"A perfect large-scale solo work...As Biddeth Thy Tongue feels like a dramatic soliloquy and possesses a wide expressive range thanks to its juxtaposition of great lyricism and extended techniques" - SEQUENZA 21
"Displays gradients of nuance rarely heard from Adolphe Sax's unwieldly invention." - INNOVA
Read More"Very physical...an exploration of the magician's box of Romantic fireworks where the pianist is captivated in maniacal and almost vertiginous runs between extremes of the keyboard" - DAGENS HYHETER (STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN)
“Programmatical metamusic…by a talented American with a Hungarian father…” - SVENSKA DAGBLADET, (STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN)
Read More"An innovative composer moved to write for the instrument after encountering a major player…a powerful, ruminative suite" - TIME OUT NEW YORK
"The other works on the program [Britten’s Suite for Harp, Carter’s Bariolage, and Hindemith’s Sonata for Harp] are about what the notes say, as opposed to the program’s world premiere, Every Lover is a Warrior, which is more about what the notes suggest. The music itself is like a series of haiku poems, written with an economy that allowed room for the listener to contemplate a multiplicity of meaning as well as the subtle interruptions in symmetry that told you that nothing was what it seemed. With Bridget Kibbey’s atmospheric range of articulation, the piece seemed as fine as any around it." - THE PHILADELPHIA ENQUIRER
"Sensitively scored...naturally attuned to the harp's evocative qualities" - THE WASHINGTON POST
”Otherworldly” - HARP COLUMN
"The virtuosic first movement of Every Lover Is a Warrior, based on the Appalachian ballad “John Riley,” had [the harpist] wheeling and tumbling through the octaves, drawing out striking, earthy tones. The solo instrument became a full bluegrass ensemble, both melody and rhythm." - THE BOSTON GLOBE
Read More"Understated sonic beauty….Kati Agócs's Hymn was a haunting work that resonated with me. It explored the contrast between the independent instrumental parts within the timbral unity of the ensemble. It was one piece that could have been longer. A rare quality in new music." -HURD AUDIO BLOGSPOT.COM
“A gorgeous Hymn that begins with the warmth of ‘Das Rheingold’…incorporates both the vocal and intervallic strengths of the saxophone”- THE BIG CITY (NEW YORK), FOUR BROTHERS BLOG
Read More“Versprechen (Promise) by Kati Agócs was a tour de force for the player. With incessant double stops and encompassing the full range of the cello (at one point, a leap of two octaves brought the cellist’s left hand within a couple of inches of the bow), Promise is gripping to watch and hear. - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"My favourite piece [on the disc] is Kati Agócs's Versprechen (Promise), which reimagines a Bach chorale using the sort of variations on note sequences favoured by Serialist composers. This is beautifully varied, highly textured writing…- MUSICAL TORONTO
“Kati Agócs’s Versprechen, for solo cello, was grimly dramatic… its source a Bach chorale, amplified into double-stop impasto, boiled away to a wisp of harmonics, finally coming into hard-won light.” – THE BOSTON GLOBE
Read More"Ms. Agócs’s work is a song cycle, its texts drawn from Latin, Hungarian, and English poetry and a letter from Joan of Arc in French. The fifth movement will be a setting of an Italian text, the piece’s point being the universality of the passions and the way they fire writers’ imaginations. Ms. Agócs’s imagination is fairly nimble: although her harmonic style can be fairly dense, her vocal writing has an almost 19th-century naturalness. She has, in other words, avoided the unnatural leaps and spiky rhythms frequently heard in vocal works by composers whose harmonic sense she has embraced.
Ms. Agócs’s approach to accompaniment is striking, too. Although she wrote the work for Antares, a quartet that consists of a pianist, a violinist, a clarinetist, and a cellist, she used the full group sparingly. In the opening movement, for example, the singer is accompanied by violin and cello; the fourth is scored for only voice and cello. Brenda Patterson, a mezzo-soprano with an appealingly warm sound (she is the cellist’s sister), gave the work a shapely reading that pointed up Ms. Agócs’s responsive to the texts.””
- THE NEW YORK TIMES, Review of Imagination of Their Hearts as premiered by Brenda Patterson and Antares, January 2004 (Allan Kozinn)
“The outstanding work [on the disc] is Kati Agócs's Imagination of Their Hearts, a cycle for voice and four instruments setting medieval and folk poems in five languages..." - BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Read More“The Yale fellows gave an assured performance of Kati Agócs's intriguing Caritas, in which well-behaved but oddly unsettling two-part counterpoint for flute and cello becomes discombobulated when the stark piano part enters.” - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Read More