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Da Vinci Classics
Physical and Digital Release: 16 February 2018
Justyna Philipp explores Piotr Lachert's piano music, following its shifting characters through rhythmic invention, expressive contrast and the composer's individual keyboard language.
Composer(s): Piotr Lachert
Artist(s): Justyna Philipp, piano
Barcode: 0793597816245
13.67€
Piotr Lachert: Piano Music · 20 tracks
Justyna Philipp, piano. Sonatas Nos. 14, 18 and 24 · Avale Koan. Timings verified on Spotify, Apple Music and Qobuz; total duration 65:11.
Justyna Philipp was born in Gdańsk, where she began her piano studies. She continued her training in Warsaw and Weimar, studying with Amadeus Webersinke, Andrzej Jasiński and Ekaterina Popowa-Zydroń.
Since 2000 she has regularly recorded works by Piotr Lachert and other contemporary composers in collaboration with Polish Radio Gdańsk.
The President of the City of Gdańsk honoured her for twenty years of artistic activity. She performs in Poland and abroad.
Piotr Lachert (Piotr de Peslin Lachert, 1938–2018), born in Warsaw, came from a German-French family established in Poland since the 18th century. He became a Belgian citizen in 1977 and lived in Italy from 1992 until his death in Pescara on 18 September 2018. The first piano lessons Lachert received were from his mother, Hanna Lachertowa. He then studied piano with Jan Ekier (Warsaw), Vlado Perlemuter (Paris), and Reimar Dahlgruen (Hannover). At the Conservatoire de Bruxelles, he studied chamber music and conducting. He was a self-taught composer and was influenced by artistic contacts with Karol Goeyvaerts, Boguslaw Schaeffer, Maurice Béjart, Bob Wilson, and John Cage. Until 1971 Lachert was a classical piano soloist, often playing duets with his sister, violinist Hanna Lachert. Thereafter, he worked as a performer, pianist, conductor and director, all within the context of contemporary music.
In 1972 he founded and directed for 20 years the Théâtre Européen de Musique Vivante, a musical theatre ensemble based in Brussels. The first “repertoire” of this group was happenings, workshops, multimedia performances, action music, and improvisations. In 1973 he re-discovered the clavichord, an instrument with which he developed a distinctive modern performance practice. He composed for amplified clavichord, writing many pieces for Annette Sachs. In 2014, Lachert brought attention to the ancient Chinese instrument the Guzheng, little known in Europe. For the Italian performer of this instrument, Cecilia Bielanski, Lachert composed pieces written in the tradition of European music. Lachert’s compositions were performed in more than 70 festivals and cycles of New Music concerts, and were played by about 60 chamber music ensembles and orchestras, and more than 300 soloists.
From 1972 to 1976 he worked on electronic, concrete, and acousmatic music in the studio Métamorphoses d’Orphée in Laine (Brussels). Lachert was one of the first composers to write in the “new consonant music” style. In 1976 he created “méthode créative”, a new method for teaching piano, based on controlled improvisation and graphic notation. Its first edition was published by Baerenreiter Verlag (Kassel / London). In 1979 Editions Jobert Paris published Lachert’s “Cartes” for violin and piano, one of the first European compositions in the style of repetitive music.
Between 1981 and 1984, in cooperation with computer programmer Robert Marchal, Lachert created “Letter Music”, a computer-assisted composition system. Lachert was one of the creators and leaders of Jeunesses Musicales de la Pologne (1956 – 1960). Lachert was the director of “New Music for New Pianists”, an international piano competition held five times between 1987 and 1998, in Brussels, Belgium; Pescara, Padova; and Latina, Italy. Between 1997 and 2005 he was the director of the five “Città di Pescara” Awards, an international composition competition in Pescara, Italy. In 2011-2012, together with Jörg Grünert and Alessandra Fol, Lachert organized three sessions of GRAFIMUSE: a visual art competition with works made only by professional musicians. The competitions, held in Pescara and Fermo, Italy, and Sofia, Bulgaria, included audience participation where they would improvise music as if the pictures were graphic scores.
In 1988 Lachert became the artistic director of “Alain Van Kerckhoven, éditeur” (Brussels), a publishing house devoted to New Consonant Music. In 1992 together with Valentina Chiola, Lachert founded the music publishing house “Chiola Music Press” (CMP), now known as “Consonant Music Press.” The press specialises in New Consonant Music.
Lachert taught piano at the Liceum Muzyczne in Warsaw, Poland; the Conservatory in Brussels, Belgium; and Accademia Musicale Pescarese in Pescara, Italy. He was a juror in many piano and composer competitions.
New Consonant Music? Album notes by Alain Van Kerckhoven · 12 September 2017 For many music lovers, contemporary classical music conjures up ideas of ping-pong balls bouncing on pianos, pieces only comprehensible to post-doctoral math students, a dentist appointment or a huge public subsidy swindle. And unfortunately, history bears them out: after World War II, musical creation was hijacked by a small group of people who gave in to the modernistic temptation of turning away from the past and developing totally artificial compositional systems like serial music. Unfortunately, these composers…
Album notes by Alain Van Kerckhoven · 12 September 2017
For many music lovers, contemporary classical music conjures up ideas of ping-pong balls bouncing on pianos, pieces only comprehensible to post-doctoral math students, a dentist appointment or a huge public subsidy swindle. And unfortunately, history bears them out: after World War II, musical creation was hijacked by a small group of people who gave in to the modernistic temptation of turning away from the past and developing totally artificial compositional systems like serial music. Unfortunately, these composers gained the favour of the authorities which meant enormous financial resources that enabled them to take up any space available for contemporary works.
Claude Debussy was however explicit: “Music should humbly try to give pleasure. Extreme complication is the opposite of art. Beauty should be sensitive; it should give us immediate enjoyment, it should force or wheedle its way into our minds without our having to make any effort to apprehend it.”
Music is a language, and of course all languages evolve, but the effect of substituting an artificial revolution for a natural evolution was to empty the concert halls of all but a few musicologists, plus the master's friends and disciples. For the first time, music-lovers were forced to look to the past, which they tended to overly idealize.
Fortunately, we are now reviving the fundamental tie between composers, performers and the audience. New Consonant Music is a movement that makes the issue of language secondary. The essential thing for us is to transmit an emotion by any means: it doesn't really matter whether the music is total, repetitive, hypercomplex, minimalist or polystylistic. What does matter is that beauty has a chance to reach the audience without needing hours of prior explanation. We don't want to be inventive at all costs. Our approach is resolutely post-modern.
The label “New Consonant Music” was coined in 1989 in Schaerbeek (Brussels) by four people: Boudewijn Buckinx, Dominique Lawalrée, Piotr Lachert and me, Alain Van Kerckhoven. We liked the idea that this movement is an attitude of serenity and humanism after the cataclysmic upheavals which the art of music has endured during the modernist phase.
We quickly understood that the adjective “consonant” could lead someone who is not familiar with these ideas down the wrong path: it can be misleading in its apparent evocation of an aesthetic that would keep any musical bumps or dissonances well away from our ears. In fact, this is not the case.
The history of music could – as a caricature – be summarised as a very long struggle between two trends: on the one hand the will to incorporate what has been found beautiful into a formal structure and, on the other hand, the inextinguishable impulse to go outside that context and to produce freedom of expression that explodes the frameworks and their rules.
So, with the passing centuries and in the course of some thrilling adventures, the second trend got the better of the first – without the first finally giving way to the second for all that! Several compositions have pushed one or other of these tendencies to the very limit. Perhaps the most amazing example is John Cage’s 4′33″ (in which the performers do not deliberately produce musical sounds), or on the other hand, some post-serial works which again go to the limit, demonstrating crystal clear symmetry on paper, but that are, alas, almost unbearably incomprehensible for the ears. It must of course be said that many composers have produced works of genius without necessarily going to such extremes.
The point is that through the centuries music has been enriched by sounds which have enabled it to express the very depths of sensitivity, if not in universal terms then certainly in a relevant and contemporary way. Therefore, we must place ourselves in the context of what has gone before and also take account of the amazing accessibility of music and sounds, along with the technical possibilities of acoustics, some of which surpass by far the possibilities of human hearing.
This spectacular explosion of possibilities has its challenges as well: the fact that the listener gets saturated and can lose interest in an art that has become too accessible. Additionally, as a composer one is inhibited from composing in a spontaneous manner because all that is spontaneous is deemed to be trivial and uninteresting. Has everything not already been said, after all? It is precisely this attitude which New Consonant Music seeks to oppose!
This trend actually has a unique aesthetic guideline: not to prescribe an aesthetic! It is true that 'barbarity' based on nothing more than the desire for novelty is not welcome. Nor does New Consonant Music embrace the merely 'attractive' if there is no mystery, delicacy and inventiveness. It is very sceptical in the face of commercial demands, or music 'made to measure'.
So, to young performers who start to quake when they hear the word “contemporary”, I would say, just take Apollinaire's advice: make an effort to sympathize! Listening to this CD is a pretty good way to follow Apollinaire’s advice. It features the works of one of the fathers of the New Consonant Music, who is also one of the most magnificent composers of our time.
Every prejudice you can rid yourself of will open up a new world.
Alain Van Kerckhoven (Brussels, 1964) is a music publisher who has written articles and essays exploring the relationships between society, technology, music and consciousness.
Justyna Philipp, piano. Mario de Lisi reads poems by Piotr Lachert in Sonata No. 14, “Triste”.
Recorded at Polish Radio Gdańsk; the original inlay identifies these as archival recordings from 2000–2002. Sound engineer: Jacek Puchalski.
Cover artwork: Anja Kunze, Passing Souls. Inlay artwork: Anja Kunze, Waiting for (HER). Production, design and art direction: OMK–Da Vinci. Printed with the support of S.P.L.M. All compositions are registered with SABAM. ℗ & © OMK–Da Vinci Classics.
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