Edinburgh festival 2011
Melvyn Tan – review
Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
Tim Ashley
"Think gamelan, think shadow puppets, and lots and lots of incense," Melvyn Tan remarked, guiding his audience graciously through John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano. Ever the striking programmer, Tan was in the process of interweaving Cage's extraordinary evocation of Asian music with a selection of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.
Despite surface differences, the two composers have much in common. Both were attempting to define new musical parameters and languages. The 20 brief movements of Sonatas and Interludes all use binary form, "which is why I've put it with Scarlatti," Tan continued, "since Scarlatti is the king of binary form." Tan is, of course, among the most thoughtful, elegant and refined of pianists. By the end, you couldn't help but think these were composers he was born to play.
This was one of those marvellous concerts where everything seemed to illuminate everything else. We tend to think of Cage, with his absorption of eastern philosophies, as essentially spiritual, while Scarlatti's sonatas always suggest a worldly pleasure in creativity. Put them together, however, and your assumptions begin to totter.
Sonatas and Interludes, as played by Tan, is alive and alert with an intense sensuousness in which every percussive gesture and flicker of colour has an exquisite physicality. Scarlatti, in contrast, often reveals tremendous severity of means, precisely at the point where he seems most searching: the E Major Sonata K162 seems to traverse huge oscillations of mood through the simplest of melodies, while the Sonata in C K49 opens unnerving emotional abysses precisely at the point where it is most humorous. Tan played it all with faultless grace, and the audience adored every second of it. An outstanding recital and a festival highlight so far.