This month a couple of news related in some way to the hot topic of the moment, Artificial Intelligence and its connection to the most human of human characteristics, art making.
Finally out the trailer of the multimedia installation The moon is full, but it is not the moon, which took place in Luxembourg last summer. Together with artists Gioj De Marco, Karolina Pernar and Andrej Mircev, we dreamt our dreams and fed an AI, interacting through and with it to build a collective dreamworld. This was the base for our artistic output that took the form of an immersive multimedia installation. Here you can have a taste of it:
This experience is still working in my mind; what AI means and can mean for our present and future… (no easy pronouncements on such a complex topic).
The invitation to this edition of the festival Udin&Jazz, titled “Jazz against the machine”, was an other tile of the mosaic. Having been asked to lead a concert for kids and families about contemporary/experimental music, I started reflecting upon the meaning of education, let’s say about the ingredients of such a fundamental task in human society that is growing the next generation – a task we are delegating more and more to entities not always emotionally connected to our children. I quote from the presentation:
Piano Maestro – How important is the role of the teacher in transmitting knowledge, in a humane society? In times that constantly mention so-called artificial intelligence, it is good to weigh the value of “showing how it is done, by doing.” A gesture that combines in-formation, care, passion, pleasure, meaning. The masters of this concert do not go slow, in truth, [“piano” in Italian means also “slow”, ed.] but they take great leaps and transform the piano into an instrument that is not yet there. Their students will go even further, making their own that look between the curious and the amazed that allows them to imagine, and realize, the world of their own desires.
The music of Henry Cowell, John Cage, Philip Corner, Tan Dun, seemed to me a recognizable path of an attitude towards art and life that constitutes the real heritage from teacher to pupil. György Kurtág’s Játékok is a lovely example of the reverse process: the blessing of learning at every age from every cue that life brings to us (and every teacher knows how much he learns from his students!). Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus made a brief, courteous apparition among all this ordeal of strange sounds. Looks like the kids enjoyed the performance, and the adults too. Thanks to Francesca Tini Brunozzi and Angelo Salvin for the pics below.
A couple of very nice reviews came from Germany this month: one on Glissando magazine about MaerzMusik performance in Berlin in March, the other published on the historical Schott music magazine Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik (founded by Robert Schumann, it dates 1834).
Monika Zykla wrote an extensive review about all the events of MaerzMusik festival 2023 for magazine Glissando. That’s how she refers to Subtle Matters recital: “In the first part of the three-hour-long evening program titled Subtle Matters the Italian pianist and researcher, Agnese Toniutti, delivered a stunning solo piano recital that explored the sonic possibilities of the instrument „beyond its body” as described in the program. One of the highlights was Toniutti’s enthralling performance of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s four-part solo “timbre piano”4 composition, Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?) (1997/2000). This piece was juxtaposed with Tan Dun’s C-A-G-E, fingering for piano (1994), an homage to John Cage, and a selection of compositions for real and toy piano by the American composer Philip Corner. As in her solo album released in 2021 under the same title, Toniutti showed exceptional sensitivity and insight in her selection of the pieces. As a result, a fascinating dialogue emerged between Dlugoszewski and Dun’s compositions that further contextualized and situated Dlugoszewski’s music and aesthetics as part of the New York scene. It subtly referenced Dlugoszewski’s ambiguous and changing attitude towards John Cage as its most prominent and central figure which I read as a hint towards the question of why Cage’s silences were louder than the silences of others. Toniutti undertook an extensive body of research so that subtleties like this could surface and be signaled through music. Not to mention the amount of work she put into performing Dlugoszewski’s piece in the first place, despite the score being unavailable, as Toniutti explained in the program note.” You can read the complete article here.
Jakob Böttcher reviewed Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano by John Cage, released this spring on Neuma Records, on Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik issue 2/2023. Here is the English translation, and below the screenshot of the original review in German. “Screws and erasers – in view of the unbelievably rich sound palette that unfolds, it is hard to believe that these are the only objects that John Cage opposes to the sublime piano as preparation objects. Even Cage himself noted that the sound result of the preparations can vary greatly depending on the instrument. With her version of the opus magnum for prepared piano, composed in 1946-48, the Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti has succeeded in creating an incredibly high-resolution and subtle recording, both in terms of interpretation and sound. Cage certainly did not call the one-movement miniatures, most of which are barely three minutes long, Sonatas and Interludes without a hint of irony. The symmetrically nested 16 sonatas and four interludes follow in their arrangement and form a stringency that continues in the musical text in the form of idiosyncratically angular rhythms and patterns. Toniutti understands how to implement the often mechanical character of the pieces with emphasis (she herself writes in the booklet that she understands it as her role to implement especially the tone durations as precisely as possible) and yet to recognize and emphasize the humanity, even a cantabile gesture, that they contain. Her fine pianistic agogic delivers an authentic and at the same time organical result. A similar dualism is found on the tonal level. The musical text and the preparation go hand in hand. The preparation evokes the machine-like character, in which the piano mutates into a real sound apparatus through the screws and erasers. On many recordings, the piano is almost unrecognizable behind these drum-like, often wooden sounds. Agnese Toniutti’s preparation takes a different approach and refreshingly does not hide the sound generator; with many notes the piano tones are clearly recognizable. Paradoxical – and ingenious – is the fact that the preparation sounds are not drowned out by this, but can even be experienced all the more intensely. Thus, Toniutti’s piano is uniquely balanced in reproducing the preparations in an exceptionally wide range of colors (the screws are obviously carefully selected and placed) and at the same time combining them with the familiar tones of the concert grand. The keys are always softly struck, even in the most machine-like conditions, despite the considerable dynamic reduction due to the preparation, which – as Toniutti notes in the booklet – often tempts one to play with more weight. The soft attack underpins the tonal fusion of piano tone and preparation sound. The high sound quality of the recording (sound: Marco Melchior) contributes decisively to the tonal brilliance, which portrays the grand piano very directly and yet warmly and spatially. Agnese Toniutti has succeeded in making an excellent recording of the Sonatas and Interludes, in which she coherently and nuancedly balances machine-like and human agogic as well as preparation and piano sound. The sound result is unique.
More about Lucia Dlugoszewski’s timbre-piano: it just has been published an article written in collaboration with Kate Doyle, PhD, for Contemporary Music Review Special Issue: Engaging Analysis and Performance. Kate is assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Arts, Culture & Media at Rutgers University—Newark, and I had the pleasure of collaborating with her for several years now about the work of Dlugoszewski. This is our more recent production after partecipating to Toronto Symposium and to the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. The title of the paper is Problem as Possibility: A Dialogue about Performance and Analysis with Lucia Dlugoszewski’s Experimental Notation as Case Study (https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2023.2193090). Here is the abstract:
The musical score can be a site for dynamic exchange between performance and analysis, a place for conversation about material and meaning. As is typical in conversation, conundrums or disagreements generate new ideas and new forms; problems become possibilities. Such is the case in navigating the scores of Lucia Dlugoszewski, who sought radical ways to produce and notate sound forms from around 1950 until her death in 2000. This article is not intended to serve as a survey of Dlugoszewski’s work but to document an exploration of the role that dialogue plays when performing and analysing musical repertoires. Its two authors will perform an excerpt of an ongoing dialogue about the challenges of navigating Dlugoszewski’s innovative scores. A circularity emerges as every potential solution is performed, evaluated, and questioned anew; through this cycle, analysis and performance become a unified, continual process. A thesis emerges from the dialogue: Dlugoszewski’s scores are a documentation of logic that is not present as much as one that is, a kind of notation in reverse, an ideal realised through performance at the edge of practical execution.
Der Freitag and Die junge Welt also wrote about March Subtle Matters recital in Berlin at MaerzMusik Festival (music by Dlugoszewski, Corner, Dun). Quoting Der Freitag in the words of Michael Jäger, …the program announced “sound worlds full of unexpected textures and resonances,” and it was not an over-promise… In the compositions of Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925-2000), Tan Dun (*1957) and Philip Corner (*1933), playing not only on the keys but even more so on the strings under an open piano has always been the main move. We have heard it before, but in the compositions presented here (Tan Dun’s bears the name C-A-G-E, fingering for piano [1994], which refers not only to a sequence of notes, but also to that great initiator, and thus implicitly puts Cage on the same plane as B-A-C-H), the strings are often used like a zither, and sound almost like a zither, sometimes melodious, sometimes “sublimely” chaotic, both then occasionally doubled by the keys – a piano, so to speak, in dialogue with itself. As if communicating with [the] unconscious…
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.
Delighted to take up the challenge of ERT/Piccoli Palchi and bring my experience of piano experimentation to the very young. After a workshop in classes with kids from 6 to 11 years old, and one with their teachers, I will play in concert for them. The program will include one of their compositions based on selected extended piano techniques along with pieces by some of the distinguished experimenters of their times: Debussy, Cowell, Bartok, Kurtag, Cage.
From kids to adults, very happy to have accepted a teaching position at Conservatorio“G.Tartini” in Trieste.
Here a new review of Subtle Matters by Paolo Carradori for Le Salon Musical: “I don’t know if courage can represent a useful category that can be spent in music criticism, but one thing is certain, this album is a courageous work. … Subtle Matters not only tells us how the piano not traditionally played, far from the bourgeois living rooms, can still give us surprising sound panoramas but also reminds us how the artist, whoever puts his hands inside the instrument, must necessarily put back into play, courageously re-discuss role and visions.”
Below some pics from the last colourful concert on March 26th at Moroso showroom – which in addition had an excellent acoustics. Music by John Cage, Tan Dun and Philip Corner for prepared piano, string piano and… regular one.
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).
“[…] 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).
