Lubomyr Melnyk
KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode
Unseen Worlds 2007
01. One KMH
02. Two KMH
03. Three KMH
04. Four KMH
05. Five KMH
This month I'm gonna try a different strategy by mixing new releases with recent reissues, vintage, forgotten records and the likes. Melnyk comes first because we're neighbours, and then surely, because he's one of the world's greatest "unknown" composers and pianists. How about a quick insight:
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. He holds two world records, actually: one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
Speed would be nothing without control, and in fact Melnyk had to train himself for years, even by taking up Tai Chi, to be able to perform the pieces he composed - simply because his pieces did require an unusual rate of speed to be perfomed. The exact opposite of Sakamoto-type players - Melnyk's piano comes in layers and layers, rushing past your ears, swirling around your head - but the fact stays: it's all done with great delicacy, precision, and more importantly (doh!), with a true love for sound, inspired from classical composers, as well as Terry Riley or Steve Reich. KMH, his debut album dated to 1978, has now been reissued for the first time, while rest of the reissues can be found at Melnyk's home page. For anyone interested in (maximalist) early minimalism, or just un-plain instrumental music.
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. He holds two world records, actually: one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
Speed would be nothing without control, and in fact Melnyk had to train himself for years, even by taking up Tai Chi, to be able to perform the pieces he composed - simply because his pieces did require an unusual rate of speed to be perfomed. The exact opposite of Sakamoto-type players - Melnyk's piano comes in layers and layers, rushing past your ears, swirling around your head - but the fact stays: it's all done with great delicacy, precision, and more importantly (doh!), with a true love for sound, inspired from classical composers, as well as Terry Riley or Steve Reich. KMH, his debut album dated to 1978, has now been reissued for the first time, while rest of the reissues can be found at Melnyk's home page. For anyone interested in (maximalist) early minimalism, or just un-plain instrumental music.
>> link removed (69mb)
>> love it, buy it (Forced Exposure)
KMH was Melnyk's first recorded attempt at documenting his new mode of playing. The initial patterns to emerge are in a somewhat dissonant vein, but as the fifty-minute piece progresses the sonorities become more and more lush, with rows of notes materializing out of some kind of achingly beautiful ether. Extremely listenable, and seemingly endlessly fascinating, KMH is a major rediscovery that will surely change the way people look at official canon of minimal music in the twentieth century. There's no reason he should be left out of the textbooks from here on out. -MK
1 comment:
There are a few places on the net where you can hear samples of the piece if you're curious: the unseenworlds.net website and myspace being only two. Please remove those files and the links.
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