Sorceress of the New Piano

On Saturday evening I had the luck to be in the audience for a screening of Evans Chan's documentary about the career and performances of Margaret Leng Tan at the Pioneer Two Boots Theater. It was through Ms. Tan's recordings and concerts that I was first introduced to many cornerstones of modern repertoire for the piano, and whenever I attend her recitals she never disappoints. I always leave having discovered a work or composer I hadn't known about before, or having heard sounds I didn't realize my instrument was capable of.

Prior to Saturday's screening, the small audience was treated to a 30 minute mini-recital of works for toy piano. Tan is undoubtedly the foremost proponent of this deceptively innocent-looking instrument. The performance opened with a work that has become her hallmark, Cage's Suite for Toy Piano. Written using only 9 keys, its simplicity was an extreme contrast to the busyness of the next piece, Toby Twining's arrangement of "Eleanor Rigby." Tan also included the premiere of a new piece by Joshua Fried and some crowd pleasers from Australian composer Eric Griswald.

As in Tan's DVD of the complete Makrokosmos of George Crumb (also under Chan's direction), I was not impressed by the haphazard manner in which film was shot and edited. Yet while its execution seemed sloppy at times, Chan's work makes up for its executional shortcomings with its richness of content. Outlining the trajectory of Tan's career beginning with her precocious childhood in Singapore, it followed her through her study at Juilliard, and featured ample footage of her Brooklyn studio filled with assorted Steinways, Schoenhuts and canines.

Not only was the film the history of one pianist's very unique career path, it also outlined the development of extended pianism in the 20th century through one of Tan's key concepts: the three C's (Cowell, Cage and Crumb). It included many interviews with musical and intellectual luminaries from soprano Joan La Barbara to Edward Rothstein from the Times. Some of my favorite segments showed Tan toting her toy pianos and playing them in unlikely settings: various locations around Paris, the Beethoven Haus in Bonn, and a public school in the Bronx. I also loved her comic Ode to Schroeder (from Peanuts), a multimedia performance in which she "hand syncs" with the most famous toy pianist of all.

The screening was followed by a question and answer session with Tan, Chan and composer Ge Gan-Ru, whose music appeared in the film. The documentary was, at its best moments, incredibly personal, as when the pianist spoke about her close relationship with John Cage during his last years, her struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, and the social implications of her role as an artist, particularly as a toy pianist. Ms. Tan commented afterwards that she hoped her work would inspire a younger generation to continue pushing the pianistic envelope. I hope we prove to be worthy of the task.