Subtle Matters – Reviews and Radio broadcasting

New release 2021
Subtle Matters – Agnese Toniutti
by Neuma Records (2021)

On line purchase
Physical copy on Bandcamp
Digital download here (from April, 16th)

More info in News

REVIEWS (last update December 2021):

Top Five of Manifesto – Year 2021

Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classics – April 2021

“The CD of pianist Agnese Toniutti is a call for piano work beyond the boundaries of the keyboard. The performer’s focus is on a co-creative role in which the ambiguous is transformed into sound, what is only delineated by notation is revealed as the true essence of the music, and the scores are transformed-as the pianist says in her accompanying text-into a “lush garden full of unexpected and surprising sounds.”
Stefan Drees, Neue Zeitshrift für Muzik 3-2021, Schott

“I do not know if courage can be a useful, expendable category in music criticism, but one thing is certain, this record by Agnese Toniutti is a courageous work. There are many reasons for this, first and foremost, that of proposing repertoires not very usual in today’s music. But it is by trying to dig a little deeper that in the pianist’s approach to (and within) those repertoires we unearth the merits of Subtle Matters. …rigor and freedom. With these keys of access, Toniutti, in emphasizing sound, silence and detail, safeguards, far from academicism, her own poetics as well as those of the composers examined.”
Paolo Carradori – Le Salon Musical March 28th 2022

“[…] 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 Subtley 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

“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