Latest / The Downing Arts Podcast / MT26.5 The genius of Lubomyr Melnyk

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MT26.5 The genius of Lubomyr Melnyk · The Downing Arts Podcast

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  Welcome to the Downing Arts Podcast.
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  It's week four of term and the recent storms have certainly made their
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  mark on the college grounds. Lots of creative arts events coming up though to raise
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  your spirits. Stay tuned to find out more.
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  Coming up on the 3rd of November is a very special concert featuring
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  the Ukrainian pianist Lubomir Melnik. And here to tell us a little bit about
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  it is his long term student, Nathan Adlam. Welcome, Nathan. Hi Louisa,
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  thank you very much for this podcast and for having us.
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  Yeah, so I'm currently, I'm an integrated master's
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  student in mathematics at the University of Oxford, the other place for you.
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  And I run my. So I'm from Balliol
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  College and I run Bailio's Music Society and maths has always been very much my
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  thing, but I studied music for a little bit.
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  I did a music gcse. I was sort of your typical
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  doing it because there's some basic competency and why
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  not? But I wasn't very passionate about music. I didn't go very far at
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  all. But then I encountered this, this man, Lubem Malnick
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  and it has really changed the course.
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  So I, I now play all over Oxford and
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  I, I have been managing every concert, not just his concerts, but everybody's
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  concerts in Balliol for the last three years essentially.
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  So I'll say a bit more about Lubemet,
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  but first of all I want to thank Louisa and Downing very, very much for
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  having us because we, I organized a concert with him in Cambridge
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  last November and this was very difficult because it's not my city. So we've
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  hosted him in Oxford six times now to fantastic success
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  every single time. But doing it in Cambridge was a whole different kind of ordeal
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  and Louisa very kindly offered to make things easier the next time and host
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  him properly. So we are very grateful for this. Well, we're looking forward to it.
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  Yeah. Now, a little bit about Lubomir.
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  I suppose the first thing I should say is be
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  very wary of what you read on the Internet because you have to imagine
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  a man who has 20 Ataris at home,
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  no computer more recent than a Windows XP and a Nokia brick.
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  So the, his Instagram account, his Facebook, his YouTube, his Wikipedia,
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  his websites, even, none of these are actually managed
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  by him or particularly under his control, which,
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  which has been a sort of problem. Like he'll. In the early 2000s,
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  I think he, he asked some friends to make a website for him because he
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  thought, well, this seems to be what people do, but it doesn't necessarily
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  mean either of us are very happy with them, but it's sort of
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  too late now. So this
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  is one thing to understand, is that he is quite hard to understand unless you
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  experience him in person or you have lessons with him or something
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  like this. Very loosely speaking, his music is
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  sort of a second kind of classical music,
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  harmonically speaking. It is rooted in that tradition.
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  He venerates Beethoven more than any person I've
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  ever met, really. And. But he's extremely open
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  about the fact he can't compose like Beethoven, but his solace is
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  that nobody can. So in his opinion. In his opinion,
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  the last great pianist what died in 1920 or something.
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  He's never elaborated on who exactly that is, but you get
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  the sense of where his mind is at that. And so he.
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  He loves his classical music, but instead
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  has gone down this much more philosophical route.
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  And his music sort of prioritizes
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  human experience in a way. It's very phenomenological in the way
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  he teaches it. But the. The end result,
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  in short, is something very unlike anything you've heard before.
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  So even when I play and I'm, you know,
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  he is light years better than I am, I have people telling me that they
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  heard four or five instruments. I have people joking, was that a symphony?
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  I have people telling me they can't believe my hands haven't
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  fallen off. Because he's achieving something very,
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  very strange in the positive sense of strange. So our ears
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  can recognize, yes, this is classical harmony, kind of. But I
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  feel it's sort of lush. It's like people can touch the sound. He makes these
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  very rich textures and plays blazingly fast, always with his eyes
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  closed, as if it's sort of drinking a cup of water or something.
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  Very, very easy. No obstacle at all. And this
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  has dazzled people, and it dazzled me. So I discovered him through
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  this TV show called Mare of East Town. It's a very good cop show
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  set, I think, in Pennsylvania. Anyway, excellent tv.
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  One of his pieces plays as the credits roll.
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  And I. This one was
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  much less lush than what I've been describing, but it's. It felt a
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  bit like Philip Glass initially. So I'd been teaching myself Philip Glass. I was predisposed
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  a sort of very minimalist opening. But then after a minute or two,
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  I can intellectually maybe discern, okay, there are only at
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  most five notes here. But it's. There's some trick of the sound. And I feel
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  like I'm hearing three melodies at once or something. And it really puzzles
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  me. And I. I do a bit of digging. I find much more.
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  Let's say dazzling pieces again in the sense that, how the
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  hell can anyone, you know, play this fast? And then I. And then I reach
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  out to him and he responds immediately the next day in a very
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  warm, effusive, grandfatherly sort of way. Just very happy to
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  meet someone who's interested. And I've had lessons since. And that was in 2021.
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  Then he was in London. A few months later,
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  he was playing in the Jazz Cafe. So he gave me a lesson on the
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  stage of the Jazz Cafe, and then we had a concert. And the concert
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  was just so incredibly moving and astonishing. And I knew,
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  you know, I'm not a good pianist. But, yes,
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  for as long as I'm able, I want to stick with this and see where
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  this goes. Wow. Fantastic. I remember,
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  you know, I mean, we've had several conversations over the months about this.
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  This music. And I mean, I've never actually heard it live, so I'm really
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  looking forward to the concert. So for. For someone,
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  you know, like me, who's. Who's never heard it,
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  how would you suggest a potential audience member would sort of approach
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  this? I mean, we're hoping to. Well, we're going to
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  have the room set up so that people can actually sit around the piano.
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  So it can be a really sort of immersive experience.
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  How would you suggest people approach this? I would
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  suggest that people not come to the show with many expectations,
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  in a way. So he also tells
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  his students to be the same when it comes to practicing.
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  So he'll give you a score, but he'll say, and he
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  talks about this at length in his book as well. He'll just say the notation
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  will put preconceptions in your mind that you need to get rid of.
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  Ultimately, you just want to play. And same thing here, ultimately you just
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  want to listen. So for his music can attract absolute
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  classical music fans to kind of total experimental music
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  fans, to people who don't think they're very musical at all. It can attract anybody
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  from quite a wide range of backgrounds. So there's no particular model
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  that you want to put on it. I think what you can expect for sure,
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  even if you don't like the aesthetic, which some people don't,
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  you can definitely expect to be impressed by his physical virtuosity.
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  And you can expect, I think, to be, let's say, charmed,
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  by the way he is and speaks. He always hangs around to talk afterwards,
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  and he always talks before a concert. And he definitely dislikes
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  this thing where you go to, let's say, the Royal Abbott hall and there's Sir
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  Andra Schiff in the middle and you, you're a thousand miles away from him,
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  so to speak, and you, you feel separated.
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  It's like you're watching it through a window or something.
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  So he, he's very on the ground in that way.
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  He, he's kind of a very fiercely Catholic man to the
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  point of even when he's telling you how to play his music, he's telling you
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  to love every single human being and all of this and this spills out into
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  his stage presence. So you can expect to be meeting someone interesting in
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  that way and charming in that kind of way as well. Yeah, we're going to
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  be able to talk with him as well after the concert because we'll have refreshments
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  and things. So. Yeah, he'll be around then. Wow.
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  Am I right that he's the only person in the world really
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  who expounds or plays this type of music?
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  Yeah. So this comes to the crux of what makes people
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  skeptical and reasonably skeptical is these claims about oh,
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  he's the only one or that he is a new technique.
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  And I, I had some skepticism but
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  I have to say when I heard him in the jazz cafe I, it was
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  like I just wanted to kneel really. It was just silly how
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  sort of orthogonal to any other conception of piano music. It was
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  certainly he's been doing some looking for, he's for reference and
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  we should have said this earlier maybe he is turning 78 so soon.
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  So he's had a over 50 year long career now.
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  He, his, his style has changed considerably over those
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  years. I mean in the early days it was very much about this 12 tone
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  music. Schopenhauer and, and Joseph Maria how Joseph Hauer
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  is an Austrian pianist. A bit before he,
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  he sort of, he found a particular physical technique and he didn't
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  know how to compose with it. And it's a strange story, but long story
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  short, he ends up having a two hour conversation with John Cage and John
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  Cage recommends to him this Joseph Hauer pianist and through that he
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  has a sense of how he wants to compose back then.
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  Nowadays his music is much less like that, it's much more operatic.
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  But anyway, so he's been working with other musicians through this 50
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  years. In the early days he wanted to do collaborations
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  with other pianists. He wrote loads of exercises that are
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  way too hard before he realized that people would find them way too hard.
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  So there's this book which I have in my library there called the 12
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  no, 20 circular etudes and they're
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  listed as beginner exercises. And I first received them after
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  three or four years with him. I can still only play about two of them.
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  They're not beginner at all. So when
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  working with other classical pianists, usually he would find that on
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  occasion they'd be able to sort of memorize the notes or something, but they
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  just weren't ever doing what he was doing. And they seemed. He just didn't like
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  their approach at all. So that which he values
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  was not that which they valued, so to speak. And he has
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  since worked with other famous names like Niels Frahm.
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  But those collaborations always sort of short lived because people find him interesting and
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  then they play together, but then they quickly realize his playing style is just
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  so different to the point where they can't accompany him.
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  In my experience of meeting classical musicians in Oxford,
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  hosting them, even having masterclasses with them sometimes,
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  I found that I surprised people consistently as well.
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  So we can't prove that he's the only one, but it
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  sure seems that way. And he's certainly the only one to think about it the
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  way he does, because everybody's the only person to think about things the way that
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  they do. So if there are
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  other people out there with a similar thing, we'd all be very happy,
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  actually. I mean, one of the greatest concerns among his fan base is
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  that these wonderful live experiences might disappear
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  one day. And it's not like it came from nowhere either, I should say.
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  He has influences and he's very honest about his influences. I mean, classical music
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  would be the biggest of the influences, the greatest, I should say. But also Indian
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  sitar music. He found the Indian classical
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  tradition extremely impressive from that physical virtuosity
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  point of view. And he also found Terry Reilly quite interesting
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  in the 60s and 70s. Not so much the minimalism that came after Terry Reilly,
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  but Terry Riley specifically, he really liked this didn't
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  fall out of a tree, right, this music. But it has
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  since become very much bound up with him. He's been on this lone road and
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  nowadays as a student it's very hard to separate them and you
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  almost don't want to. I mean, I often find I play the pieces better when
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  I understand him better. So yeah, he appears to be
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  the only one certainly that the unicity isn't
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  that important really. I think he is doing something important. If there are
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  other people doing something important, great. But certainly he is doing
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  something important in my estimation and that's why I do what I
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  do. Is he still composing or is he sort of mainly performing these
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  days, he's still composing. So ahead of the concert in Downing,
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  he will play in my college, Bailey College, and he'll play the mantras, which are
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  a new composition. When the full scale invasion
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  happened in 2022, he made a new album called the Sacred 1000,
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  which we've played in Oxford quite a few times.
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  So he does still compose and he composes exercises all
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  the time as well. His oeuvre is quite
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  a bit larger than what can be found online.
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  Many of his works are not recorded and certainly almost none of his
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  scores are available on the Internet. There's a lot of it sort of invisibly just
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  in his house somewhere. But yeah,
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  he does still compose. Wow. Well,
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  afraid that's all we've got time for. I could quite happily talk all afternoon
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  about this. Yeah, thank you for that insight into what we can.
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  Well, maybe what we can expect next week. And yeah,
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  so just to reiterate, the concert is on Tuesday 3rd November.
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  It's at 7:30 in the east Staircase Music room and I
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  will put the link for tickets in the show notes. Thank you very much Nathan
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  and looking forward to seeing you. Thank you very much, Luisa.
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  This week in college On Sunday at 6pm,
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  the Chapel Choir sing this time's Choral Eucharist featuring Mozart's Spatzen Mess,
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  accompanied by instrumentalists. All welcome refreshments served afterwards.
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  On Monday and Tuesday at 7:30pm Also in the chapel,
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  the Dramatic Society present Moonlight Monologues. Ticket link in
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  the show notes. Also on Tuesday at 7:30. As we've already heard,
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  the incredible Ukrainian pianist Lyubomyr Melnyk comes to college for one night
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  only for a truly special concert. Ticket link in the show notes.
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  On Wednesday 4th November, the new exhibition no Provenance opens in
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  the Huon Gallery again. More details in the show notes.
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  Next week I'll be catching up with our new junior organ scholar Auriel Chapman,
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  as she fills us in on how things are going in her first term at
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  Cambridge. Have a great week and thanks for listening.