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Articles
Photo
by
Michael Dames
The
pianist Margaret Leng Tan sometimes plays on a toy
piano. At other times she reaches in to work the
strings by hand or with various objects.
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A Performer Drawn to the Piano's Wild Side
By ALLAN KOZINN
The
New York Times
Published:
November
19, 2004
If
Margaret Leng Tan wasn't so serious about what she
does, and if she didn't do it so well, an
unsuspecting concertgoer might mistake her for a
slightly eccentric novelty act. Ms. Tan plays many
of her concerts on a toy piano, one of those
tinkly sounding miniature keyboards that children
play. Often she uses two of these instruments, one
for each hand. Along with a growing catalog of
virtuosic toy piano works composed for her, she is
likely to include in these concerts a Beethoven
sonata synchronized with a video clip of
Schroeder, the Beethoven-obsessed Peanuts
character, playing on a similar instrument. O.K.,
she's serious, but she has a sense of humor.
When
Ms. Tan plays what she calls an "adult
piano," her programs are no more
conventional. Often, they include works for the
"prepared piano" favored by John Cage -
that is, an instrument that has been set up with
screws, nails and other objects wedged into its
strings to create unusual effects when the notes
are played. Or she might play works that require
her to use her forearms on the keyboard to create
a dense welter of notes, a cluster technique
developed by Henry Cowell, with whom Cage studied.
Just
at the moment, though, she is thinking more about
the music of George Crumb, whose "Makrokosmos,"
Books I and II (1972-3), require her to spend
ample time playing directly on the piano's strings
- that is, plucking, scratching, strumming and
caressing them, as well as sliding objects (a
drinking glass, a metal brush) along them, and
causing them to resonate by singing into the body
of the piano. Ms. Tan is playing these colorful
collections at Zankel Hall tomorrow evening as a
75th-birthday tribute to the composer. She has
also just recorded them for Mode, a new-music
label, which is releasing them on both CD and DVD.
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Pioneers
of Pianism
"For
me," Ms. Tan said, "George Crumb, along
with John Cage and Henry Cowell, forms a
triumvirate - the three C's, the three intrepid
American pioneers of 20th-century avant-garde
pianism. In 'Makrokosmos,' you are not only
creating sound, you are creating theater. It's
very visual, very choreographic - so perfect for
DVD. To play it, you have to be somewhat of an
actress and a vocalist. You have to be a
jack-of-all-trades, really, because inside the
piano, you are also something of a harpist and a percussionist."
Ms.
Tan has created a small revolution in piano
playing over the last 20 years. Although she is by
no means the first to master the techniques of
performing inside the piano, her way of combining
the avant-garde pianism with her toy piano work,
as well as her program of commissioning new works
for both instruments, has made this diminutive
pianist an important figure in the world of
contemporary music.
Crumb
as
Mentor
She
is the subject of a new 90-minute documentary by
Evans Chan, "The Sorceress of the New
Piano," which was shown recently at the
Vancouver Film Festival. And having been closely
associated with John Cage during the last 11 years
of his life - she says that meeting him in 1981
led her to reconsider her repertory, which had
been mainstream until then - she now speaks of Mr.
Crumb as her mentor.
Mr.
Crumb first came to prominence around 1970, the
year he completed two especially vivid scores:
"Ancient Voices of Children," a setting
of Lorca poetry for voice and chamber ensemble,
and "Black Angels," a searing antiwar
work for amplified string quartet. His chamber,
vocal and orchestral works have often included
everything from lighting instruments to
suggestions for quasi-theatrical movement. During
the 1980's, when the main debates in contemporary
music focused on the feud between Minimalists and
atonalists, Mr. Crumb's music, which follows other
agendas, was eclipsed somewhat. But it has enjoyed
a revival in recent years, both in the concert
hall and on recordings, including an expansive
series on Bridge Records.
Mr.
Crumb is also famous for the exquisite calligraphy
of his scores. In some, staves full of notes wind
in circular arcs around the page; others depict
objects that Mr. Crumb wants his music to suggest.
The 24 movements in "Makrokosmos," Books
I and II, for example, have dual titles - one
descriptive, one representing a zodiac sign - and
several of the scores refer to them. "Crucifixus
(Capricorn)," for example, is presented in a
cruciform score. "Spiral Galaxy(Aquarius)"
is written in a graceful swirl, and "Agnus
Dei (Capricorn)" is a peace symbol. (Asked
why he writes this way, Mr. Crumb once said that
apart from looking nice on the page, this method
of scoring forced performers to memorize his
music, since it can't easily be sight-read.)
"To
this day," Ms. Tan said, "George draws
his own staves, because he wants them spaced a
certain way, and printed manuscript paper doesn't
give him that freedom. This is someone who is
still working in a very calligraphic way, when so
many composers have gone to computer notation
programs. But I can understand why, because his
scores are so personal, they are such beautiful
works of art. When I play them, I like to display
them in the lobby so that the audience can enjoy
them during the intermission, or before and after
the concert.
"The
Cage scores are very calligraphic too," she
added. "I think these two composers have very
much in common. In fact, when I visited George
this summer, he told me that during the 1960's he
met Cage, and it was a seminal experience, because
until then, he had not been able to come up with
his own language. His music didn't yet have that
stamp that says, this is George Crumb and no one
else. But after he met Cage, he wrote that
extraordinary set of Five Pieces for Piano, in
1962, and I think that was the beginning."
Variety
of Influences
Ms.
Tan came to Mr. Crumb's music by way of the Five
Pieces, in the mid-1980's, when working inside the
piano was still a fairly new world for her. She
was born in
Singapore
, in 1953, and began
studying the piano when she was 6. Her lessons,
she said, covered the classical repertory. But
that isn't all she was hearing.
"
Singapore
was a British colony
for 150 years," she said, "and it only
became independent in 1965. So I was exposed to
Western classical music very early. But at the
same time, there was the sound of ethnic music all
around you, and it doesn't matter whether you
consciously listen to it or not, it's part of
growing up. And I'm so glad I grew up in
Singapore
, rather than in
Hong Kong
or
Taiwan
, because
Singapore
is multiracial.
There's the Chinese component, which is the
majority today, but also a large Indian population
and the indigenous Malay people. So you grow up
trilingual and tricultural. Well - plus Western,
so four languages and cultures. You're exposed to
it all in a natural way."
When
she was 14, a visiting pianist from the
United States
heard her perform and
suggested that she apply to the
Juilliard
School
. Two years later, she
moved to
New York
to become a student of
Adele Marcus at Juilliard. Musically, Ms. Tan's
interests were in the standard classical canon,
although she tried to find fresh programming
twists. One early program, assembled for an Asian
tour, included works that showed the influence of
Asian music and philosophy on Western composers,
and included music by Debussy, Messiaen, Hovhaness,
Griffes and Cage.
She
began exploring other works by Cage as well,
including some of his prepared piano pieces, in a
program she performed with a dancer in 1981. While
rehearsing for those performances, she contacted
Cage and asked him to hear her play. Their
friendship began then, and lasted until Cage's
death in 1992.
"Meeting
Cage was one of the milestones of my life,"
Ms. Tan said. "I think of my whole life as
B.C. and A.C. - before Cage and after Cage."
Cage's
works opened for Ms. Tan a world of piano music
based on extended techniques, or ways of playing
the instrument other than by pressing the keys.
Mr. Crumb's Five Pieces followed a few years
later, and she felt a kindred spirit at work in
those as well.
"I
was really struck by two things in the Five
Pieces,'' she said. "One was this absolute
distillation of his timbral universe. And the
other was an aura of suspended time, where musical
space assumes an almost three-dimensional presence
- where the musical space becomes almost palpable,
and where each tone has a living presence. These
are qualities that I feel are inherent in Asian
music as well. His concept of time and space is
very much encapsulated in the Japanese concept of
'ma,' in which time and space are perceived as one
- as inseparable entities that exist
coincidentally rather than separately. It
permeates Crumb's music, and it's something that
Cage was preoccupied with as well. And if one is
aware of it, one approaches the music
differently."
'So
Utterly Primitive'
Having
explored the Asian influence in Western music, Ms.
Tan has also championed Asian composers, including
Somei Satoh, Ge Gan-ru and Tan Dun. Western
composers who have written for her include Aaron
Kernis, Julia Wolfe, Toby Twining and Lois Vierk.
Some have written works for her to play on the
standard piano, but most have been intrigued by
her toy piano playing, something she took up in
1993, when the Serious Fun Festival at
Lincoln
Center
presented a Cage
memorial concert. For the occasion, Ms. Tan
learned Cage's Suite for Toy Piano (1948), and she
was hooked.
"The
toy piano is so utterly primitive," Ms. Tan
said. "It's just little plastic hammers,
attached to piano keys, hitting metal rods. It's
nothing but a repackaged xylophone pretending to
be a piano. You have to work hard to make it
speak. But if you work at it, you actually can
make it capable of articulation, touch and
dynamics within its limited range."
Cage
clearly suspected as much. In his Suite, his
articulation is specific, and he asks for dynamics
that range from quintuple piano to quintuple forte
- a range far beyond the instrument's means.
"But
he knew what he was doing," Ms. Tan said,
"because a player who observes those
indications will work very hard to accomplish
them, and even though you cannot produce that
range, what comes out is very different than if
you hadn't tried at all."
3
Steinways, 16 Toys
After
Ms. Tan began playing the toy piano regularly in
concert, she said, composers began writing her
e-mail messages full of ideas for new pieces. Mr.
Kernis wrote her a concerto that she describes as
"one of the hardest pieces I've ever
played." Ms. Wolfe provided a piece for toy
piano and boom box, and Eric Griswold wrote Ms.
Tan a work for toy piano and a hand-cranked music
box.
"I
had thought the toy piano programs would have died
a natural death at some point," said Ms. Tan,
who now has 16 toy pianos and three Steinways in
her
Brooklyn
apartment. "But
there's been a tremendous demand. I think
composers feel that with the toy piano, there are
no rules to be broken, so the sky is the limit.
"It
reminds me," she said, "of a wonderful
saying by Marcel Duchamp: 'Poor tools require
better skills.' " |
