Artist : Lubomyr Melnyk
Album : Niche / Nourish / Niche-Xon
Year : 1998
Genre : Classical
Quality : 207kbps / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo
Source : CDR
Playtime : 0h 59m
Size : 110.1mb
Label : Bandura Records
Catalognr :
Tracklist:
01. Part I 29:57
02. Silence 0:00
03. Part II 29:35
Releasenotes:
There are no other dates on the CDR than 1988 and discogs is no more helping as
to when the CDR was actually released so we decided to tag it as 1988.
Enjoy!
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There are few pianists in the instrument's history who have introduced something
so new and astounding as Lubomyr Melnyk. After the somewhat miraculous
development of the piano technique - in itself a glorious instrument - in the
17th century, little has happened with the instrument, until now, when this
composer/pianist began his devotional work with Continuous Music - inspired by
the new modes of composition introduced to the West by people such as Terry
Riley and Steve Reich (in the late 1960'). Melnyk has developed this Continuous
form into a speical piano technique, with specific and highly-demanding
capacities in the pianist. It can be noted here that Melnyk, because of this
technique, is probably the world's fastest pianist - achieving super-sonic
speeds of over 19 notes per second in each hand. But all that is secondary, the
real essence of this music is the creation of magical landscapes, where the
listener becomes immersed in a pure and gentle dimension of sound.
One of the special characteristics or specialities of Continuous Music is
two-piano work - because this music then flourishes as a double-sided image in
the mind, creating a mysterious and delightful effect of space and sound. You
can see this very clearly here in this piece.
NICHE / NOURISH / NICHE-XON : two pianos, 1988 (56'30")
The original shorter work was commissioned by the canadian pianist Kethleen
Solose and The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1987. Originally, it was a
short work of only one movement - but, as often is the case, this time-frame
proved to be too small for all the related musical thoughts that flowered out of
this first section, and the piece quickly grew into a full 3-movement work
lasting nearly one hour.
This is one of Melnyk's "happier" works, sometimes quite sunlit and airy, one
sometimes even gets a feeling of flying lightly though the clouds. At other
times, it can feel tragic and lamenting.
It is certainly a piece that offers a multitudinous array of flourishing and
abstract landscapes that flow continuously before the listener.
Each section, or movement, is able to exist on its own, ie. you can perform the
piece with 1, or 2 or all 3 of the movements. It can also stand as a solo-piano
work, without the added dimension of the second piano. This also produces an
ineresting and fully pleasing result.
Although the entire performance was performed and recorded "non-stop" without
any breaks, for the full 56min - after much thought, for cd purposes this
performance has been broken up into 2 sections to enable the listener to choose
the first or second half the piece at any one time. These two sections have a
short overlap in the fade-in to Part II.
http://www.lubomyr.com