Margaret Leng Tan, piano

Hailed as the “diva of avant-garde pianism”, and Cage and Crumb’s favourite performer, Margaret Leng Tan bears the burden of an artistic biography that is history. Her concert presents the pioneers who laid the foundations for every extension of the language of the piano, inaugurating an experimentation with the instrument that remains essential to this day.

John Cage, Henry Cowell and George Crumb: the protagonists of avant-garde piano in the United States.
The Perilous Night corresponds to Cage’s intention to create “a percussion orchestra under the control of a single player”.
Cowell is credited with two innovations: the use of clusters, which are played with the palm of the hand, the forearms and fists in The Tides of Manaunaun and Advertisement, and the string piano, for which the performer plays the strings of the instrument directly, as in Aeolian Harp and The Banshee.
Inspired by ten paintings (by Chagall, Kandinsky and Klee, among others), the cycle Metamorphoses, Book I is a compendium of Crumb’s language that requires the performer to sing and act, and play not only the grand piano, but a toy piano and various small percussion instruments as well.