Agnese Toniutti © Laura Battel
Agnese Toniutti
Agnese Toniutti is an Italian pianist specialised in contemporary and 20th century music. She dedicates herself to the exploration and research on peculiar piano repertoire, often revolving around the concept of sound and its role in musical composition, investigating the complementarity of composition and improvisation in musical creativity, both as an author and as interpreter. Her solo recitals are often thematic or monographic, carefully interweaving live performance with extracts from writings and audio documents selected after musical, bibliographical and archival study. Among them, the monographical “portrays” of Giacinto Scelsi, John Cage, Giancarlo Cardini, and the recitals dedicated to Fluxus movement (featuring premieres by Philip Corner and Dick Higgins) and to women’s creativity from the 1950s to nowadays (including Lucia Dlugoszewski’s “timbre” piano research project). Her collaborations often include other artistic disciplines (acting, photography, dance, visual arts and multimedia).
Among her recent projects is the release of “Subtle Matters” (Neuma Records, 2021) featuring compositions by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Tan Dun and Philip Corner. In 2020 she also released the piano solo disc “Lento trascolorare – piano music” (Da Vinci Classics, 2020) with music by Giancarlo Cardini. In 2022, she composed the sound part of the collaborative multimedia installation “The moon is full, but it is not the moon” (Luxembourg, 2022). This was followed by the world premiere of “Ludic Inventions", a collaborative project with composers C. Riley, Kristijonas Dirsė (film) and Sabina Covarrubias (live video), which includes piano, live electronics and live video, in 2023.
As a soloist and chamber music pianist she performed at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Palazzo Cavagnis in Venice, Strehler Theater in Milan, Pavillon Le Corbusier – Fondation Suisse in Paris, Palazzo Congressi in Lugano, State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, University of North Texas, among others. She also performed for the Komponisten-Colloquium series (Oldenburg), the All Frontiers – Indagini Sulle Musiche d’Arte Contemporanee festival (Gorizia), festival AngelicA – Centro di Ricerca Musicale (Bologna), Bari Piano Festival, Ossessioni Festival (Faenza), Gamo International Festival (Firenze), the chamber music series “Italien Musiziert!” (Stuttgart) and MaerzMusik (Berlin).
As of January 2024