Very excited for this upcoming concert – Saturday October 23rd – together with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti in Udine at Salotto Musicale Fvg. “Visionaries”, dedicated to Sylvano Bussotti, is a duo exploration of music by Bussotti, Feldman, Brown, Cage, Stockhausen, together with works by Cardini, Uitti and a brand new work created for us by artist Luciano Martinis.
Looking forward to such a great experience!
Another step forward in researching the work of composer Lucia Dlugoszewski.
This time a four-handed reflection, along with Dr Kate Doyle, on how our collaboration – and collaboration in general between theorists and performers – could lead to a step forward both on stage and in the field of musicology.
We will share our insights by speaking at the Dialogues: Analysis and Performance symposium, held October 7–9, 2021, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.
Here is our abstract:
Problem as Possibility: Experimental Notation as Nexus of Concept and Praxis, Theorist and Performer
Kate Doyle (Rutgers University-Newark) and Agnese Toniutti (independent)
What happens when a score becomes a site for dynamic exchange between theorists and performers – where conundrums generate new ideas and forms? We have worked at such a place in dealing with the experimental scores of Lucia Dlugoszewski, who sought innovative ways to notate sound forms from 1950 until her death in 2000. As we sorted through Dlugoszewski’s graphic scores (held at the Library of Congress and the Archives of American Art), it became clear that they hold numerous challenges for performance – pitch arrangements do not match the composer’s descriptions, inconsistencies in graphic signs are frequent, instructions press the performer beyond the limits of even extended techniques. Through our dialogue about these problems, we developed an analysis that considers Dlugoszewski’s notation an attempt to capture what the composer simultaneously regarded as not able to be captured – the nuances of sonority. We began to understand the score(s) as a documentation of logic that is not present as much as a logic that is, as a kind of notation in reverse, as an ideal existing beyond the domain of practical execution. We each produced new forms in response to this analysis that reflect our primary work, but our dialogue continues as an integral aspect of both respective and mutual projects. We propose to perform a concise version of this dialogue as means to openly explore the possibilities of exchange between theorist and performer in the negotiation of concept and praxis in experimental notation.
A summer (often) in recording studio working at two upcoming releases.
One is “Ludic Inventions” by British composer Colin Riley. Colin dedicated the piece to me in 2018; it will now serve as the foundational layer for a video production featuring Lituan film-maker Kristijonas Dirse and Dutch audio-visual Artist Darien Brito. Eager to discover the next steps in this international collaborative project!
Then a recording of pieces by composers Mieko Shiomi and La Monte Young, for an exciting upcoming Fluxus collection. Another opportunity to further challenge creativity!
More news soon…
A dreamy open-air location surrounded by majestic lime trees will host the recital “Lento trascolorare”, with music by Giancarlo Cardini, Caterina Venturelli, Tan Dun, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi.
First planned on a very special day, the 8th of August (see G.Scelsi, 5 Jan 1905 – 8 Aug 1988), then moved to the 22nd to… follow the sun.
An ideal place to resound in quietness.
Last update December 2021
Spring is blooming and brings a brand new recording! “Subtle Matters” will be released by American label Neuma Records on April, 16th.
It features compositions by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Philip Corner and Tan Dun.
Dlugoszewski, pioneer in experimental musical scene, is the inventor of “timbre piano” and Corner, internationally known as a composer, musician and artist, is co-founder of Fluxus movement. Almost all the pieces are played with extended techniques in the inside of the instrument.
The album will be welcomed on Monday, 29th March by Alley Stoughton’s show “Not Brahms and Liszt” for Cambridge MIT WMBR Radio. You can also listen to the very first track here on Bandcamp.
To know part of the (adventurous) story behind the recording you can read the booklet here (Italian version in pdf here.)
To purchase the album: physical copy on Bandcamp or digital download here (from April, 16th).
REVIEWS:
Top Five of Manifesto Year 2021
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classics – April 2021
“[…] Ms. Toniutti impresses with the practiced ease with which she moves from sound event to sound event. Agnese Toniutti takes to these works with enthusiasm, imagination and eventful awareness. As one re-listens a few times the structural and sensual elements of each work becomes more pronounced and readily understandable, until in the end you see that no piece is arbitrary but rather poetically sensible and comprehensible in the pianist’s vision of each segment. The music vacillates between high abstraction, cavernous atmospherics and post-ethnic primality. In so doing the album sums up the spectrum and state-of-the-art for the continuingly fertile extended technique pianisms operative today. I warmly recommend it.”
Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, August 23rd, 2021
“[…] Agnese Toniutti is not only a deserving Italian artist but, as far as her subject matter is concerned, she is at the top of the world scene. […] If only for the inclusion of this suite [by Dlugoszewski, ed.] the value of “Subtle Matters” seems to be immeasurable. […] In conclusion, “Subtle Matters” is an important disc, for the material it contains, for the excellent performance, for the excellent sound and for the more than accurate packaging.”
Mario Biserni, Sands-zine, August 21st, 2021
“Tinkly, booming, comedic, and thought provoking. ”
Cousin Mary, KFJC, July 30th, 2021
“If the extended technique is the “canon” of the 21st century, the pianist Agnese Toniutti deserves a place of honor among the performers who have emerged in this twenty years of amazing creative fervor: figures like hers nourish and even inspire the repertoire of the new avant-gardes dedicated to the instrument of the romantic ideal par excellence […].[…] an all-out action on the metal surface of the taut strings, a landscape of vivid tonal and non-tonal polychromy, a playing field and set of profound dramatic tension that Toniutti masters with extraordinary control, offering us […] one of the most meaningful essays of inside piano never heard.”
Michele Palozzo, Percorsi Musicali, June 20th, 2021
“[…] Spooky and entertaining by turn, one’s left curious to see exactly how the work [Dlugoszewski’s Exacerbated Subtlety Concert, ed] is notated, and Toniutti’s intensity and concentration keep us listening. Tan Dun’s C-A-G-E is subtitled a “fingering for piano”, passages where the piano’s strings are strummed hinting at pentatonic folk music. Repeated listenings highlight the work’s ingenuity and beauty, and there’s naturally a focus on the four notes which spell the name of John Cage, a friend and mentor to Tan. Philip Corner’s Toy Piano is ear-tickling, and his A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese showcases her ability to make the unlikeliest musical material sing.“
Graham Rickson, The Art Desk, May 22nd, 2021
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classics – April 2021 “This riveting recital by the Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti brings together the work of three disparate composers, all of which involve exploring the inside of the keyboard. In her liner note essay she writes, “Walking into a new score is like opening a door, having in hand a magic access-key to someone else’s inner universe—their music, first of all, but also a world of feelings, thoughts, decisions and reactions, an individual view of life. That notion is crucial to the opening work, the four-movement “Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?)” by the Polish-American Lucia Dlugoszewski, who wrote and recorded the piece using the “timbre piano,” one of many instruments she designed before her death in 2000. Toniutti had to learn the piece through that recording and research various ways to get at the sound, since apart from knowing some of the devices she used (including thimbles, hairpins, jars), there was no specific instruction about the instrument. She transcribed the recording and found her own way forward to create something clearly related to the original, but also her own, rife with alien, evocative textures, resonances, and sonic fractures. She also leaves her own impression on works by Tan Dun and Philip Corner.”
Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily, April 29th, 2021
“In a unique CD, the researcher Agnese Toniutti collects the experiments of the last century of musical history – […] “Subtle Matters” is a rare and courageous example of artistic documentation of poetics by authors who have made and are making the history of piano music -and not – of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. […] Between sound echoes of Noh theater and Kabuki (Dlugoszewski), arpeggiated and dreamlike piano delicacies (Tan Dun), fragments of wandering and bewitching sounds (Corner), this work is a “unicum” projected into the future“.
Marco Maria Tosolini, Il Gazzettino, April 25th, 2021
Subtle Matters – Intervista ad Agnese Toniutti (ITA)
musicaelettronica.it, blog by Tempo Reale, Firenze
Marco Baldini e Luisa Santacesaria, April 19th, 2021
“The young pianist, an excellent performer, is here dealing with a repertoire of contemporary music written between 1994 and 2020, ranging from the tribute to John Cage by the Chinese Tan Dun to the dedicated pieces (also for toy piano) by the American Philip Corner, although the surprise remains the initial concert in 4 parts by the Polish-American Lucia Dlugoszewski, an extraordinary artist and inventor of a timbre-piano in which hammers and keys are replaced with strings and plectra. 5/5: Unique.”
Guido Michelone, Alias – Il Manifesto, April 17th, 2021
“A very original cd […] by the talented pianist Agnese Toniutti, which presents a courageous choice of authors out of any commercial homologation: Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925-2000), Tan Dun (1957) and Philip Corner (1933). Sounds and peculiar paths that open not only to musical perspectives but also to existential ones. Congratulations for this choice and for the excellent interpretation that demonstrates how much Agnese Toniutti is convincingly inside this music which is also a different interpretation from the usual repertoire.”
Renzo Cresti, April 10th, 2021
“Pianist Agnese Toniutti has a bracing, incisively performed new recording, ‘Subtle Matters’, on the Neuma label, featuring pieces by three composers. Lucia Dlugoszewski’s ‘Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?’ is a rigorous, four-part exploration of the piano’s interior. There’s a lovely, jagged but dreamy work by Tan Dun, ‘C-A-G-E fingering for piano’ and four wonderful compositions by the always inspiring and challenging Philip Corner. Excellent work, do check it out.”
Brian Olewnick, April 1st, 2021
“A wonderful album of modern piano landscapes, all gorgeous and unusual in their own voices. A sonic journey / exploration of dynamic acoustic atmospheres.”
Collin J Rae, March 30th, 2021
“One of those people that doesn’t just play the piano, she plays the piano going beyond just hitting the keys and even bringing toys into the arena. An experimental work that doesn’t feel like it’s just pulled out of the air on a whim, this is less a recital than a journey inhabited by stops and starts, twists and turns. Often becoming head music for cosmic experiences, if you start with Varese and go from there, this might just be the musical comfort food you want on your plate.”
Chris Spector, March 15th, 2021, Midwest Record
Il Gazzettino, April 25th, 2021
RADIO BROADCASTING AND INTERVIEWS:
#RadiostArt (Italy) – Interview for Clocks and Clouds with Stefano Taglietti
10.45 pm, June 28th, 2021
#Radio UNAM (Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico): Interview for Testimonio de Oídas curated by Dulce Huet (espagnol – podcast)
June 15th and June 19th, 2021
#Radio Horizon 93.9 fm (Johannesburg, South Africa)
May 18th, 2021
Philip Corner: Toy piano, A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese
#Radio CiTR 101.9 FM – University of British Columbia (Canada) Bepi Crespan Presents
May 8th 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) – Part IV, Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano
#Radio Centraal (Antwerpen, Belgium) Vhoorspel with Rudi Claessens
April 29th, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) – Part I e II, Philip Corner: Man in field (Sound as hero), A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese
#Radio Onde Furlane (Udine, IT) Ator ator, interview with Paolo Cantarutti (Furlan/ITA)
April 28th, 2021
Podcast here
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?), Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano, Philip Corner: A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese
#Radio WFCF (Flagler College Radio, Florida, USA) Music of our Mothers with Ellen Grolman
April 28th, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?)
#Radio Horizon 93.9 fm (Johannesburg, South Africa)
April 26th, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?), Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano, Philip Corner: Man in field (Sound as hero), Small pieces of a Fluxus reality
#Radio KUNM (University of New Mexico, USA) Other Voices, Other Sounds – Contemporary music and sound art with an international perspective
April 22nd, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) – Part III and IV
#Radio Panik (Bruxelles, Belgium) Indiedrome : “Exacerbated Subtlety”
April 20th, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?)
#Radio Capodistria (Slovenia) Sonoramente Classici interview with Luisa Antoni: “Agnese Toniutti presents Subtle Matters” (ITA)
April 18th, 2021
Philip Corner: Man in field (Sound as hero),
Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano, Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) – Part 4
#Radio CiTR 101.9 FM – University of British Columbia (Canada) Bepi Crespan Presents
April 17th, 2021
Philip Corner: Man in field (The Sound as hero),
Small pieces of a Fluxus reality
#Radio Electus (Seattle, USA) #85: Music of Memory with Michael Schell
April 8th, 2021
Lucia Dlugoszewski: Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) – Part 2.
#Wrmbr Radio, MIT Institute (Cambridge, USA) – NOT Brahms and Liszt with Alley Stoughton
March 29th, 2021
Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano, Philip Corner: A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese
#Difficult Listening (Australia)
March 28th, 2021
Tan Dun: C-A-G-E, fingering for piano
A brief extract from Dlugoszewski’s Exacerbated Subtlety Concert – Part IV for “timbre piano”, performed at Angelica Festival, Bologna (IT), on Sept 18th, 2020 (European premiere).
The exploration of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s work for “timbre” piano keeps on going.
After the European premiere of Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?) in Bologna this September for Angelica 30th Festival, I’m very happy to have given my little contribution to musicologist Kate Doyle’s speech at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting this weekend.
Dr Doyle’s lecture for the panel “At the Borders of Notation” was titled “The Suchness of Sound: Lucia Dlugoszewski’s Revolutions of Musical Form and Instrumentation”. I partecipated with a video extract of the performance in Bologna (here is the link, below is the video) and a brief interview.
My research on Exacerbated Subtlety Concert is also the topic of a podcast episode of Infuse, a dynamic concert series based in Paris. You can listen to it here or below, with the elegant (and musical) direction and editing by Sarah Elzas.
Lucia Dlugoszewski (pic courtesy of Erick Hawkins and Lucia Dlugoszewski Papers, Music Division, Library of Congress)
A brief extract from Exacerbated Subtlety Concert Part IV, performed in European Premiere at Angelica Festival, Bologna (IT), on Sept 18th, 2020.
Infuse Podcast, “Agnese Toniutti à la recherche du piano à timbre de Lucia Dlugoszewski”, interview made in February 2020, direction and editing by Sarah Elzas.
Honoured to be part of the third publication of (re)cover by Libreria Martincigh in Udine, an editorial project that redeems out of print books and (re)presents them to the public along with new contributions in dialogue with the original work. Quoting the text introducing this edition:
“Started in 2016 by the bibliographic studio Martincigh, (re)cover creates hybrid publications that make resonate past and present, tracing connections between great masters and contemporary authors. (re)cover/3 presents the artist book by Giancarlo Cardini, Soap bubbles, published in 1991 by the Centro Di Edizioni, paired with the music album, Lento trascolorare, by the pianist Agnese Toniutti, produced by Da Vinci Classics, stemmed from collaboration between the Friulian interpreter and the Florentine composer.”
Bolle di Sapone/Soap bubbles includes a collection of short poems or, as the author writes, “Fragments of daily contemplations” collected from 1971 to 1989, the libretto of Il Castello Insonne, “scenic nocturnal mystery in 29 episodes, to be played between about two and four o’clock on a moon- less night” performed at Venice Biennale Musica in 1991, and the score of Neo-Haiku Suite for piano, flowers, lights, objects and two performers (1979), together with photographs from the performances. One of them, a picture by Enzo Della Monica, served as a cover image for the cd Lento trascolorare.
The (re)cover edition is also accompanied by a precious text by journalist and writer Brunella Torresin.
Grateful and excited to play live again: a weekend on the road with music I love.
On Friday 18th Sept in Bologna, for Angelica 30th Festival. In program the intriguing music for timbre piano by Lucia Dlugoszewski (a European premiere) and a solo piano piece by Giancarlo Cardini from my new disc Lento trascolorare. Double set: it was great to share the stage with Frances Marie Uitti’s legendary cello (and music)!
On Sunday 20th Sept. in Villa di Toppo Florio (Buttrio, Ud), immersed in an enchanting botanical garden, for TreeArt Festival. A program dedicated to Giacinto Scelsi, introduced by Luciano Martinis’s lecture about the famous Palm Tree of Scelsi. In collaboration with Scelsi Foundation – Rome.
Below some pics and video of the events.
Angelica Festival, Bologna, before and during the concert
TreeArt Festival, Buttrio (UD), with Luciano Martinis and his series “La Palma di Scelsi” (Scelsi’s Palm Tree)
TreeArt Festival, Buttrio (UD), the concert (photo Lara Carrer)
https://www.facebook.com/eventibuttrio/videos/2726573880995801/
TreeArt Festival, Buttrio (UD), a video of the event
In 1959 John Cage was in Italy. Some Italian composer friends suggested him to partecipate as a mushroom expert to the popular tv quiz “Lascia o raddoppia” led by Mike Bongiorno (here more info in Italian and English). For the occasion he wrote and premiered “Water Walk” and “Sounds of Venice”, for solo television performer. One year later he performed Water Walk again in United States, at the TV show “I’ve Got A Secret” – with some last-minute changes in the original score due to a trade union strike.
Unfortunately the video of Radio Televisione Italiana with the first performance is not available anymore.
In 2018 I performed in Venice and then in Art Park Verzegnis both “Water Walk” and “Sounds of Venice”, in collaboration with the European project Ecouter le monde, led by RFI and an international network of cultural stakeholders. This repertoire sounds very appropriate for a project that “has an ambition: to develop the practice, the meaning, and the pleasure of listening.”
Below are the two video documentations of the pieces.
Credits:
with Veniero Rizzardi – direction, Paolo Zavagna – sound projection, Claudio Bellini, Giovanni Dinello and Riccardo Sellan – technical and logistic support
Many thanks to Alberta Ziche for the video editing and Claudia Chiggio and Roberto Tonon for the video shooting.
A.Toniutti – J. Cage, Water Walk, for solo television performer (1959)
A.Toniutti – J. Cage, Sounds of Venice, for solo television performer (1959)
Despite we’re definitely living in “interesting times”, as Venice Biennale 2019 seemed to foresee, music finds its way.
My new recording Giancarlo Cardini: Lento trascolorare, piano music is finally available on line at Da Vinci Classics website, and from June, 12th on digital distribution (iTunes, Amazon, etc) and in store.
On the playlist four unreleased pieces, “Via del Fico, Firenze. Una piccola strada disadorna, silenziosa, quasi immota, arida e bella” (2011), “Tre momenti di sessualità infantile” (2007), “Terza Fantasia, ad Agnese Toniutti” (2018) and a new version of “Foglie d’autunno lentamente trascolorano” (1983, rev. 2018), together with the fascinating “Rituals for the Ryoanji Garden” for piano, gong and voice (2012) and “Una notte d’inverno” (1982) (preview here and below).
The booklet offers a writing by Giancarlo Cardini himself about his music. On the cover a picture by Enzo Della Monica taken during one of Cardini’s performances in the 80ies, part of the artist book Bolle di sapone/Soap bubbles (G. Cardini – Bolle di sapone, Centro Di, Firenze 1991). Inside some shots by the photographer Alberto Moretti.
The piano is a Steinway & Sons B-211 dated 1890, restored by Steinway Academy technician Lorenzo Cerneaz, with a magnificent sound, rich in resonance.
It’s a joy to finally see the first public (virtual but real) appearance of a project about music that I love. Let’s hope these sounds will have a long life, generous as they are in peaceful colours!
“… there is a (contemplative) process absorbed with the rational calmness of those who practice the voluptuousness of critical thinking. […] And Toniutti is really good at returning these impressions and sensations.”
Mario Gamba, Alias – Il Manifesto, 16/5/2020
“Beyond time and space. […] spirals of enchanting repetitions that run alongside the silence, of expressive modesty in peace with the world. These Zen meditations progress lightly away from the care of the present, with a placid, ceremonial step, even without ever really advancing towards a specific goal. […] the album is in all respects (Cardini’s) portrait, light, intimate […]”
Gregorio Moppi, la Repubblica, 15/6/2020
Interview with Paolo Cantarutti, Radio Onde Furlane (Italian/Furlan): Lento trascolorare cun Agnese Toniutti
“A very beautiful CD, with music made up of consonances and soft dissonances that fade into each other, just like the title, and above all with a beautiful sound, with this old Steinway piano from 1890 with its so particular harmonics.”
“Giancarlo Cardini, the unrepeatable moment –
Pianist Agnese Toniutti in Lento Trascolorare reads with extraordinary depht piano compositions by the Tuscan composer”.
Review and interview by Paolo Carradori , il Giornale della Musica, 2/7/2020, (article in italian)
“… pages […] that the virtuoso pianist Agnese Toniutti expresses enphasizing the lyrical constructivist scattered between note and note.”
Guido Michelone, Alias – il Manifesto, 11/07/2020
“Giancarlo Cardini/Agnese Toniutti, Lento trascolorare piano music
Cardini entrusted to play some of his composition pianist Agnese Toniutti, who gave evidence of extraordinary accuracy and depht, capable as few others to recognize and enhance the implications and nuances of Cardini’s thought.”
Enzo Boddi, Musica Jazz, 12/07/2020 (italian)
“For Cardini’s 80th birthday, a critical contribution and a review of Agnese Toniutti’s cd
[…] Toniutti is good at grasping the very slow transfigurations, the subtle nuances, highlighting mottled dissonances or sweet consonances, the evocation of nature, the sense of mystery, the rituality of the gesture, returning us in a ‘cardinian sound’, possible only if the the interpreter adheres with participation to a completely personal and vaguely arcane (musical) world like that of Cardini’s music. An excellent example of how it should work.”
Renzo Cresti, www.renzocresti.com, 25/07/2020
“[…] it’s up to the interpreter – the talented pianist Agnese Toniutti – to bring out the most minute details and the most hidden expressive nuances, jealously guarded, but still eager to be shared with the listener.”
Filippo Focosi, Kathodik, 15/10/2020
Interview with Marco Maria Tosolini, RAI Radio Uno – Il concerto che vorrei 5/9/2020 (podcast): Playing with…il gioco nella musica
“I recommend this cd […] whose songs induce a state of profound pacification“
Interview with Luca Berni, Rete Toscana Classica – Cronache musicali 9/9/2020 (podcast): Nuovi Album di Agnese Toniutti e Alberto Bocini
“A valuable publication […] the listener is engaged in a sort of walking journey within the music. In this moment we may need a music that is so rarefied but very present and very alive, which speaks to us of today, of our time. It is a very special record, let me tell you, it is a record that requires work from the listener, which requires attention.”
RAI Radio Tre – Battiti 24/9/2020 (podcast): Lento trascolorare
