The final concert of Evelyn Glennie's Hit List series featured the pianist Emanuel Ax and the toy piano specialist Margaret Leng Tan. Glennie may have given herself the big moments of the programme - the pyrotechnics of marimba pieces by Leigh Howard Stevens and Keiko Abe - but there was no doubt that the real star of the concert was Tan and her menagerie of diminutive pianos and toy instruments.
The centrepiece of Tan's line-up was a bonsai version of a concert grand, complete with gleaming ebony finish, fully functioning lid and music stand. Kneeling down to play the instrument, Tan looked like Charlie Brown's piano-playing friend from the Peanuts cartoons.
The current repertoire for this most dinky of keyboard instruments is as meagre as its dimensions. Tan, who calls herself the "world's only professional toy pianist", has made it her mission to create a collection of contemporary works for the instrument. She gave UK premieres of music by Stephen Montague, Errollyn Wallen, Toby Twining and Guy Klucevsek.
Montague's Mirabella was a fleet-footed study, but Tan's exaggerated performance did not give the toy piano's distinctive, chiming sound enough time to resonate. Wallen's Louis' Loops, for two toy pianos, based loosely on themes from the harpsichord music of Louis Couperin, again suffered from Tan's self-conscious virtuosity; while the charm of Twining's Satie Blues for piano and toy piano quickly outstayed its welcome.
Klucevsek's Sweet Chinoiserie, on the other hand, was much more successful. Using glasses of water, toy drums, pianos and a child's accordion, Klucevsek's music created a miniature world of vivid imagination. With its artful simplicity of melody and rhythm, Sweet Chinoiserie was like a children's fairy-story, full of bizarre but somehow coherent imagery.
Yet the concert as a whole lacked coherence. Ax presented two pieces from Debussy's second book of Images, and contributed to the world premieres of Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic's Quasi una Sonata for marimba and piano, and to Elena Kats-Chernin's Vitalia's Steps, scored for piano, toy piano and percussion. Both were marked by individual moments of interest but they failed to create any convincing musical momentum.
