MUSIC FOR TOY PIANO

Cornish College here in Seattle was able
to bring us a program of  the  music  of
Cornish  favorite  son,  John  Cage, and
others,  in  PONCHO  Concert  Hall  last
night.   The  extraordinary Margret Leng
Tan  was  the  lone  performer  of   the
evening.   Tan  is  an accomplished (the
program notes bill  her  as  the  ‘fore-
most’)  interpreter of Cage’s early pre-
pared piano music and now specializes in
the small but interesting repertoire for
toy piano; Cage’s ‘Suite for Toy  Piano’
was   the  main  musical  prize  of  the
evening.

The performance began with a very  short
film  called  WORXOK  by  someone simply
named Trimpin, with the bell-like sounds
of toy piano for accompaniment.  Someone
appeared to hold some kind of screen  in
front  of the projector lens to create a
diffuse visual effect.  Shots passed  of
dogs,  and  of  old women grooming them-
selves.  The effect was somewhat  mysti-
fying, though the music was pleasant.

After the film, Tan took the stage, clad
in  an  aqua,  Chinese-cut  blouse,  and
played Cage’s 1940 ‘Bacchanale’ for pre-
pared  piano–famed  as  the  first  such
work, and first performed right there in
PONCHO Hall as accompaniment to a Syvil-
la  Fort  dance  number.   Tan,  here on
spiritual home turf, played with the ca-
sual  ease of a student alone in a prac-
tice room.

As with much early Cage, the piece  sub-
stitutes for a lack of harmonic interest
with drum  pattern-like  ostinati.   The
effect  is successful in general, though
the preparation of the piano necessarily
reduces, quite substantially, the dynam-
ic range of  the  instrument,  and  thus
makes more difficult the task of produc-
ing  a  convincing  climax–a  noticeable
failure  in  the ‘Bacchanale’ through no
fault of its interpreter.  Yet  compared
to Cage’s later, far more ‘avant’ works,
it is the early  prepared  piano  pieces
that  are  aging  best, and for which he
will likely be remembered longest.

Tan plays in what I call  the  Juilliard
style of modern pianism–something diffi-
cult to define, but characterized  by  a
too-dry, too-articulated, too emphasized
approach to the playing of runs and oth-
er  fast figurations; something mechani-
cal, and a tendency to atomize long  mu-
sical phrases into short, three or four-
note units.  It is, of course, not  lim-
ited  to  alumnus  of that school, but I
have come to  associate  it  with  Juil-
liard.   In Tan’s case, it may come from
all the practice on the toy piano, which
requires  a  very deliberate touch.  Her
ear for sonority, however, is wonderful.
She was perfectly made to play the music
of such composers as Cage and Crumb, who
specialize in timbral subtlety.

The  Suite  for Toy Piano, in five short
movements–a centerpiece of Tan’s  reper-
toire–was  great  fun.  One movement em-
ploys an idea in which each hand plays a
mirror image of the other; a final move-
ment gives the audience one of the  only
conventionally tuneful moments in Cage’s
entire oeuvre.

Of the remaining  works,  all  receiving
their Seattle premiers, first was a Toby
Twinning arrangement for  toy  piano  of
the Beatles tune Eleanor Rigby.  The ar-
rangement is heavy-handed for  the  tiny
piano–with  the loud noise of its action
and  the  complexity  of  its   metallic
sound,  the  spare  textures of the Cage
come off, where the Romantic density  of
the Twinning work approaches undifferen-
tiated noise.  This noise and the dynam-
ic  limits  of the instrument remind one
of harpsichord, and one thinks that  the
solution   of   the   Renaissance   com-
posers–counterpoint, rather than harmon-
ic  interest and density–might serve the
instrument better.

Next was ‘Chooks’ from  ‘Old  McDonald’s
Yellow Submarine’ by Erik Griswold.  The
short, fun piece uses fast, open  chords
on  the toy piano alternating with quick
hits  to  the  woodblocks;  simple   and
crowd-pleasing.    Next   a  tarantella:
‘Mirabella’ by Stephen Montague.  Again,
the work is too densely chordal to sound
on the noisy instrument.  The  harmonies
are  Italio-Spanish modal standard.  The
piece is essentially a showpiece and  as
such  has  some  nice moments, the final
bars particularly.

Last  we  hear  Twinning’s  1995  ‘Satie
Blues’  for  piano and toy piano, played
by one performer, one hand on  each  in-
strument.  The work is a melancholy med-
itation with toy piano generally  taking
the  lead, and ‘adult’ piano (as Ms. Tan
calls it) in  accompaniment.   Mr. Twin-
ning  seems to be a composer somewhat in
the modern Hollywood mold.  Mild triadic
modal  harmonies succeed one another un-
der pleasantly  evocative  tunes.   Less
successful,  though,  was his attempt to
use tremolo passages on the toy piano as
transitional material, which gave a jar-
ringly clangorous effect.  The work  was
perhaps the most conventionally pleasing
work of the evening, though a bit  of  a
downer to end on.

After Tan’s show we watched Evans Chan’s
documentary, ‘Sorceress of the  New  Pi-
ano:   The  Artistry  of  Margaret  Leng
Tan’–an  occasionally  interesting  two-
hour  commercial for the performer.  But
if that’s what it takes  to  bring  such
artists  here from New York to play such
interesting repertoire, then I  for  one
am  willing  to  sit through the commer-
cial.  The Seattle Weekly ran a kind  of
running  gag  throughout  its  classical
event listings this week about the pres-
ence  of  Mozart  on nearly all the pro-
grams.  A sadly valid  observation,  but
one  not  applicable  to this event–con-
sisting as it did of only one dead  com-
poser,  who died less than fifteen years
ago, and the rest still alive and  kick-
ing.  So general kudos to Cornish and to
Margaret Tan.
 Evans Winner
 Seattle Washington
 January, 2006