United States Various: Conrad Tao (piano and Lumatone). Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York, 31.1.2025. (ES-S)

Debussy – Études, Books I & II
Conrad Tao – Improvisations for Lumatone; Keyed In
Harold Arlen (arr. Art 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 long yet intermittent relationship with Carnegie Hall. His journey began as a child prodigy, performing Mozart’s four-hand pieces. Over time, he introduced his own compositions into classical programs, gradually showcasing his talent for curating eclectic and challenging programs.
In his most recent recital at Zankel Hall, Tao performed in a theater-in-the-round setting, with the stage centrally positioned and surrounded by the audience. He alternated between two instruments: a grand piano with its lid removed – altering its resonance and frequency dispersion – and the Lumatone, a relatively new keyboard that features 280 hexagonal, color-changing keys arranged in a grid. Its isomorphic design ensures that any given sequence or combination of musical intervals maintains the same shape across the keyboard, facilitating consistent fingering patterns in different keys. This innovative instrument allows for customizable layouts and mappings, potentially offering performers greater freedom.
The recital was anchored and framed by the two books of Claude Debussy’s Études, his late masterpieces. As expected, the enormous technical challenges that each individual movement explicitly focuses on – such as various intervals, chromatic scales, ornaments, repeated notes, opposing sonorities and composite arpeggios – were easily dispatched by the prodigiously technically-gifted Tao. The pianist also offered idiosyncratic interpretations of the works which are celebrated for their musical depth, exploration of sonorities and harmonic language and myriad expressive nuances.
Tao’s individualistic approach yielded discernible differences in his interpretations of Debussy’s two books of Études. In the first six, he adopted a certain dispassion, emphasizing the music’s modernist elements and highlighting its harmonic and formal peculiarities. The latter six unfolded with greater lyricism and elegance, aligning more closely with the widely accepted interpretation of Debussy’s piano music.
In his performance, Tao also underscored their forward- and backward-looking nature which extends well beyond the homage to Chopin’s Études, their original source of inspiration. His interpretations conjured a variety of reminiscences. Frequent jazzy inflections emerged throughout, starting with the first étude, ‘Pour les cinq doigts’. The Étude No10, ‘Pour les sonorités opposées’, suggested elements of late Liszt, while the outer sections of the Étude No.12, ‘Pour les accords’, evoked Stravinskian ferocity. One could discern Robert Schumann’s expressive and intricate piano textures in the Étude No.11, ‘Pour les arpèges composés’.
Schumann’s ‘Auf einer Burg’, one of the songs in his Liederkreis, Op.39 collection – which I heard a couple of days earlier in Princeton in the incomparable rendition of baritone Christian Gerhaher – was among the most intriguingly interpreted pieces by Tao on the Lumatone. In one of his multiple remarks during the performance, Tao noted that, in its treatment of harmonies and space, the lied was ‘two centuries ahead of its time’. The Lumatone’s capability to alter the pitch after a key is pressed imparted an aural eeriness to Tao’s adaptation, complementing Schumann and Joseph von Eichendorff’s depiction of a wedding party passing by with the lovely bride mysteriously weeping.

On the other hand, Tao’s improvisations on the Lumatone – one of which served as an encore where he accompanied his own wordless song – lacked transparency, sounding ‘muddy’ and purposeless on the instrument, which he had programmed to divide an octave into 53 distinct notes.
While Tao’s transcription of Art Tatum’s version of Harold Arlen’s ‘Over the Rainbow’ seemed an oddity in an otherwise carefully curated program, his original composition Keyed In, performed on a prepared piano, provided an intriguing echo to Debussy’s Études. The piece reflected a similar preoccupation with the melodic qualities emerging from repeated rhythmic patterns executed on the piano as a percussion instrument. Nevertheless, the composition felt somewhat lengthy and a contrasting section appeared contrived, which did not enhance the overall experience.
Despite any reservations, Conrad Tao once again proved that – with his interpretative prowess, fierce individuality and canny fusion of the old and the new – he is an artist whose every step is worth following.
Edward Sava-Segal