritone, Henri Cliquet-Pleyel and Iska Aribo, pianos.

Playing time: 32′

Unpublished

First performance: 10 October 1999, at the Musikhochschule of Zurich, conducted by Dominik Blum.

Ivan Wyschnegradsky noted in his journal: ‘January 1937. I am experiencing great excitement. I’m beginning a work in ballet form with text (chorus and soloists). It will be entitled « Mystery of Identity », a danced action. It is the development of one of the three little « Mysteries » that were revealed to me in 1918. Later, this revised work would be called Acte chorégraphique.’ (Note by Franck Jedrzejewski – English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Playing time: 5’ (2’40, 2’20)

Unpublished

First performance: 1999 in Montreal (Canada), CD recorded by Michel Ducharme, bass-baritone, Pierrette Le Page and Bruce Mather, pianos.

Poem by Isabelle Rochereau de la Sablière

Playing time: 4′

Unpublished

First performance: 19 June 1980 at the Music Conservatory of Pantin, by students of Martine Joste: Josée Galmiche, soprano and Patrick Brosse, piano.

Playing time: c. 60’

Unpublished

Text by Ivan Wyschnegradsky

Playing time: 2′

First performance: 22 september 2019 in Basle

Text by the composer

Playing time: 55′

First performance: 21 January 1978 at the Maison de Radio France, Paris, by Mario Haniotis, narrator, and the Nouvel Orchestra Philharmonique, conducted by Alexandre Myrat.

Ivan Wyschnegradsky had to wait sixty years to hear the first performance of his masterwork, La Journée de l’Existence, which he had conceived and composed beginning in 1916 in Saint Petersburg. And we have had to wait another thirty years to have it on disc and be able to listen to it as we please. This is also the outcome of twenty-five years of work within the Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky, founded in 1983 under the chairmanship of Claude Ballif.
The emotion was tremendous the evening of the premiere, which took place in the Large Auditorium of Radio-France. Listeners were swept away by the work’s intensity, the conviction and dramatic power of the narrator, Mario Haniotis, and the presence of the composer, who, in the dusk of his life, had come to attend the realization of the score conceived in his youth in a moment of illumination and exaltation. We’ve corne full circle, and miraculously, the emotion of the premiere is fully intact on the disc.
This work in itself is a veritable alchemy of speech and sound.
The text was written and revised several times, the earliest versions, titled La Journée de Brahmâ (The Day of Brahmâ), being written in Russian then in French, in all likelihood beginning in 1927. Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s archives, left to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle, show that the composer continued to revise and transform this poem up until the year following the first performance, and that on the very copy of the concert programme, so it was indeed a ‘work in progress’ that accompanied him throughout his life.
As with most of his works, Ivan Wyschnegradsky wrote several versions of La Journée de l’Existence, including one with chorus ad libitum. Martine Joste (excerpt booklet CD Shiiin – English translation: John Tyler Tuttle)

Text by Ivan Wyschnegradsky? French translation by the composer

Playing time: ??

Unpublished