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mm24_abendprogramm_16_24032024_library (trascinato)

News 0 comments Contemporary Music Review, extended techniques, Hawkins Dance, Kate Doyle, lectures, Lucia Dlugoszewski, MaerzMusik Festival, research

Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part 3

Agnese

7 Aprile 2024

Research and people

Previous parts:
Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part I, Behind (or before) the scenes
Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part 2, Performance: music and dance


MaerzMusik collaborative project “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, dedicated to composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, was not only a precious occasion to listen to and perform her music. It gave us the opportunity to share the extensive research done so far, and gather together with people equally motivated.
The Library spaces hosted several theoretical interventions in the form of talks, gently led by musicologist Monika Zyla and warmly open to the public.
After the official presentation of the project, as an introduction to ensemble Musik Fabrik’s concert at Radyal System on the 20th, I’ve been included in the conversation “Ensemble Perspectives on Performing Dlugoszewski’s Music” with hornist Christine Chapman and conductor Lilianna Krych on the 21st March at Berliner Festspiele.

Radialsystem, 20th March, Kamila Metwaly, artistic director of MaerzMusik, speaking to the audience.
© Berliner Festspiele, Foto:Camille Blake

It was interesting to know other paths from the music to the score to the music, a challenge that each of us approached in an individual way.

Ensemble Perspectives on Performing Dlugoszewski’s Music, MaerzMusik Library, Berliner Festspiele, 21st March
© Berliner Festspiele, Foto: Fabian Schellhorn


Saturday 23rd was the day of the performative lecture “Problem as Possibility: Dialoguing with Dlugoszewski’s Scores” with musicologist Kate Doyle, PhD.

From MaerzMusik Library booklet.


Kate is a very sharp and creative mind with whom I had the pleasure to collaborate from the very beginning in my research on Dlugoszewski. Our time spent in conversation and reflection was and still is a constant opportunity to deepen my knowledge, on the composer’s ouvre and in general. For MaerzMusik Symposium we decided to use our article published in Contemporary Music Review as a starting point for a further dialogue where we could collect the new elements emerged so far.
The form of dialogue characterizes our exchange and is particularly fitted to an approach to Dlugoszewski’s work. We did this “in performance”, orchestrating a form with structure and openness, as the composer’s piano works often do. While preparing our intervention, we notated our ideas in a visual form, and Dlugoszewski’s visual maps and notes often came to our mind. Here you can see an extract, published in MaerzMusik Zine as a presentation:

Doyle-Toniutti lecture presentation for MaerzMusik Zine

Once more, our research on Dlugoszewski, instead of giving us certainty of answers, brought us directly into the experience of processes. Which is much more fun.

Problem as Possibility: Dialoguing with Dlugoszewski’s Scores” with musicologist Kate Doyle, MaerzMusik Library, Berliner Festspiele, 23rd March
© Berliner Festspiele, Foto:Camille Blake

Here are some nice pictures taken under the impressive graphic reproducing Lucia Dlugoszewski’s dynamic scale map (take a look at this). You can see curator and researcher Dustin Hurt, Hawkins archive curator and long standing company member Louis Kavouras and musicologist Kate Doyle. Thanks for the pics to Ly Thien Co Friedrich, our guardian angel of production.

Previous:
Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part I, Behind (or before) the scenes
Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part 2, Performance: music and dance



Berlin Maerzmusik mm24_programm_contemplations_into_the_radical_others

News 1 comment Alan Hovhaness, Eleanor Hovda, extended techniques, Hawkins Dance, Henry Cowell, Lucia Dlugoszewski, MaerzMusik Festival

Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part 2

Agnese

1 Aprile 2024

Performance: Music and dance

Previous part: Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part I, Behind (or before) the scenes
Next: Dlugoszewski inBerlin – MaerzMusik24 – part III, Research and people

Dancer and choreographer Erick Hawkins and composer Lucia Dlugoszewski met in 1952, soon after the foundation of Hawkins own dance company. Hawkins danced before – first male dancer – in the company of Martha Graham.
Hawkins explains in his writings the importance of music – live music – in au pair connection with dance and its “free-flow” movement. I already read all this and was excited to experience it with my hands and eyes working with dancer and choreographer Katherine Duke, former assistant of Lucia Dlugoszewski and actual director of the Hawkins Dance Company in New York. In fact Dlugoszewski, composer in residence of the Dance Company, took over the direction and even choreographic duties after Hawkins’s death in 1994. But, as long-standing Hawkins company dancer and Hawkins archive curator Louis Kavouras pointed out during our stay in Berlin, she was choreographing all the time even before. This was an interesting statement especially in relation with all the materials I saw at the Library of Congress. Maybe Dlugoszewki’s mind set was “in tune” with movement as much as with sound…

During rehearsals. This is one of the statements quoted by Dlugoszewski’s writings, a nice “cadeau” by MaerzMusik Festival.


This hypothesis became stronger while rehearsing with the (amazing) dancers selected for the project, Juan Corres, Laia Vancells Pi, Marco Rizzi, Kristina Berger.
Kristina was also performing the solo dance “Fountain in the Middle of the Room” with the music of the first two movement of Exacerbated Subtlety Concert for timbre-piano by Dlugoszewski. Here is what Katherine Duke writes about it:

“A Fountain in the Middle of the Room” was for me an intense journey with Lucia who is both the choreographer and the composer of the piece. She had wanted to premiere the solo in 1999 along with her beautiful new dance “Radical Ardent”, a huge work with eleven dancers organised in duets. […] She resumed working on “Fountain” to premiere it in April of 2000 with her epic work “Motherwell Amor”. Unfortunately, we lost Lucia on opening night; she had passed away in her apartment still working on the upcoming performance. The company and musicians performed “Motherwell Amor” that evening; “A Fountain in the Middle of the Room” was not performed as she was the sole musician. Lucia and I had a performance date set for the following month to perform the solo. Needless to say, I was devastated, thrown into wrenching times but forced myself to work on arranging the solo which I premiered on 26 May 2000 in silence and dedicated it to her. As opportunities to perform the solo continued to arise, I searched Lucia’s music to find something that felt connected. Finally, two of the four parts of her “Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why does a Woman Love a Man?)” seemed a match. […] For this dance, Lucia and I discussed a revolution of subtlety, the high risk of elegance and a torn non-linear wild elegance of space throughout the delicacy of construction. Lucia daringly embodied that delicate mystical ‘something’ of seeing and hearing for the first time which the haiku poets practice without respite.”

Rehearsing Fountain in the Middle of the Room, Kristina Berger dancer, choreography and music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Exacerbated Subtlety Concert I and II. Pics by Louis Kavouras

Cantilever (1963) has a different energy, sunny, joyful and sparkling. Dlugoszewski sets the music so that she could keep constant eye-contact with the dancers, and literally follow them “step by step”. Louis Kavouras confirmed this, also telling us that she often corrected dancers in the studio, as she knew the choreography better than them! The rehearsals confirmed my first impression transcribing the piece (see Part I): there is an intimate connection between sound and movement, big or minimal, and a love for small precious details that Dlugoszewski and Hawkins clearly shared. It’s not something flashy, dramatic or showy; the adjectives that come to my mind now that I try to describe it are “simple, beautiful, elegant, subtle”… some of the favourite words used by Dlugoszewski. Looking at the dancers literally embodying these concepts, under the guide of Katherine, left me a huge impression.

…revolution is in perception rather than conception…

As for the rest of the program, including four piano solo pieces, that’s what I wrote in the booklet:

“[…] Henry Cowell and Alan Hovhaness both received commissions by Erick Hawkins Dance Company, although not for piano solo works. They were both connected to an important figure in Dlugoszewski’s formative early years in New York – though quite cumbersome in the later years: John Cage. Cowell pioneered the exploration of new sound production both on the keyboard and on the inside of the piano, and transmitted his explorative attitude to Cage, one of his students. I can’t think about prepared piano, or even timbre piano, without considering the mysterious sounds and never-before-seen gestures of Cowell’s “The Banshee” (1925). And the outrageous (for the time) clusters of “The Tides of Manaunaun” (1912) opened the field to among other things some of Dlugoszewski’s favourite techniques in “Cantilever”.
“Spring Music with Wind” (1973) by Eleanor Hovda is a solo piano piece for extended techniques. Subtle and delicate, connected strongly with breath, gesture and voice, it goes in search of new sounds with lightness. Quoting conductor Jeannine Wagar, “The title, ‘Spring Music with Wind’, suggests the flow of energy and its non-quantifiable shape”, a concept that Hovda often underlines and closely links to the timbre of sound. In this piece she prescribes the use of friction mallets and a curved glass bottle.”
Alan Hovhaness’s “Shalimar op. 177” (1950, rev. 1951) belongs to his “Armenian period”. As the son of an Armenian immigrant, he became increas- ingly attracted to Armenian and Eastern music after an academic training. In his own words, “Shalimar” was composed in Kashmir “after visiting the Mogul gardens and many beautiful mountains in the Himalayan regions. The foun- tains no longer gush forth their music and beauty in the Shalimar gardens, but the memory of their sound and visual wonder among the great Chenar trees, with steep, rugged mountains rising in the background, was in my imagination and I summed up the lost scenes during the days of Mogul grandeur. The form of the Suite, with its interludes for borders, suggests that carpet-like design of Mogul gardens.”

Concert programme, 24th March 2024


Below some pics of the show on Sunday 24th March (full house at the BerlinerFestspiele Side Stage!) © Berliner Festspiele, Foto: Camille Blake.
You can download here the very interesting booklet dedicated to the composer by MaerzMusik.

  • Friends in the audience
  • Looking at Kristina
  • Here she is
  • Cowell
  • Hovda
  • Hovhaness
  • Cantilever: Marco, Juan, Laia
  • Cantilever: Marco and Juan
  • Cantilever: Kristina, Juan, Laia
  • All of us with Katherine Duke

Previous: Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part I, Behind (or before) the scenes
Next: Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 – part III, Research and people



mm24_programm_contemplations_into_the_radical_others

News 1 comment Alan Hovhaness, Eleanor Hovda, extended techniques, Hawkins Dance, Henry Cowell, Lucia Dlugoszewski, MaerzMusik Festival

Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part 1

Agnese

30 Marzo 2024

Behind (or before) the scenes

This year’s MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin involved me both as a performer and as a researcher. I came home full of impressions, new knowledge and human encounters, a wealth of inputs that I am slowly metabolizing.

This was the second year of a collaborative project, “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, dedicated to composer Lucia Dlugoszewski and strongly desired by Maerz Musik artistic director Kamila Metwaly.
While the previous year I had the chance to present my previous work in performance – my research on Dlugoszewski begins in 2017 – this year I had the opportunity to go further.

In October 23 my research trip in Washington DC, USA, at the Library of Congress, had been illuminating in several aspects.
The Dlugoszewski/Hawkins archive is huge and I gave priority to searching for materials related to two pieces, Exacerbated Subtlety Concert and Cantilever.
At the time of my recording (Subtle Matters, Neuma Records, 2021) I spent a long time in transcribing Exacerbated Subtlety Concert from a recording by Dlugoszewski. No score was available, infact. This was my first encounter with the timbre-piano Dlugoszewski invented in the Fifties. Since then, and the last time after checking the Library of Congress documentation, I reworked the transcription 4 times, trying to get closer to the original idea and way of performance.
This unusual path to discover the piece and the instrument, first through the sound, then through notation, has been an incomparable way to access the composer’s creative process. And fruitful, also: besides the performances and recording, it started a wonderful collaboration with scholar Kate Doyle, PhD, a musicologist who’s also a creator in her own field. I will speak about this in the second part.

Old style transcription of Cantilever: pencils work pretty well…

Cantilever (1963) is a piano solo piece expanded in an ensemble version in 1968. It was written for a choreography by Erick Hawkins, and performed many times both in the piano solo version or in ensemble. I expected to find plenty of material at the Library of Congress. The fact is that Dlugoszewski, when it is the case of timbre-piano or piano parts, didn’t spend time in writing a regular score. She was the performer, and the music was stored in her head and hands.
So I transcribed the piece listening to three different recordings, two of them from early on and one of a performance from 1999. This, too, was an interesting work that put on the table a lot of questions and made me clearer about her compositional process and the very practical issues related in connecting with dance.

The coreographer and dancer Erick Hawkins was a strong advocate of live music on stage; while collaborating closely with Dlugoszewski, he also commissioned from early on a number of works to other composers. Among them, Cowell and Hovhaness.
I chose some solo piano pieces by Henry Cowell and Alan Hovhaness that seemed to me related to Dlugoszeski’s ones, to movement and dance.
Eleanor Hovda‘s solo piano piece was a beautiful discover, very connected with the rest of the programme. Using extended techniques, she creates her unique world of lightness and amazement, with sounds produced by friction mallets, breath, voice sound, and a bottle. Researching about her, I found out that Hovda and Dlugoszewski met and write eachother regularly. The younger Hovda writes in a letter to Lucia “how often I give thank to you for your influence on my life and art.”

So, the music program seemed ready. Now it should meet with movement. Because, yes, this was an other exciting opportunity to explore at MaerzMusik: the connection between Dlugoszewski’s music to the other art always present in her life, dance.

Next:
Dlugoszewski in Berlin – MaerzMusik24 part II, Performance: Music and Dance 
Dlugoszewski inBerlin – MaerzMusik24 – part III, Research and people


Interv Doppio Jazz

News 0 comments extended techniques, interview, John Cage, prepared piano, Sonatas&Interludes

News from the web

Agnese

31 Gennaio 2024

Some discovers from the web, “old” and new.
Happy to start the new year being included in critic João Esteves da Silva’s favourite albums of 2023 with John Cage’s Sonatas&Interludes for prepared piano (Neuma Records, 2023).

And, again from the year just passed, here is an interview by critic Guido Michelone for Doppio Jazz. Guido attended my lecture-concert on extended piano techniques in July, for festival UdineJazz, and then asked me an interview. Of course I dare not claim any say in jazz, I’m just partecipating as a “curious of sounds”, as the title says!


Trieste Prima

News 0 comments CD release, John Cage, Neuma Records, prepared piano, Sonatas&Interludes, Trieste

Sonatas&Interludes in Trieste

Agnese

5 Dicembre 2023

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?“…


Ludic Inventions 6

News 0 comments Colin Riley, Kristijonas Dirse, Ludic Inventions, Sabina Covarrubias, Scotland, Sound Festival

Scotland, Ludic Inventions premiere at Sound Festival

Agnese

26 Ottobre 2023

Starting today at Aberdeen, Scotland a residency with Colin Riley, Sabina Covarrubias and Kristijonas Dirsé working on Ludic Inventions project. Live electronics, film and video live together with piano performance, to be premiered at Sound Festival on Friday 27th October, 20.30 Lemon Tree Theatre in Aberdeen. Very much looking forward!


IMG_3188 3

News 1 comment Library of Congress, Lucia Dlugoszewski, MaerzMusik Festival, USA, Washington D.C.

Washington D.C., in search of Lucia Dlugoszewski

Agnese

10 Ottobre 2023

Looking forward an intense week of research just starting today at Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (USA).
After many years I will finally be able to see and read some of Lucia Dlugoszewski‘s scores. This in-depht study will be very important for further develop my knowledge of the composer’s aesthetic and repertoire, and will also lead to the next performance for 2024 MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin.
Grateful for this fantastic opportunity!


Below some pics of the week’s highlights

  • Finally trying Dlugoszewski’s original timbre-piano objects!!
  • with Dr Libby Smigel, the Dance curator at Library of Congress, Music Division
  • Very first three boxes of Dlugoszewski’s papers… how excited!
  • Monumental, green, sunny Washington DC


News 3 comments Festival Aperto, Philip Corner, Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia, Festival Aperto for Philip Corner

Agnese

25 Settembre 2023

This year Philip Corner celebrates his first 90 years!
Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia dedicates an event to his 70-years composing career, a very special concert where I will have the honour and pleasure to play his piano works with him.

Very much looking forward to next October 4th, 20.30, at the beautiful Sala degli Specchi in Teatro Valli, Reggio Emilia (tickets, program and info here).


Below some pics by @Andrea Mazzoni
and a poetic review by writer and journalist Ivanna Rossi,
author of “Gli sConcerti di Philip Corner-The disConcerts of Philip Corner”
(Italian / English)

pics by @Andrea Mazzoni for Festival Aperto

Gazzetta di Reggio, Oct 4th 2023 (click to zoom)

Ivanna Rossi, Philip sconcerto di Philip Corner e Agnese Toniutti alla Sala degli Specchi, 4 ottobre 2023.
(scroll down for English translation by Philip Corner)

Gli specchi sono pieni di gente che si specchia su altra gente che si specchia su altra gente. Philip e Agnese sono quattro otto sedici trentadue musicisti…
Entrano e si profondono in un inchino davanti al monolito nero lucente che racchiude il Sacro Nulla carico di infinito silenzio rumore pensiero.
I musicisti hanno abiti bianchi e neri come tasti di questo mondo.
L’inchino riconosce il Potere, il pubblico riconosce l’inchino.
Il concerto può finire qui: cominciando.
Gli applausi si rispecchiano all’infinito.


Fare musica è ascoltare il suono goccia a goccia. Cogliere una nota con un dito, seguirne la coda nell’aria. Ogni nota manda una scia di borotalco luminoso. Un bouquet di note, poche.
Il dito resta teso nel riverbero sonoro, si abbassa in silenzio, dubbioso di aver preteso troppo, o poco e niente.


Agnese graziosamente rovista tra le note, cerca qualcosa che punga. Rovista con delicatezza, prova, scarta, tralascia. Le note cadono con code vibranti, con strascichi setosi e cangianti.
Ecco ha trovato: una nota interrogativa, un punto interrogativo sottile e appuntito, di cristallo. E’ una nota in why.
La prova: sì, va bene è una nota impavida, capace di fronteggiare il Tabernacolo d’ogni spavento.
Osa: why?
La Forza risponde dall’Alto con voce bassa continua pervasiva.
Pensi: adesso calpesta il why importuno, lo fa tacere.
No, non succede, il why allora saltella importuno inopportuno e cristallino, reca disturbo al motore immobile che lo sovrasta con un suono che non tramonta e non muta.
Why?
Risponde il suono pastoso di un respiro grave, di un pensiero assorto che fa risalire il sangue rombando fino alla testa.
Why? saltella la domanda cristallina.
Il sacro rombo illumina di tuoni e lampi la cupola del cielo, lo spazio dentro fuori e oltre, e lei, armata della sua indefettibile nota di cristallo, ancora: why?
Lui manda lo stesso identico rombo cavernoso, sempre uguale e diverso, definisce infinitamente paziente lo spazio eterno, oscuro, e lei lo punge: why?
Lui soffia lo stesso identico suono rovente e onnipotente, e lei: why? e ancora: why? Lui romba con spaventosa fermezza che non ammette repliche e non si cura di dare spiegazioni, è così e basta.
Lei insiste, insiste e pungola: why? why?
Da un momento all’altro il rombo schiaccerà il punto di domanda come un insetto. Lo spiaccicherà al suolo, lo zittirà per sempre.
Invece Whhhrom e Whhhrom e Whhhrom, why e why e why, una interrogazione, una non risposta, una danza all’Infinito.
Cade il Silenzio. Chi si è arreso per primo? Non lei, non Lui.


In scena c’è un piccolo piano toys fuori luogo, ridente, pronipote della maestà del meraviglioso Steinway.
Dove solleticarlo? Dove picchiettarlo? come fargli dire quel che sa?
Philip lo saggia con la sua bacchetta: sì, toccato di sopra il pianotoys dà un suono sordo; se lo batti sui tasti fa uno stridìo; se l’accarezzi sul fianco è capace solo di un banale fruscio.
Se la bacchetta capita in un angolo della tastiera, ecco che spingendo e frullando si produce un trillo gioioso: ah! si trova lì il bandolo della musica! Sta lì, invisibile, raggomitolata stretta.
Come in Spoon River, qui detto Crostolo, Philip fu sorpreso dai suoi novant’anni ma con la vita avrebbe ancora giocato…


Agnese si siede a suonare scalpitando, con scatti del corpo, delle gambe e delle dita: appare un centauro musicale, un Monstrum con cinque gambe e una coda. Non sa ancora cosa dire.
Quando si siede Philip, manda guai: “Guai a voi!”
L’avvertimento fende a zig zag un bosco di note in salita. Il suono cade rotto, gelato, tagliato improvvisamente in modo netto. Affettato.
Insiste, sbuccia il suono con un colpo preciso; lascia nel bosco una segatura sonora.
Saltella nell’aria, è già un altro giorno.
Creature selvatiche veloci passano veloci tra sgranature di suoni con inclinazioni diverse. Dall’alto cade l’eco luminosa di un suono non finito. Infinito.


Una danza a volo radente attraversa piano piano la sala, sotto voce, al battito di una formazione di oche, tranquille. La musica green è un omaggio alla dolce Phoebe dai capelli verdi, che sa sempre dove andare. Le oche sposate bianche se ne vanno lente a due a due dalla sala, obbediscono all’invito di andarsene senza voltarsi, che ormai basta, cos’altro c’è da dire e non dire?


Gli applausi si rispecchiano tutt’intorno affettuosamente, ancora da prima.

Ivanna Rossi


(E Philip aggiunge) Why? chiedi tu. La risposta si trova negli mille anni di commentari talmudichi…..; Why not?

Some backstage pics ↓

PHILIP UNCONCERTED BY PHILIP CORNER AND AGNESE TONIUTTI IN THE ROOM OF MIRRORS OF THE TEATRO COMUNALE OF REGGIO EMILIA, OCTOBER 4, 2023

The mirrors are filld with people who mirror other people who mirror the other people. Philip and Agnese are four eight sixteen thirtytwo musicians….
They enter and bow profoundly before the glowing black monolith which encloses the Sacred Nothingness filled to infinity with silence, noise, thought.
The musicians wear white and black , just like the keyboards of this world.
The reverence recognizes the Power; the public recognizes the Reverence.
The concert could finish here: beginning again.
The applauses’ reflexions are infinite.

To make music is to listen, drop by drop, to sound.
Pluck a note with one finger, follow it into the air.
Every note sends out a wake of luminous white talc, notes in a bouquet. But few.
The finger remains tense within the sonorous reverberations and flexes in silence, as if in doubt whether having pressed too much
or too little or not at all.

Agnese ls looking around among the notes, graciously, looking for somthing pungent. She rummages with delicacy, finds, rejects, puts aside. The notes fall with vibrant finishes, with the stiff traces of being dragged. Aha! She has found it: an interrogating note, a questionmark both subtle and sharp, and made of crystal. It is a note in ”Why”.
Proof: it surely goes well as an intrepid note, able to stand-up to the Tabernacle of any fright. Dares it : “Why?”
The Force replies from Above with Voice low , continuous , pervasive.
Thinks: now tread on this importunate “why”
to make it shut-up.
No it doesnot work; the “why” is now leaping around, imperative and inappropriate yet crystalline…… bringing disturbance to the motionless motor which it has overpowerd with a sound that doesnot diminish and doesnot change.
”Why?”
In reponse a mellow and deeply breathed tone of matching thought-fullness which makes the blood rise throbbing up to your head.
“Why“. Leaps-up the question, in crystal.
The sacred rumble lights up the sacred dome of heaven with thunderclap and lightningflash. And the spaces within, without, and otherwhere……and she herself armed with an unsubmitting crystalline note , once more: “why?” and she stings him with “why?”
Again he exhales his identical cavernous roar, and she : “why” and again “why”. He roars with a frightening immobility that admits no reply and disdeigns any explanation, that’s the way it is.
But she, insisting, insisting, pushes back at him: “why?” “why?”
In the time of one minute the rage will squash the question’s mark like a bug. It will hurl it back to earth. It will make it shut-up, for good.
Instead—-Whhhrom,Whhhrom,and Whhhrom “why” ”why” and “why” an interrogation a no-comment a dance to Infinity.
Silence falls. Who gave up first? not Her not Him.

On the scene there’s a tiny toypiano. Out of place, laughingly, the great-niece of the marvelous and majestic Steinway. Should we beg of it? Should we slap it? How to make it say what it knows?
Philip tries it out with his stick : Yeah. Touched on the top the pianotoy gives a dull thud; if you hit it on the keys it gives a screech; if caressed on its side it is only capable of a banal swish.
But if the littl stick finds a corner of the keyboard, there you can push it and spin it to produce a joyous trill: ah! this here is the main thread of music! Stay there, invisibly rattling in confined space.

Just like “Spoon River” here called the Crostolo,
Philip was caught by surprise by his ninety years but he will go on playing with life.

Agnese makes a stir as she sits down to play, agitating body,legs,fingers: she looks like a musical centaur.A five-limbed Monster, with tail. She does not know yet what to say.
When Philip sits down there’s trouble “Troubl to y’all”,
This zigzag warning cleaves a forest of notes rising.
The sound falls back; broken, frozen, suddenly neatly cut-down. Sliced.
Insistingly flays the sound with a blow of precision, leaving a sonic harvest in the forest.

A leap in the air, and it is already another day.

Wild creatures pass quickly among husked sounds, at diverse angles. ……..from On High there falls the luminous echo of a sound not finished. Infinite.

A dance in grazing flight bit by bit crosses the room, understated, to the pulsing formation of tranquil eyes. The music is green in homage to dear Phœbe, whose hair, also green, always knows where to go.
Like stately birds the couples slowly leave the room, together. They are following the suggestion to walk out straightforwardly. Now it is all over.
What else is there to say and not say?
Applause mirrors the interior surrounding with affection, just like at first.
——Ivanna Rossi
(And Philip adds) “Why?” you do ask……: the Answer is to be found in the hundreds of years of Talmudic Commentary : “Why Not?”
——translation by Philip Corner

This one was in 2018 in Turin, at Artissima Fair


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News 0 comments AI, artificial intelligence, György Kurtág, Henry Cowell, John Cage, luxembourg, Philip Corner, prepared piano, Sonatas&Interludes, Tan Dun

July rhymes with AI

Agnese

16 Luglio 2023

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.

pics@Angelo Salvin

pics@Francesca Tini Brunozzi


    NZfM_2-23_p-77 (trascinato) 2

    News 0 comments John Cage, Lucia Dlugoszewski, MaerzMusik Festival, Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik, new release, Philip Corner, prepared piano, Sonatas&Interludes, Tan Dun

    June reviews from Germany

    Agnese

    29 Giugno 2023

    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.

    • Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik 2/2023


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