Leng Tan, Margaret

She Herself Alone [DVD]

Label: Mode Records Country: USA

"In addition to being a renowned new music pianist, Margaret Leng Tan is the foremost specialist at the toy piano. She has concertized worldwide with her miniature instruments, bestowing them with serious music status in repertoire both written for her and arrangements.

For this disc of attractive yet challenging music, Ms. Tan performs Cage's classic "Suite for Toy Piano" plus her arrangement of Cage's seminal "Dream" for toy & grand piano (a work that foreshadowed new age music); and her arrangement for voice and toy instruments of a recent song by George Crumb.

Ms. Tan uses no less than six different toy pianos here. Some works find the toy piano performed with other instruments including grand piano, toy zithers, music boxes, glockenspiels and percussion, with Ms. Tan as a veritable one-person toy orchestra.

Her initial toy piano CD, "The Art of the Toy Piano" on Philips/Point (1997) was critically acclaimed and a strong cross-over seller.

This long awaited follow-up recording combines serious classics (Cage's "Suite") with colorful fun (Griswold), a sultry blues-tango (Twining), drama (Crumb), to haunting meditations (Cage's "Dream" and Liben).

SPECIAL DVD FEATURES:

Each work is treated to its own visual mood, and captures the theatricality of Ms. Tan's performance combined with the exotic toy instrumentation, as directed by Spanish cinematographer Anton Cabaleiro."-Mode Records