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Vierteltonmusik 1983
500 copies
Double LP

Double LP with quarter tone music as well as a recorded talk on side 3. Interpreter: Sylvaine Billier, Martine Joste, Jean-Francois Heisser, Jean Koerner, (piano), Jacques Wiederker, (Violoncello), led by: Michel Decoust /// Like Erik Satie and Charles Ives, Ivan Wyschnegradsky belongs to a generation of composers who have always stood somewhat in the shadows, away from what was considered ›Neue Musik‹ in the 1920s or even the 1950s. Only today are the supposed outsiders being recognized as part of the mainstream. Ivan Wyschnegradsky was born in St. Petersburg on May 14, 1893 and died in Paris on September 29, 1979. He studied composition with Sokolov from 1911 to 1914 and was introduced to the work of Alexandr Scrjabin by Sokolov, who was a decisive influence on his work. With his concept of subdividing octaves into ever smaller intervals, ultimately to the point where the ear could only just distinguish them, Wyschnegradsky followed the path that Ferruccio Busoni had projected in his ›Outline of a New Aesthetic of Musical Art‹. Like Busoni, however, Wyschnegradsky never abandoned the classical conception of composing; in this he always remained indebted to Scrjabin as a model, as well as in his conception of a Gesamtkunstwerk consisting of colors, music and space, which he wrote down at the beginning of the 1940s. This record edition presents a cross-section of his oeuvre, compiled by the composer shortly before his death, based on a concert recording from 1977. The fourth side of the record contains an interview with the composer in which, among other things, he discusses his synaesthetic visions, explains the ›Etude sur les Mouvements rotatoires‹ and recites Richard Wagner's ›Tristan und Isolde‹ at the piano as a profession of faith in the transformative power of music.