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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.' " |
