There is no support tonight, just Ukrainian born, maverick classical pianist Lubomyr Melynk playing for nearly two hours. Luckily tables and chairs are provided, something of a necessity when attempting to absorb this kind of music.

His first composition starts off delicate and tranquil, with an eastern feel to its chords reminiscent of a Ryuichi Sakamoto piece. But while it starts slow soon it rapidly speeds up. A trickle soon becomes a downpour of notes like a damn has burst and we’ve become fully immersed in what Melynk coins as his ‘continuous music’.

He plays overwhelmingly fast. A camera is positioned above him and from the TV screen it looks like he is barely touching the keys, his forearms simply gliding over them back and forth in smooth motions. “You’re listening to the piano, not me”, he tells us before the piece and you can see what he means. He almost seems like a vessel from which the music is passing through. It’s hard to see from where I’m sitting, but it doesn’t seem to appear that he is even looking at his hands.

It can seem overwhelmingly dense and impenetrable at first, but slowly refrains and melodies reveal themselves to you, before sinking back into the continuous music. How each part is being played simultaneously is beyond me, it would seem each of his fingers is playing a separate refrain or counter-melody. He plays without any music in front of him. Repetition is the name of the game here, but there are subtle, almost imperceptible changes constantly happening and before you realise it the piece has totally morphed.

Modern classical is a genre you would usually expect to be austere, theoretical, and even a little cold. But Lubomyr seems an open, chatty character and he imbues his music with an unselfconscious sentimentality and sincerity. ‘Butterfly’ is dedicated to a group of children while one piece is simply titled ‘I Love You’. He explains that, as humans, we aren’t used to being loving and calls love the most fundamental thing in the universe. He makes a reference to Jesus but doesn’t refer to him by name, maybe out of fear of alienating some of the crowd. The narratives Lubomyr attaches to his pieces can be a bit limiting. The music doesn’t feel open to any interpretation apart from the one he prescribes it and the more cynical amongst the audience might be tempted to scoff at the new age feel of some of his sentiments. But the emotional warmth of his pieces is impossible to resist.

After a brief intermission the second half of the show is one long piece titled ‘Windmills’, with Lubomyr playing along with a recording done earlier that day in the same room. He explains the composition tells the story of a windmill being destroyed by a vicious storm, and then out of the rubble its soul rises to heaven where it sings a song to all the beauty it has seen in the world during its lifetime. “We’re prisoners in a universe of beauty” he explains, and we just need to see the insignificance of our every day troubles to see it. I decide to close my eyes during the piece, and follow the narrative in my mind’s eye. I see the windmill turning in perfect unity, and then its demise and ascension. When I open my eyes I’m almost startled by where I am, the experience is so transporting. Maybe I didn’t quiet see the beauty in everything tonight, but I definitely heard it.
Louis Ormesher