A new bilingual edition of one of the most emblematic works by Iannis Xenaki is going to be released. It is a new publication which is seen from a practical angle as much as a musicological review. We have called in Michel Tranchant who, under the supervision of the composer, recorded the work with Groupe Vocal de France.
Michel Tranchant brings new information about Xenakis’ desires for the performance of this piece, including small clarifications and musical indications given directly by Xenakis, which did not appear in the first edition of Nuits.
For that matter, this edition was thought about from a practical point of view. The vocal music of Xenakis always seems to be of great difficulty to understand and to execute – this edition is accompanied by playing and technical performance advice, serving as a guide for singers, and suggesting technical solutions answering any question that the players could ask when working with the score.
“ I first met Iannis Xenakis in October 1980 at the Lille Opera where, at the invitation of Amnesty International Région Nord, a lecture-debate had been organised led by Iannis Xenakis and Maurice Fleuret in the course of which the Groupe Vocal de France of which I was the music director performed Nuits.
It was performed at the start of the event, before the lecture, and again to end the evening.
The presence of Xenakis, everything he expressed at that time, at Fleuret’s urging, the exchanges with the public, meant that this second ‘interpretation’ was quite unlike the first we had given. There emerged an incredible depth and strength, simply by virtue of the fact that Xenakis had spoken of that painfully tragic period he had lived through, in flesh and blood, the Greece of of the ‘Colonels’.
The origin of this score, Xenakis’s personal experience, that he wanted to transcribe through this work for twelve solo voices: you really have to know all this in order to be able to reconstruct vocally and emotionally the deep meaning.
With the Groupe Vocal de France, over the many performances we have given of Nuits, we have always found that strength, that impact, especially as I had the singers read out the dedication “For you, nameless political prisoners…” in French, English or German as the venue required.
To read out and to hear such a powerful text right before the vocal explosion of the sopranos put both us and the audience in the position of giving and receiving this work in all its dramatic scope.
Iannis Xenakis attended quite a few rehearsals before the recording the Groupe Vocal de France and I made for Arion in 1984, a recording he wholly monitored in the control room.
It was during these sessions that he shared with us many details that appear in the present edition, details necessary for a better understanding of the text and hence for a performance that is as faithful as possible to the composer’s intentions.”
Michel Tranchant, February 2014