IMMUTABLE DREAMS (2007)
“This was the resumption of the Miller’s signature Composer Portraits series, and Third Sound opened the concert with Agocs’s intimate “Immutable Dreams,” from 2007. Its first movement is a gradually intensifying assemblage of feathery, glassy wisps; the second, dominated by a piano solo that harkens to Romantic heft; the third, an earnest elegy with tangy harmonies and an effusive cello line.” - THE NEW YORK TIMES, Review of Kati Agócs Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre (Columbia University), 10 December 2021 (Zachary Woolfe)
”Colorful and highly chromatic” - OPERA NEWS, Review of Kati Agócs Portrait Concert at Miller Theatre (Columbia University), 11 January 2022 (Arlo McKinnon)
"The three movements of Kati Agócs's mesmerizing Immutable Dreams take a quintet through vast sonic terrain, from delicacy to angry density. The second movement is an homage to the late György Ligeti in which the piano plays a bold cadenza (Lisa Kaplan made it a commanding moment), while the finale, "Husks," evokes poetic images through floating gestures and thunderous sonorities." - THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, "Eighth Blackbird Soars in Modern Fare", March 18, 2009 (Donald Rosenberg)
"Immutable Dreams closed the concert with an indelible impression. Muscular and direct, it comprised three intense and strongly contrasted movements. “I feel the air of other planets…”, a discursive study in color and articulation beggars description: my notes say things like “shapes and rising calls”, “folding/unfolding shafts of light”, “fallings and cascades.” “Microconcerto (in Memoriam György Ligeti)”, only “micro” in its relative brevity, featured authoritative playing from Hub pianist Ashley Zhang. She realized the wide-ranging textures from cool soliloquy to crashing clusters with a visceral force that never turned harsh or ugly. This set up the essay in extremities of tone that defined the final movement, “Husks”, that culminated in a manic, occasionally shrieking race to the end. This experience lingered well after the concert ended."- THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER, "Hub New Music Debuts with 'Strength in Fragility'", January 24, 2016 (Brian Schuth)
"The final piece was Immutable Dreams, a restless memento mori for Pierrot ensemble with a haunting pulse. The instruments’ colors imperceptibly blended, fragments of ostinatos picking up on each other and spiraling outward."- THE BOSTON GLOBE, "Hub New Music Transports with all-Kati Agócs program", January 27, 2016 (Zoë Madonna)
““Microconcerto [in Memoriam György Ligeti]” from Kati Agócs’s Immutable Dreams is a highly concentrated piano concerto. Gauzy wisps of sound set the promised dream-state at the start, giving way to an all-in crescendo. Lyrical lines set akimbo in each “orchestra section” led to a rhapsodic solo piano cadenza which Orion Weiss attacked with passion and precision. The ensemble returned in a furious descending passage that resolved in a return to the offset lyrical lines, a tribute in sound to Agócs’s Hungarian heritage and the inspiration of Ligeti, who passed away during the composition of this work."- I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, "New York-based Third Sound Ensemble Debuts in Old Havana," December 15, 2015 (Arlene and Larry Dunn)
"The centerpiece of the program [was] the newly commissioned work by Kati Agócs [Immutable Dreams]. This piece, written in the light of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, displayed new constellations of timbre – some raw, some effervescent, some irridescent, some incandescent, and some luminous. Composer Agócs marshals this galaxy of sound into a brilliant new composition that, metaphorically, is visually striking, and aurally gorgeous. The ensemble’s playing was wonderful." - THE NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR , Review of The Da Capo Chamber Players’ “Second Viennese Roots and Shoots” Program, Merkin Hall, New York, January 2007
“Immutable Dreams: II. '“Microconcerto [in memoriam György Ligeti” has a tall task in directly emulating “one of the greats,” but composer Kati Agócs ultimately succeeds through a combination of captivating development and an earnest appreciation of her Hungarian heritage. Pianist Orion Weiss impresses in this microconcerto format, moving adeptly between keen soloistic lyricism and nuanced interplay with the ensemble.” - I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, Review of Third Sound: Heard in Havana, 2 April 2020 (Adam O’Dell)
“Seductive….Ligeti-inspired” - CHAMBER MUSIC, August 2020 (Sasha Margolis)
“We need to hear more of this composer.” - THE SARASOTA OBSERVER, 25 September 2016 (JuneLeBell)
“Elegant and elegiac...concludes with a haunting, musically enigmatic and gentle metacrusis” - THE WHOLE NOTE, July 2020 (Andrew Timar)