United States Varied: Conrad Tao (piano and Lumatone). Zankel Corridor at Carnegie Corridor, New York, 31.1.2025. (ES-S)
Debussy – Études, Books I & II
Conrad Tao – Improvisations for Lumatone; Keyed In
Harold Arlen (arr. Artwork Tatum) – ‘Over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz (transcr. Conrad Tao)
R. Schumann – ‘Auf einer Burg’ from Liederkreis, Op.39 No.7 (arr. for Lumatone by Conrad Tao)
Conrad Tao, now thirty, has had a protracted but intermittent relationship with Carnegie Corridor. His journey started as a baby prodigy, performing Mozart’s four-hand items. Over time, he launched his personal compositions into classical packages, step by step showcasing his expertise for curating eclectic and difficult packages.
In his most up-to-date recital at Zankel Corridor, Tao carried out in a theater-in-the-round setting, with the stage centrally positioned and surrounded by the viewers. He alternated between two devices: a grand piano with its lid eliminated – altering its resonance and frequency dispersion – and the Lumatone, a comparatively new keyboard that options 280 hexagonal, color-changing keys organized in a grid. Its isomorphic design ensures that any given sequence or mixture of musical intervals maintains the identical form throughout the keyboard, facilitating constant fingering patterns in several keys. This progressive instrument permits for customizable layouts and mappings, probably providing performers better freedom.
The recital was anchored and framed by the 2 books of Claude Debussy’s Études, his late masterpieces. As anticipated, the big technical challenges that every particular person motion explicitly focuses on – equivalent to varied intervals, chromatic scales, ornaments, repeated notes, opposing sonorities and composite arpeggios – have been simply dispatched by the prodigiously technically-gifted Tao. The pianist additionally provided idiosyncratic interpretations of the works that are celebrated for his or her musical depth, exploration of sonorities and harmonic language and myriad expressive nuances.
Tao’s individualistic method yielded discernible variations in his interpretations of Debussy’s two books of Études. Within the first six, he adopted a sure dispassion, emphasizing the music’s modernist components and highlighting its harmonic and formal peculiarities. The latter six unfolded with better lyricism and class, aligning extra carefully with the extensively accepted interpretation of Debussy’s piano music.
In his efficiency, Tao additionally underscored their forward- and backward-looking nature which extends effectively past the homage to Chopin’s Études, their authentic supply of inspiration. His interpretations conjured quite a lot of reminiscences. Frequent jazzy inflections emerged all through, beginning with the primary étude, ‘Pour les cinq doigts’. The Étude No10, ‘Pour les sonorités opposées’, urged components of late Liszt, whereas the outer sections of the Étude No.12, ‘Pour les accords’, evoked Stravinskian ferocity. One might discern Robert Schumann’s expressive and complicated piano textures within the Étude No.11, ‘Pour les arpèges composés’.
Schumann’s ‘Auf einer Burg’, one of many songs in his Liederkreis, Op.39 assortment – which I heard a few days earlier in Princeton within the incomparable rendition of baritone Christian Gerhaher – was among the many most intriguingly interpreted items by Tao on the Lumatone. In one among his a number of remarks throughout the efficiency, Tao famous that, in its therapy of harmonies and area, the lied was ‘two centuries forward of its time’. The Lumatone’s functionality to change the pitch after a secret’s pressed imparted an aural eeriness to Tao’s adaptation, complementing Schumann and Joseph von Eichendorff’s depiction of a marriage celebration passing by with the stunning bride mysteriously weeping.
Then again, Tao’s improvisations on the Lumatone – one among which served as an encore the place he accompanied his personal wordless music – lacked transparency, sounding ‘muddy’ and purposeless on the instrument, which he had programmed to divide an octave into 53 distinct notes.
Whereas Tao’s transcription of Artwork Tatum’s model of Harold Arlen’s ‘Over the Rainbow’ appeared an oddity in an in any other case rigorously curated program, his authentic composition Keyed In, carried out on a ready piano, supplied an intriguing echo to Debussy’s Études. The piece mirrored an identical preoccupation with the melodic qualities rising from repeated rhythmic patterns executed on the piano as a percussion instrument. Nonetheless, the composition felt considerably prolonged and a contrasting part appeared contrived, which didn’t improve the general expertise.
Regardless of any reservations, Conrad Tao as soon as once more proved that – along with his interpretative prowess, fierce individuality and canny fusion of the previous and the brand new – he’s an artist whose each step is price following.
Edward Sava-Segal
