John Cage & Margaret Leng TanMargaret Leng Tan performs John Cage Suite for Toy Piano (1948) at Other Minds 5, 1999 (March 27, 1999)

This audio is available in streaming format

Margaret Leng Tan performs the John Cage composition Suite for Toy Piano (1948) at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

Margaret Leng Tan, toy piano. Ms. Tan plays the Schoenhut toy piano.

According to Tan:
Cage wrote his Suite for Toy Piano at Black Mountain College in North Carolina for Merce Cunningham's Diversion. Its five short movements use only nine consecutive white notes. As such it can ostensibly be played on virtually any toy piano, even one with painted black keys. One of the most charming and whimsical of his compositions, it is filled with Cagean irony and humor, as in the exaggerated dynamic extremes from sffz to ppp. As if a toy piano could have such capabilities! Nonetheless, the pianist tries his best and from the effort subtle differences emerge. I would like to dedicate this performance to Schroeder.
- Margaret Leng Tan

This item is part of the collection: Other Minds Archive

Author: John Cage & Margaret Leng Tan
Date: 1999-03-27 00:00:00
Source: Other Minds
Recorded by: Other Minds
Keywords: Avantgarde; 20th Century Classical

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial

Notes

All Other Minds programs available, with additional print and photo materials, at http://www.radiOM.org. Coming soon you will be able to view our complete list of titles not yet digitized at http://www.radiOM.org/titles.

Individual Files

Write a review Reviews

Downloaded 8,956 times Average Rating:

Reviewer: KOBUN - - December 6, 2007
Subject: Mastermind

I love to imagine how this toy piano was set up in a concet hall. The pianist on a tiny chair? Wearing tails?