Concert

Contemplations into the Radical Others

Dlugoszewski / Dun / Corner / Toniutti / Wang / Miller / Hespos / Kashian / Ensemble Musikfabrik

Lucia Dlugoszewski

Lucia Dlugoszewski performing “Geography of Noon” Courtesy of the Erick Hawkins Dance Foundation, Inc.

“I wanted to help the ear hear sound for its own sake.” Spotlight on Lucia Dlugoszewski: Agnese Toniutti and the Ensemble Musikfabrik reveal worlds of unexpected richness, textures, and resonances.

The Story about Lucia Dlugoszewski presents some fascinating glimpses into the life and work of the composer, performer, inventor of instruments, author and choreographer Lucia Dlugoszewski.
It will soon be available again.

Programme booklet 24.03.2023

In this two-year project “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, MaerzMusik and its collaborators will engage in extensive research into the work of Lucia Dlugoszewski. For this year’s festival edition, MaerzMusik has invited Ensemble Musikfabrik and the pianist and researcher Agnese Toniutti to present the composer’s scored works, including “Tender Theatre Flight Nageire”, “Space is a Diamond” and the “Exacerbated Subtlety Concert” series for piano. The two-part concert programme on 24.3.2023 is the seed that will launch the project and grow into a more focussed retrospective of Lucia Dlugoszewski’s works in 2024.

 

Programme

 

Subtle Matters

Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925-2000)
Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does a Woman Love a Man?)
for timbre piano (1997/2000)

Tan Dun (*1957)
C-​A-G-E, fingering for piano (1994)

Philip Corner (*1933)
Toy Piano (2012)
ch roma tika (2022) World Premiere
Man in Field (the sound as “Hero”) (2020)
Small pieces of a Fluxus Reality (2018)
A really lovely piece made for & by Agnese (2019)

 

Space is a Diamond

Jing Wang (*1992)
Yan
for shell horn solo (2016)

Mazyar Kashian (*1991)
Rondo de facto
for one pebble (2020)

Lucia Dlugoszewski
Space is a Diamond
for solo trumpet (1970)

Hans-​Joachim Hespos (1938-2022)
li-lá
for two alphorns (1996)

Tamara Miller (*1992)
na rua – uma bola e um sol pobre – revira no lixo
for cornet and percussion (2022)

Hans-​Joachim Hespos
Ruhil
for cornet, tenor horn and trombone (1985)

Lucia Dlugoszewski
Tender Theatre Flight Nageire
for brass quintet and percussion (1971, rev. 1978)

Cast

I. Subtle Matters

Agnese Toniutti with works by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Tan Dun and Philip Corner

This section of the evening is a unique exploration of the piano’s sonic possibilities beyond its body. Pianist Agnese Toniutti employs various techniques to uncover the instrument’s unexpected richness, textures and resonances. Her journey delves into the imaginative worlds of the three composers and how their individual searches each shaped the concept of the piano. Lucia Dlugoszewski’s “Exacerbated Subtlety Concert (Why Does A Woman Love a Man?)” (1997, rev. 2000) is a piece for “timbre piano,” a transformation of the instrument’s sonic identity that earned critical recognition with a new name. Dlugoszewski, a pioneering figure of the last century, created an original sound universe that is not widely recognised. Since no score of the work was available, Toniutti has conducted extensive research to be able to present it. Tan Dun’s “C-​A-G-E fingering for piano” (1994) bridges traditional East and contemporary West. The piano becomes a “relative” of Chinese traditional instruments and pays homage to John Cage, one of the most revolutionary Western composers of the 20th century. Tan Dun uses the Flemish compositional device of associating a pitch to every letter of Cage’s name. And Philip Corner, an American composer based in Italy, explores the piano as an open field where all means of sound production are welcome, and the keyboard is one among many. The priority is the realisation of the compositional idea of each piece, moving within the boundaries of a few written indications that turn into poetry, as the author says. The concert “Subtle Matters” features three distinct sonorous and musical worlds that reshape the piano in different ways. Yet they all share one common trait: to inspire wonder while listening and reach “a hearing whose moment in time is always daybreak,” as Lucia Dlugoszewski once wrote.

II. Space is a Diamond

Ensemble Musikfabrik with works by Lucia Dlugoszewski, Hans-​Joachim Haspos, Tamara Miller, Jing Wang and Mazyar Kashian

In the second part of the concert programme, Ensemble Musikfabrik presents Dlugoszewski’s challenging composition for solo trumpet “Space is a Diamond” and one of her better-​known ensemble works “Tender Theatre Flight Nageire”. This is followed by works by Hans Joachim Hespos (1938–2022), an autodidactic composer whose music defied categorisation throughout his career. The evening also includes works by Jing Wang, whose fascination with the variety of sound led her explore the sonic qualities of the shell horn. The works of Tamara Miller and Mazyar Kashian enter a conversation with Dlugoszewski’s pieces that reveals their highly experimental and inventive character. “The stuff is very fresh and new and with the very reduced material forms a nice counterpoint to ‘Tender Theatre Flight Nageire’,” says Dirk Rothburst, the percussionist of Ensemble Musikfabrik. “Space is a Diamond” includes various “calligraphies” of speed, that often only stripe the outermost registers, leaving a toneless void in between, or spiralling parabolas of melodic variations in calligraphic flights. “‘Tender Theatre Flight Nageire’ is actually a series of musical rituals involved somehow with the poetic roots of erotic experience. Its nakedness of spirit requires a special courage all its own, the courage of vulnerability in terms of letting out feeling, something perilously real with a fierce fragile ambience of elegance, sensitivity, and that radiance of the highest energy release in the mind we call passion. Rituals of sound involving both immediacy and Amor combine to create the musical structure.” (Lucia Dlugoszewski)