Ivan Wyschnegradsky

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 come 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.

After the piece, the CD also offers two interviews. Excerpts come from nine half-hour programmes recorded in 1976 by Robert Pfeiffer and broadcast on France-Culture during the summer of 1977. At the head of these excerpts, we are publishing the beginning of Daniel Charles's interview with the composer the day of the premiere of La Journée de l'Existence. We endeavoured to present essentially the remarks directly concerning this work, followed by several childhood and youthful memories. Moreover, in the course of this series of interviews, Ivan Wyschnegradsky analysed several of his works and evoked with Robert Pfeiffer his attempts at building quartertone pianos, his theory of non-octaviating spaces and inaudible spaces, his vision of ultra-chromaticism, rhythm, the sound continuum and the cosmic conscience, his 'ultra-chromatic' drawings, the problems of notation, the need for new instruments, spatial densities... all thoughts relating to the research undertaken immediately after the composition of La Journée de l'Existence and continuing throughout his whole life.

La Journée de l'Existence (The Day of Existence), confession of life before life, for orchestra and narrator. Text and music by Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979). Mario Haniotis, narrator; Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France conducted by Alexandre Myrat. Recorded live at the premiere, Paris, 21 January 1978.