Lubomyr Melnyk, caressing the ears

At first, Lubomyr Melnyk was rejected by the classical world. Now a new generation of musicians hails his "continuous piano music" as visionary. Seeing his latest album released on Sony Classical must feel like sweet revenge.

The continuous waves of sound that Lubomyr Melnyk (now 67) conjures out of his piano are still the subject of dispute today. Even now, classical hardliners reject his accumulation of repetitive patterns, which to their ears sounds like a tuneless, but saccharine, agglomeration of minimalism, new age, and Chopin – conjuring doesn't really fit into their three dimensions. But a new generation of musicians, familiar with electronica and ambient, has taken to Melnyk's intangible sound spectrum – developed over years in a self-taught process – and is happy to let itself be swept along by his addictive whirlpool of notes.

The Berlin-based Erased Tapes label was the first to take Melnyk up; recognition was on its way. Here in Belgium, the Ancienne Belgique presented him live alongside Nils Frahm. And now, Sony's classical department reckons there is a market in the classical sector for the long-time underdog. Back in 1978, things were different: Melnyk, who has Ukrainian roots but had by then moved to Canada, released his first album, KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode.

"It was a complete flop," he told us, 35 years later. "The classical world hadn't the slightest interest in what I was doing. I had had a classical training as a pianist, but I also loved the minimalism of Steve Reich and company. I wanted to combine those influences and I did so by listening very carefully to the sound of my instrument. Whereas the piano in classical music is just an instrument to play sonatas and concertos on, I went looking for the true voice of the instrument, for what makes the instrument different. Music and instrument are of equal value for me. During my research, I noticed that my body and my mind had also begun to change. Not that strange, when you bear in mind that you are doing a number of very complex things at the same time, while the goal is to make them sound like a single whole."

That fluidity, that continuous wave of flowing piano sounds, characterises Melnyk's new album, illirion, too. When he says that classical pianists strike their keys, whereas he barely touches them (but does so many times) – caresses them, in fact – and with every touch melts gently into his instrument, as with a lover, he really means it. As a consequence he was, at one time, the world's fastest pianist, but he realises now that that didn't do his career much good.

"I just wanted to make it clear exactly what continuous piano music was. At the end of the day, it didn't surprise me that the little world of classical music, with its very peripheral appreciation of classical music and its own little circle of fantastic pianists, wouldn't admit that continuous music involved a higher level of piano-playing. It's hard, after all, to admit that someone can do something you can't do yourself. That my music introduced an extra dimension, in which your body, as it were, becomes one with the music – people's minds weren't ready for that at all in the Seventies and Eighties, although I know that, even then, some of them were moved by my music."

> Lubomyr Melnyk. 12/12, 19:30, Botanique, Sint-Joost/Saint-Josse