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Conlon Nancarrow & Margaret Leng TanMargaret Leng Tan performs Conlon Nancarrow's Three 2-Part Studies at Other Minds 5, 1999 (March 26, 1999)

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Margaret Leng Tan performs the west coast premiere of Conlon Nancarrow's Three 2-Part Studies (1942), arranged by Tan, at the Other Minds Music Festival in 1999 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco.

Margaret Leng Tan, two toy pianos

According to Tan:
The published score of the Three 2-Part Studies bears the following dedication:
"For Jürgen, a dearest friend, who found this score, forgotten in the dust of my studio."

When I first embarked on my career as a toy pianist in 1995, I was ferreting around for pieces that would lend themselves to the toy piano. I had always thought Nancarrow would be a good bet given the toy piano's aggressively percussive nature. When I acquired two toy pianos with distinctly separate personalities, it seemed inevitable that the Three 2-Part Studies had to be heard on them. Even more formidable than the task of transcribing them was the feat of mastering the transcription. I would long ago have given up had I not been goaded on by the ultimate challenge - to render on a toy instrument the kind of virtuosity and precision that would lead Nancarrow to bypass the uncertainties of human excecution and invest his energies in the player piano's unfettered possibilities.

The year before his death, I sent Nancarrow a garage recording of the Three Studies. His wife Yoko informed me that Nancarrow had thoroughly enjoyed them in their toy incarnation.
- Margaret Leng Tan


This audio is part of the collection: Other Minds Archive

Author: Conlon Nancarrow & Margaret Leng Tan
Date: 1999-03-26 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.

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Reviewer: WBamberger - - August 6, 2006
Subject: The joys of complexity
Colin Nancarrow was a paper punch artist. After writing some (very good) music for traditional ensembles, he decided to write solely for the player piano. He would punch in each note by hand, at the rate of something like a dozen an hour. Committed to--or through---paper, with more allegience to abstract ideals than to human abilities, Nancarrow's music can be beyond human capabilities.
Margaret Leng Tan took this seeming-impossibility as a simple challenge. Tan uses two toy pianos, which because of their limited octave range challenge a performer to keep lines separate. But the bigger challenge is in teaching oneself how to, as Rahsaan Roland Kirk put it when he played two instruments at once, "splitting the brain." To play in two key signatures at once is not too difficult, but to play in two time signatures is a wrenching experience. Margaret Leng Tan's mind/hand complex was up the the challenge. The hail-on-the-rooftop clatter of the keys almost but not quite hides the deliberately out-of-synch layering of these pieces, and Tan's command of their complexities.
The first Study is quick, difficult to sort out. The second is slower, with hesitations that suggest a waltz without a hint of 3/4 time. The uppermost notes here present a short melody so close to "Whistle While You Work" that the lyrics will unavoidably come into your head.Here, perhaps because the piece is less frantic than 1 or 3, the music's feel is less mechanical--in fact, the loss of a identifiable sturcture in places makes the music seem all the more human. Those who know Frank Zappa's "King Kong as Played by 3 Deranged Good Humor Trucks" will find a realted sensibility at work here---Tan is interested in the fun to be found in complexity.And her enjoyment shines through.
Through some fumbling on my part, I managed to open archive files for both these piece and Tan's performance of John Kennedy's "Fanfare.." for toy cymbals simultaneously. They played together beautifully. Try it... Your split mind will enjoy it.