Lubomyr Melnyk's website text has all the subtlety of a carnival barker: "#1 The FASTEST pianist in the world-- sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously, and #2 the MOST NUMBER of NOTES in ONE HOUR-- in exactly 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a remarkable total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes." And on some level, KMH's value is in its virtuosity-- Melnyk plays for about 50 minutes without interruption, sounding not like one pianist in one key, but about four in eight.
Melnyk's "theory" of performance was called "continuous music," which is a pretentious way of saying he really loved the sustain pedal. Not to slag his Big Idea at work-- which is pretty remarkable to listen to-- but in essence, he took the slow-changing repetitions and broad compositional structure of minimalism and made them busier, foggier, more imprecise.
Though anything with a lot of repetitive internal movement and no distinct melodic impetus can draw comparisons to Steve Reich, 1979's KMH is probably better understood next to other minimalist piano totems: Charlemagne Palestine's fierce, strobe-like "Strumming Music", any of La Monte Young's conceptual marathons, or even some of Satie's knottier, more abstract pieces. But "Strumming Music" had a monolithic feel to it-- huge, open harmonies hammered without ambiguity. Melnyk's weave is denser, his harmonies more casually dissonant-- the result of two keys passing each other in open space-- and his syncopations much more rocky.
KMH, like any of its decent comparisons, is for active listening. In a way, its greatest triumph is to expose the intense concentration minimalist art requires. The Museum of Modern Art recently opened a retrospective of the sculptor Richard Serra, best known for his large-scale works in sheet metal. One of the rooms featured huge, snaking walls of steel. People wove through them like it was a garden maze. Though the detail in KMH is much more obvious, the essence is comparable: minimalism is about being impassive on the most fundamental level. It's about getting in Your Way. A Serra sculpture dictates how people have to move around the room. It's a visceral experience. Similarly, KMH is consuming; it doesn't let you relax. Melnyk's playing is less about composition and more about the physicality required to play it-- he compares the continuous mode to Tai Chi. Minimalism has always been about presence and focus. Minimalist music is not ambient music.
Credit due to new Texan reissue label Unseen Worlds for their work on KMH, especially after their great work on "Blue" Gene Tyranny's Out of the Blue earlier this year. And it features all of Melnyk's original liner notes, which means neo-spiritualist barking of the highest order-- he didn't even want to make the record, fastidiously explaining the use of six microphones, criticizing machines for their insensitivity to the piano's true "sound-curtains," ending with the florid and patently nonsensical entreaty to "let them come hear the music only if they want to." But if you do, don't expect it to fade into your carpet-- KMH isn't cold steel and hard angles; it's minimalism at its most lush, ornate, and taxing.
