IVAN WYSCHNEGRADSKY
Music for Quartertone Pianos
Cosmos Op. 28 (1940/45)
4 Preludes from 24 Préludes, Op. 22a (1934)
Étude sur les mouvements rotatoires Op. 45a (Etude on the Rotary Movements, 1962)
Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra Op.17 (1929/36)
Donald
Wende Museum & MicroFest present Sarah Gibson • Thomas Kotcheff • Vicki Ray • Steven Vanhauwaert Crockett, conductor Pianos provided courtesy of Steinway & Sons, which is proud to support the artistic mission of MicroFest.At the age of 23, Ivan Wyschnegradsky was nearing the end of both his music and law studies in his native Saint Petersburg when, “I saw the great light in full day,” and from that day forward dedicated his life to “awakening in every man the slumbering forces of cosmic consciousness.” He immediately began work on a grand poem for narrator & symphony orchestra called La Journée de l’Existence, soon to be followed by another transformative epiphany that music was indeed a continuum in which the piano’s halfsteps of equal temperament were merely arbitrary stopping points on an infinite spectrum. This “ultrachromatic revelation” led him first to quarter-tones, and eventually to composing with pitches measured in 3rds, 6ths, 8ths, and 12ths of a tone, a world that he later described as Pansonority.
Of course revelation is one thing, realization quite another. His first compositions were for two upright pianos, one tuned a quartertone flat and, flanked by both, he was able to execute a quartertone scale with one hand on each. This enabled access to the brave new world that he had envisioned, but the obvious limitations of this system inspired the composer to begin the search for a single instrument capable of the same effect. He left St. Petersburg for Europe, visiting Berlin & finally settling Paris where he would spend the rest of his life.
His upright triple-keyboard quartertone piano was finally built in 1929 by August Förster who had made the first grand quartertone piano for the Czech composer Alois Hába in 1923. Its delivery unleashed a torrent of activity, with the composer writing for string quartet and choral works as well as for the new piano. It was destined, however, to function more as a laboratory than a concert instrument since contemporary pianists were understandably reticent to take on a 3-manual keyboard with eccentric notation. And so he returned to using two instruments, as displayed by some of the works performed tonight.
Wyschnegradsky first used four pianos as two quartertuned pairs in his 1927 Op. 14, setting poetry by the Russian poet Alexander Pomorsky for two choruses plus percussion. A decade later, the combination was rechristened his “ORCHESTRE DE QUATRE PIANOS” when he transcribed his Symphony “Thus Spake Zarathustra” which closes our program. But first we hear a 15-minute work from 1940 that was premiered in Paris by Messiaen students Yvette Grimaud, Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Boulez and Serge Nigg in 1945 under the composer’s direction. The single movement Cosmos Op. 28 explores the unique textures and registers of this unusual combination, contrasting sinewy melodies accompanied by constellations of shimmering tremolos, punctuated with granitic clusters of profound harmonic density. Years later, Serge Nigg reminisced,
What joy finding ourselves as if immersed in the magical world of microintervals, unreal harmonies, in a fantastical atmosphere, an Ali-Baba’s cavern where diamonds, carbuncles and other precious sound gems glittered. The letdown was hard the day after the concert, when we returned to the ordinary sound world, a bit commonplace and prosaic, of our good old 12note scale of which the chromatic intervals seemed to us to flirt with gaping holes in which all enchantment had vanished.
Centuries ago, J.S. Bach famously explored all twelve keys in his Well-Tempered Clavier, a feat previously impossible in the era’s common meantone method of tuning. Wyschnegradsky similarly explores all twenty-four keys of his newly minted “diatonicized chromatic” scale that consists of 11 half-steps and 2 quarter steps, utilizing thirteen of his twenty-four pitches per octave. Stylistically, these four selections from the 24 Préludes, Op. 22a (1934) are as charmingly diverse in mood, tempo, and texture as their 18th century forbearers.
The Étude sur les mouvements rotatoires (Etude on the Rotary Movements, 1964) is based on a magic square – such as the famed palindrome first discovered in the ruins of Pompeii:
which reads exactly the same whether from Left-to-Right starting from the top left corner, Right-to-Left from the bottom right corner, but also Top-to-Bottom from the upper left & Bottom-to-Top from the lower right. Wyschnegradsky’s pitch choices are equally invertible on all levels, creating melodies and harmony which are reminiscent of his close friend Olivier Messiaen who was an early champion of the Russian émigré.
The concluding Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra Op.17 [auf Deutsch: Also sprach Zarathustra, English: Thus Spake Zarathustra] began life as a symphony for the unheard of and later described by the composer as “not very practical” ensemble of a single quartertone piano at which sat 3 players, a quartertone harmonium with 2 players, a quartertone clarinet, all accompanied by a string ensemble and percussion. Though now lost, the manuscript was transcribed by the composer for an “orchestra” four pianos, two tuned ¼step higher, and retaining the subtitle Symphony for it does indeed follow the Classical four-movement template while moving the Lento slow movement to the penultimate position.
Premiered at Salle Chopin-Pleyel in Paris in 1937, Messiaen wrote a marvelous, perceptive appreciation of the concert saying: "Here there are not only melodic contours known and appreciated by the Hindus alone, but also absolutely new harmonic material, which brings us prisms, chord clusters, dense carillons, ethereal garlands.”
To the end of his life in 1979, Ivan Wyschegradsky continued to explore his extraordinary terra incognita creating music for orchestra, string quartet and a host of socalled “microtonal” keyboard instruments including the electronic ondes martenot
using progressively smaller and smaller divisions of the octave. The recent resurgence of interest in his music tells us that a century after his initial satori, his cosmic vision continues to resonate.
Music can only realize cosmic consciousness by blending into and expanding the sound continuum
Ivan Wyschnegradskymore at: http://www.ivan-wyschnegradsky.fr/en/catalogue/
Artists
SARAH GIBSON is a Los Angeles based composer and pianist whose works draw on her breadth of experience as a collaborative performer with a deep interest in the creative process across various artistic mediums. She has received honors and recognitions such as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's Sound Investment composer, American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, Copland House Residency, Victor Herbert ASCAP award, and a Chamber Music America Grant. She has received commissions from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Tanglewood Music Center, Arco Collaborative, Aspen Summer Music Festival & School, and Seattle Symphony, among others. As a pianist, Sarah has performed with many of these ensembles as well as with wild Up, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the Atlanta Symphony where she debuted under the direction of Donald Runnicles in 2005. Sarah is co-founder of the new music piano duo, HOCKET, which has been lauded as "brilliant" by the LA Times' Mark Swed, and is a core artist for the inimitable Los Angeles Series, Piano Spheres. HOCKET has held residences at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and received grants from the Earle Brown Music Foundation and the Presser Foundation. HOCKET has performed at such festivals as the MATA Festival, the L.A. Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight, Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, and the Other Minds Festival. Sarah received degrees in Piano and Composition from Indiana University and the University of Southern California. Alongside Artistic Director Andrew Norman, she is the Lead-Teaching Artist for the esteemed Nancy and Barry Sanders Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program. Sarah is Assistant Teaching Professor in Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the College of Creative Studies and Music Department where she is the director of the Ensemble for Contemporary Music.
THOMAS KOTCHEFF is a Los Angeles based composer and pianist. His music has been described as “truly beautiful and inspired” (icareifyoulisten.com) and “explosive” (Gramophone magazine). His compositions have been performed internationally by The Riot Ensemble, Seattle Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Wild Up, Sandbox Percussion, Trio Appassionata, Argus Quartet, Lyris Quartet, Alinde Quartett, USC Thornton Edge, The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, HOCKET, Peabody Percussion Group, Latitude 49, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble amongst others. Thomas has won numerous awards and honors including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Presser Foundation Award, New York Youth Symphony's First Music Commission, Aspen Music Festival's Hermitage Prize, a BMI Student Composer Award, a SCI/ASCAP Student Commission, multiple
awards from the National Association of Composers USA, and the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition amongst others.
As a new music pianist, Thomas has dedicated himself to commissioning and premiering new piano works. His playing has been described as “dazzling” by Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times and “outstanding” by Steve Smith of Night after Night. In 2020, Thomas released the world premiere recording of Frederic Rzewski’s 75-minute solo piano work Songs of Insurrection in which Rzewski hailed his performance as “magnificent.” He is the pianist and founding member of the Los Angeles based piano duo Hocket.
Described as “phenomenal and fearless” VICKI RAY is a pianist, improviser and composer. She has commissioned and premiered countless new works by today’s leading composers. Ray is a founding member of Piano Spheres and head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts where she was named the first recipient of the Hal Blaine Chair in Musical Performance. She has appeared on numerous international festivals and was a regular member of the faculty at the Bang On a Can Summer Festival at MASS MoCA. Ray has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series as soloist and collaborative artist. Her widely varied performing and recording career covers the gamut of new and old music: from Boulez to Reich, Wadada Leo Smith to Beethoven. Notable recordings include the first Canadian disc of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Blue Rider Ensemble, the premiere recordings of Steve Reich’s You Are(Variations) and the Daniel Variations with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the first recording of John Cage’s Europeras 3 and 4. Her recording of Cage’s The Ten Thousand Things on MicroFest Records received a 2013 Grammy nomination. Recent recordings include the premiere recording of Andrew Norman’s Sonnets with Eighth Blackbird’s Nick Photinos on the New Amsterdam label and YAR – a duo recording on the Orenda label with slide guitarist Scot Ray. Her recording of Daniel Lentz’s River of 1000 Streams – was named by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as one of the top 20 recordings of 2017. Vicki can also be seen on the mighty chromolodeon as a member of the LAbased PARTCH Ensemble.
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times for his ‘impressive clarity, sense of structure and monster technique’, STEVEN VANHAUWAERT has garnered a wide array of accolades, amongst which the First Prize at the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition. Mr. Vanhauwaert has appeared as a soloist at the National Center of the Performing Arts in Beijing, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, the Concertgebouw in Brugge, the Great Hall of the Budapest Liszt Conservatory, the Forbidden City Theatre in Beijing, Segerstrom Hall, and the National Philharmonic Hall in Kiev. He has appeared with orchestras including the Pacific Symphony, the Lviv Philharmonic, the Sofia Sinfonietta, the Reno Chamber Orchestra, the International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, the Flemish Symphony and the Kyiv Kamerata.
Many of Mr. Vanhauwaert’s performances have been broadcast live on networks such as PBS, K-MZT, K-USC, K-PFK, W-FMT, RTBF, WTV, Radio4, and KLARA. He was also a featured guest in a documentary on creativity for the German/French channel ARTE. He is the co-director of the Unbound Chamber Music Festival in Mammoth Lakes, a 3-week long summer festival featuring
guest artists from around the world. He also serves as Artistic Director for the Second Sundays at Two series in Rolling Hills, CA. His discography covers a wide range of composers, from Joseph Woelfl to Stravinsky and Tigran Mansurian. He has recorded on the Hortus, Sonarti, ECM, and Bridge labels; several of his albums have received 5 diapasons in France, and have garnered praise in the press in the US and abroad. Mr. Vanhauwaert is a Steinway Artist.
Los Angeles-based composer and conductor DONALD CROCKETT has received commissions from a wide spectrum of organizations including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival, Hilliard Ensemble, Harvard Musical Association, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and a consortium of twenty-two collegiate wind ensembles. The recipient in 2013 of an Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, he has also received grants and prizes from the Copland Fund, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA and many others. Deeply committed to education, Donald Crockett is Chair of Composition and Director of Thornton Edge new music ensemble at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.
About MicroFest
Now in its third decade of celebrating the beauty that lies “between the keys” of the piano, MicroFest is the world’s leading concert series devoted to the glorious universe of non-standard tunings. Founded by microtonal guitarist and radio personality John Schneider in 1997, MicroFest has grown to a festival of multiple at Southern California venues ranging from the Claremont Colleges to Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA. MicroFest has included ground-breaking concerts and premieres of works by Ben Johnston, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, and Harry Partch with new and historical instruments. MicroFest is co-directed by Schneider and composer Bill Alves www.MicroFest.org
