Regamey, Konstanty Kazimierz (EN)

Regamey Konstanty Kazimierz Rudolfowicz, Régamey, *23 June 1879 Zhmerynka (near Vinnytsia), †20 January 1938 Kyiv, of Swiss descent, pianist, composer and teacher. The Regamey line came from canton Vaud in Switzerland and its members belonged to rich bourgeoisie in Lausanne and Geneva since 1640. Great-grandfather Lousi Regamey settled in Vilnius and obtained the right to teach French, and after marrying a Pole, he moved to Kyiv. Since then, the Regamey family underwent rapid polonisation. His grandson, Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey graduated secondary school in Odesa in 1897 and later studied at the Saint Vladimir University in Kyiv. Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey learnt to play the piano at N.A. Tutkowski’s piano school in Kyiv, later at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; he obtained a diploma in A. Yesipova’s piano class, where he met his future wife, Lydia Slavitch, Serbian-Swedish in origin. After returning to Kyiv to obtain the right to run a music school, he accepted the allegiance to the Tsar of Russia and in 1900, founded the Slavitch-Régamey Music School. In 1910–14, G.I. Indrziszek’s publishing house printed his songs, piano compositions and Berceuse for violin and piano. A copy of one of the songs, Jam tu, Ineziljo, preserved in the collections of baritone K. Czekotowski that were donated to Main Library of the Academy of Music in Gdańsk, has a composer’s dedication written in beautiful Polish language: “Kochanemu Zygmuntowi Ławrockiemu [dla] kompana i serdecznego druha, K. Régamey, 11 V 1917” [“To the beloved Zygmunt Ławrocki, comate and warm-hearted friend, K. Régamey, 11 May 1917”]. In the same publishing house, Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey published 12 collections of etudes by well-known authors and wrote an introduction (H. Berens, H.J. Bertini, F. Burgmüller, C. Czerny, S. Heller, J.N. Hummel and others), and he also added his own etudes. His music school was closed down in 1919 and Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey, after divorcing his wife, moved to Taganrog, where he taught at the conservatory in 1919–22. He revived his music school in Kyiv in 1922, which was later annexed to the M. Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama, where Regamey was a professor in 1928–34, and after the Institute was closed down by the communist authorities, he was a professor at the piano department at the conservatory in Kyiv in 1934–37. He was a member of the Leontovych Music Society. He led an active concert activity, accompanying famous vocalists, including M. Filimon (baritone), D. Revutsky (tenor) and M. Bocharov (baritone). In 1927–32, he participated in unique concert series, broadcast on the radio, designed by L. Revutsky, presenting vocal music of different eras. Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey, considered a member of the cultural and artistic elite of Kyiv, used Polish in writing and speaking. In 1936, he was appointed by the Soviet authorities as the director of the Polish Song and Dance Ensemble, the establishment of which he announced in the monthly “Radiańska Muzyka” (1936 no. 4), where he reported on the establishment of the ensemble and its activities. On 15 July 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD and charged with espionage for Poland. The verdict was upheld. On 20 January 1938, Regamey was shot in a prison in Kyiv.

Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey’s biography and work have not been a subject for musicological studies, he is only mentioned among those repressed during the Stalin’s Great Purge and can be found, among others, in Istoria ukrainskoj muzyka, vol. 4, edited by Ł.O. Parchomienko, Kyiv 1992. The Ukrainian security services erased any traces of Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey, as well as of numerous other Ukrainian musicians and composers removed from public life by the NKVD. Only their students and the Kyiv musical community remembered them. It was only the independence of Ukraine that enabled archival research from 1990, which became the basis for reconstructing the first biography of Konstanty Kazimierz Regamey with elements of pro-Polish activity, Regamey’s biography published for the first time in musicological literature in the volume Pe–R EM PWM in 2004.

Literature: A. Mucha, entry: Konstanty Rudolfowicz Regamey, in: Kompozitori Ukrainy ma ukrainskoj diaspory. Dobidnik, Kyiv 2004 (K.K. Regamey is defined as „pianist, composer, teacher and Pole by descent!”); I. Licenko, entry: Konstanty Regame (Regamey), in: Słownik muzikantiw Ukrainy, Kyiv 2005 (mention that he was repressed and disappeared); J. Stankiewicz Zapomniana postać Konstantego Kazimierza Regameya i jego nowo odnaleziony „Koncert fortepianowy fis-moll” op. 21, in: Sto lat muzykologii polskiej. Historia – Teraźniejszość – Perspektywy, ed. D. Łopatowska-Romsvik, A. Patalas, Kraków 2014; J. Stankiewicz Dwaj Regameyowie – ojciec i syn, in: “Regamey & Regamey”, a double album of vocal and piano recordings by both composers, Polmic, Warsaw 2020.