“Elegant, stately, lyrical, intensely romantic—all such words apply to this captivating thirteen-minute setting.” - TEXTURA

“A substantial, through-composed effort…employs elements of ground bass but also thrives on poignantly chromatic melodic writing. Throughout, Agócs’s ear for dramatic contrasts comes out strongly.” - ARTSFUSE

“The highlight of this recording of new music for the piano trio [The Claremont Trio’s CD Queen of Hearts] opens with a simple chaconne consisting of three-note phrases, the pattern of which is fleshed out and blooms attractively. Eventually it accelerates into runs and rivulets of sound before subsiding into gentler three-note phrases before ending grandly on a final chord.” - SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL REVIEW

"Agócs’s Queen of Hearts beguilingly wove a chaconne (that constantly changed) against a melodic line. The rhapsodic and very emotional one-movement work was played with intensity by the Claremont Trio. The piece offered a lot of dynamic contrast and ended on high notes triumphantly." - AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE

"Draws one in and gratifies with its clear communication….The Claremonts matched the intensity and lyricism in the score; plainly, they are making this music their own..." - BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER

"If the 20th-century classical world was about carving up the last of the dissonance and starting radical new schools of composition, the 21st-century classical world seems to be all about synthesis and syncretism, taking up the messy mantle of competing traditions and making something new and personal and beautiful out of it. Kati Agócs fits right in there: her polystylism has been making waves all over the world for the last decade or so…. It would be easy enough to pigeonhole Agócs as yet another post-modern more-is-more composer, but what I hear is an artist with ravenous taste and the skills to match...Agócs blends the history of piano trio writing with her own distinctive voice." - OREGON ARTSWATCH

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