This Saturday, 9th December, the new release of John Cage’s Sonatas&Interludes for prepared piano (Neuma Records, 2023) will be presented in Trieste, Italy, h. 19.00 at Revoltella Museum, invited by Trieste Prima Festival. The conversation around Cage will be accompanied by the young pianists of Piano City Pordenone; a dialogue between Cage’s music for prepared piano and works by Ligeti, Kurtàg e Dohnányi. From the booklet of the festival: “Will we also find the suggestions inherent in Sonatas & Interludes in Kurtagian hommages and Ligeti’s piano pages? Or will it be the seemingly most distant piece, Dohnányi’s Nocturne, that is most in tune with the Cagean dimension?“…
Very excited to take part to MaerzMusik Festival – Berliner Festspiele in Berlin! On March, 24th I will play “Subtle Matters”, with music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Philip Corner and Tan Dun, following my 2021 release by Neuma Records and adding a premiere of Philip Corner. The recital is part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, a long-term project by Maerz Musik focussing on composer Lucia Dlugoszewski in cooperation with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Ensemble Musikfabrik and many others. Here you can find the program of the evening, featuring me and Ensemble Musikfabrik, here you have the whole program of the festival, and here there’s an interesting review about Dlugoszewski‘s life and work.
It is a great satisfaction to be able to announce this new Spring release (street date: March 17th, 2023), coming out after many years of performances of such a masterpiece as Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage. This achievement was possible thanks to a great team of professionals: Marco Melchior, always by my side recording, Erdem Helvacioglu, mastering, and Philip Blackburn, director and manager of Neuma Records label.
To have a physical copy come listen to one of my concerts or buy it on Bandcamp or on Neuma Records website (also digital download).
…a fresh look into the seven decades old music that both her playing and her musicological insights make as fresh as if the work had been composed last year.Rafael de Acha, All about the Arts , February 27th, 2023
The prepared piano was one of the legacies of composer John Cage, and this album with Agnese Toniutti gives a tribute to the iconoclastic sound and attitude. Is the listener prepared for the prepared piano? George W.Harris, Jazz Weekly, February 27th, 2023
The sound of the work has something special, different from many other editions of this repertoire… we have reason to believe that Cage would have appreciated this magical playful “humus.” Needless to note Toniutti’s executive gracefulness, which blends with that precision of accent inescapable in the most “antipianistic” pianism of the 20th century, devoid of emphasis, restored to a welcoming, almost meditative dimension. Marco Maria Tosolini, Il Gazzettino, March 8th, 2023
Agnese Toniutti, among the greatest “performers” of contemporary classical music, interprets to perfection this summa of modern culture… And the pianist, in approaching the instrument, opts for the wonder of intonation and the delicacy of timbre. Guido Michelone, Alias – Il Manifesto, March 18th, 2023
Certainly there’s much to admire in the Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti’s centered rhythm, rich palette of dynamic nuances, and her sensitive textural delineation…Toniutti unquestionably conveys the music’s roots in dance, as well as Cage’s subtle humor. Her intelligent, well-written booklet notes discuss both the music and the process of getting it ready for performance.
Jed Distler, Classics Today.com, April 3rd, 2023
This is a very enjoyable recording whether it is to be a collector’s only recording of this music or one that stands most favorably in comparison to previous recordings. If this is to be your first recording of this work or if you simply want to hear another interpretation, you will not be disappointed. This is a wonderful performance. […] Keep your eyes and ears open for Agnese Toniutti, an advocate for and a master of the avant garde.
Allan J.Cronin, New Music Buff, April 14th, 2023
…That is why this interpretation by Toniutti is sensational. We are listening to a Martian instrument; the technologization of the old piano is extreme and detected. Then there is the anti-solemn attitude of this performer who manages to bring to mind the amiability of Cage in the midst of games (also paradoxically evocative of the Baroque) that seem to take place among laboratory machines and not in front of the most matronly and bourgeois of keyboard instruments. Mario Gamba, Alias – Il Manifesto, April 22nd, 2023
From the booklet of Sonatas&Interludes, Neuma Records
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).
“[…] 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
“Agnese Toniutti, sonic subversion loves lightness – In her heretical itinerary she meets today Dlugoszewski, Tan Dun and Corner – Far from academisms “Subtle Matters”, the new album by the pianist from Friuli” “…if in this album the four of his works [of Corner, ed] stand out for their acumen and a degree of singularity which is rarely remembered the same, it is certainly due to Toniutti’s acumen and singularity. […] In one of Corner’s pieces, Man In Field (the sound as “Hero”) […] the word masterpiece can be written without hesitation. […] Toniutti magical.”
“[…] a poetic landscape where the key acrobatics are nothing short of stunning.
A very exciting album that nearly redefines how one interprets the piano, Toniutti’s dedication to her art is only proving to be more gripping with each subsequent project, and it be will be interesting to see what happens next.“ Take effect Reviews, April 18th, 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 Manifesto, April 21st, 2021
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 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
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).
