Justyna Philipp - Piotr Lachert: Piano Music (2018)

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 into 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.