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BY WORK (YEAR), STARTING WITH THE MOST RECENT
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“For once, singing of complete and utter clarity…a simmering new cantata, conceived with transparency as a first principle…entirely, word for word, lucid. - THE NEW YORK TIMES
“A seven-movement chamber cantata for mezzo-soprano and ensemble..…sophisticated and eclectic…the settings were neither overtly dramatic nor emotionally overdrawn… gripping instrumental solos…despite the tragic nature of the topic, Agócs was able to find ways of including moments of hope, redemption and even renewal of faith.” - OPERA NEWS
“Written for guest artist James Sommerville, who showed his own versatility…the 18-minute piece had plenty of variety and what she [the composer] called “dreamlike” textures…satisfying for all involved.” - THE SIOUX CITY JOURNAL
“A pensive meditation that fades away on a high pitch.” - SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL REVIEW
“A light, vibrant piece that [becomes] more interior…before finding a sense of release” - FANFARE MAGAZINE,
"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
”Soulful violin…throbbing percussion…piquant melodies and propulsive rhythms create a whirlwind, Gypsy-like dance, its exultant final flourish ending the concerto” - THE WHOLE NOTE
“Inspired by Lou Harrison’s midcentury concertos for violin and percussion, Kati Agócs surrounded violinist Jennifer Koh with pairs of mallet instruments — vibes, xylophones, marimbas and glockenspiel — and only made drums prominent in the finale….Agócs spun fluid and sometimes florid turns for Koh over ear-friendly harmonies and rhythms.” - THE ASPEN TIMES
“Modern, lyrical, and fugue-like in its interplay between the four players, Imprimatur challenges both the players and the audience with a hybrid of old and new… a roller coaster of sound, emotion and technique.” - SMILE POLITELY (CHAMPAIGN-URBANA’S CULTURE MAGAZINE)
“A philosophical/ religious discussion in the old style, paired with fresh modernity….as a throbbing prayer, the movement scaled heightened rhythmic suspense to its conclusion…” - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
“Some of the most attractive contemporary music I have recently heard” - CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS NEWS-GAZETTE
“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
“The world premiere of Hyacinth Curl was exceptionally transporting. The voices swooned in the sinuous but sparse lines of a Sufi devotional poem, overlapping and swelling into rapturous harmony before joining at last in unison. Occasional arresting peals from the singers’ handbells provided the only accompaniment.” - THE BOSTON GLOBE
“They opened with a stunner, Hyacinth Curl…Agócs put the lyrics together from Sufi devotional poetry by early 19th century Iranian noblewoman and mystic Bibi Hayati. As with claims that the Song of Solomon expresses religious devotion, you could have fooled me. [The] sinuous lines wrapped around each other, aptly expressing the lyrics’ barely concealed eroticism, with only an occasional handbell for punctuation. At the most charged moments, the women’s duet trailed off into silence, and after almost unbearable anticipation, the next stroke of the handbell was perfectly placed (that is, pitched) for maximum (aural) pleasure.” - OREGON ARTSWATCH
“Two voices, soprano and mezzo-soprano sing a text that Agócs derived from a Farsi ghazal (a sonnet-like poem), punctuated here and there by handbells played by the vocalists themselves. With only two voices the piece cannot engage in the dense layering that characterizes Agócs textures elsewhere. Instead we hear a constant intertwining of melodies recognizable as Agócs’s singing lines that are rich and occasionally angular. Subtle expression thus comes to a heated text that describes a “night of Power”, filled with “Beauty’s divan” and “ambrosial perfume” and “a chalice of the red wine of dawn-tide,” ending with the poet turning to worship the face of his beloved as the bells ring over and over. [The voices] blended beautifully, achieving a restrained but effective aesthetic seduction.”- THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"Here the musicians begin the work with toneless scraping that gradually coalesces into musical form. Troubled, searching conversations take shape among the four instruments. At times, they are jagged and confrontational, at others blossoming into the kind of unashamedly soaring, tonal melodies that would not be out of place in the Mozart or Mendelssohn quartets on the program. They conclude in euphonious concord. It was as if the very string-quartet structure that Gubaidulina had dismantled in her piece were being reconstituted here and given a sense of hope by Agócs.” THE WASHINGTON POST
“While there is a central theme and melodic idea that pushes the music forward, the accompanying styles and interpretations range from classical simplicity to dense and complex counterpoint to scratch tones and texture. Most of this melody is based upon a single note turn, and Agócs explores a dizzy array of emotions and compositional approaches to that singular idea.” - LUDWIG VAN TORONTO
"Kati Agócs’s music has been described as encouraging audience members to listen and be changed. In Tantric Variations, she bases her musical explorations on the word tantric, which means woven together. Using a one-bar motive as the basis, she weaves “a landscape that really goes everywhere you could imagine,” [cellist] Rachel Desoer said. Starting with a word referring to the practice of weaving, Agócs is able to both reference the traditional craft as well as evoke the universal idea of weaving strands together to create a unified whole." - THE WHOLENOTE
“The work juxtaposes a hymn-like theme with military drums to celebrate the returning war hero. The fanfare built to a jubilant climax…a reminder that while the returning hero may be celebrated, the fighting continues." – TORONTO CONCERT REVIEWS
“Agócs deploys piquant winds and an orchestral buildup in her moving Ständchen…a triumph for all involved.” - The WHOLE NOTE
“The harp primes the piece with a healthy dose of glitter, a kind of harmonic respiration between diatonic and synthetic scales, under which the strings provide a cushion; over it all, the horn sweeps and soars…” - NEW MUSIC BOX
"a skillful assortment of moods and colors…a moderate and decorous discourse" - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"resourceful...boasts angular by lyrical horn writing…the work engages the ear primarily by gathering and dispersing its energy in unexpected ways" - THE BOSTON GLOBE
"A highly structured celebration of alliteration and assonance…the soprano’s cantillations negotiated sections of misterioso chanting, thematic folksong, and dramatic exclamation-all artfully employed by Agócs" - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"Draws fine imagery…wondrous ease and flow...a hypnotic Bolero-like feel" - VANCOUVERCLASSICALMUSIC.COM
"Crystallography set poet Christian Bök‘s words into ecstatic vocal incantations...instruments flowed slowly, wrapping around the central vocal line, and the percussionist laid down a robust processional rhythm" - THE BOSTON GLOBE
"In nine minutes, [the cellist] streamed through the spectrum of human emotions. Her instrument’s sound trembled and roared under the otherworldly ring of the cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer that sounds like a piano echoing in a dream." - THE BOSTON GLOBE
“A tribute to the composer’s father inspired by the church bells he heard on his deathbed, the piece cites familiar hourly chimes only once, but to wrenching effect.” - CLEVELAND CLASSICAL
"Saint Elizabeth Bells conjured up a hallucinatory world of overtones, musical material derived from church bells....the peculiar richness of the cimbalom generated layers of harmonic haze within which the cello sang with lyric melancholy." - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"Northern Lights ignites with sharp dissonances, moving through a fluty warm melody in the second movement; a Newfoundland folk song comes third, followed by an emotionally complex setting of the “Huron Carol.” The fifth movement swells, then trails off in a rapidly glittering auroral arpeggio." - THE SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT
"Inspired by texts in Mattthew 13:14-16, ...like treasure hidden in a field urges the reader to keep spiritual values at the forefront of the mind. It’s structured as a five-linked movement sinfonietta, and offers the percussion section a field day. Chinese wind gongs and bells add that extra fillip of vividness to the canvas, evoking an aura of mystery and magic."– MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
"A different array of spiritual moods unfolds in … like treasure hidden in a field, which highlights Agócs’s keen ear for instrumental possibilities [and] bold sense of colour and architecture..."– GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE
"Filled with attractive ideas..." - THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Gorgeous...a local composer to watch" - THE HUB REVIEW
"...like treasure hidden in a field winds the orchestra through a maze of left turns and unexpected flashes of discovery." -WQXR NEW YORK Q2 ALBUM OF THE WEEK
"Hypnotic" - THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"Artfully shaped for the 35-member ensemble…based on a parable from the Gospel of Matthew about the value of selling everything to buy the best pearl, its 'jeweled sonorities' include chimes, tuba, and rattles..." - NOTES ON NOTES
"Vessel dates from 2011 and is written for two sopranos, alto and seven instrumentalists. Agócs combines English, Hebrew and Latin poems with interrelated subjects. They represent "three perspectives on a lover addressing her beloved (or child or loved one)". It is economically scored, and each performer is sharply profiled. It’s music with a timeless appeal."– MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
"Vessel acts as a meditative, lyrical aftermath to the dizzying colors and twists of the previous music. At least relatively speaking: set for two sopranos, alto and seven instrumentalists, the music simultaneously delivers three poems in three languages – English, Hebrew and Latin Texts – building over a bed of shifting tempi and orchestral colors until only a single, repeated piano note is left to drift into (as the English text, by E.E. Cummings, declares) "the deepest secret nobody knows." - WQXR NEW YORK, Q2 ALBUM OF THE WEEK
"Music that seems to come directly from nature...it reveals a wonderfully accessible lyricism that unfolds with both drama and complexity…colorful and individual music that takes risks with both the ideas and the use of the instruments" - THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS, Citation for the 2014 Arts in Letters Award in Music
"Also sublime is Vessel, which utilizes the medieval technique of multiple simultaneous texts to create something unmistakably modern." THE BOSTON GLOBE
"The evening opened with Shenanigan, a hoedown whirl of symphonic fun...a burst of party energy..." - THE TORONTO STAR
"Shenanigan begins with loud dissonance, but soon works in a simple tune based on the interval of a fourth that captures the essence of Atlantic Canada's reels. Driven along by the strings, it is a showpiece for solo flute and for percussion. Shenanigan whirls with the energy, struggle, and humour of the people of our region." - THE ST. JOHN'S TELEGRAM (ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND)
“As a warmup to all the musical drama promised for the rest of the evening, we heard a buoyant, tidy rendition of Shenanigan, a 4-minute orchestral hoedown Windsor native Kati Agócs wrote for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in 2010. It's a fun, accessible piece that shows off a symphony orchestra's full breadth, and deserves to be heard again." - MUSICAL TORONTO
"Gripping.... Perpetual Summer produced an array of sound montages to great effect... an ideal choice as an overture for the evening’s program."" - ONTARIO ARTS REVIEW
"A fascinating balance of strength and sadness" - PIONEER PRESS, TWIN CITIES
"Dense, bold, and wide-ranging...by turns discordantly suspenseful and richly majestic, complete with crashing cymbals and even a siren" - THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
"Juxtaposes a tape part consisting of spoken-word field recordings recounting shipwrecks (almost a counterpoint in itself, the voices of the various narrators interwoven in such a deft manner) with a score in which the sea is perfectly heard, with the solo cello representing nothing less than the voice of God…” - BLOGUE CLAVIER BIEN TEMPERE (MONTREAL, CANADA)
"Melting, ice-like, high-register piano notes open Kati Agócs's Supernatural Love, followed by beams of sunlight in the violin. A slowly evolving urgency characterizes the next movement. The third movement begins with racing chords on the piano, echoed by counterpoint in the violin. The duet takes on a masculine-feminine argument, along with simultaneous pizzicato violin with percussive single-note piano. The overall effect is serene and unworldly, exploring space with sound in away that seems to evoke the time before the universe hosted life." - FANFARE MAGAZINE
“The music speaks of loss and redemption. The moods vary throughout the movements. The first is spectral, wounded, desolate, and cold. The second is open, warm, rhapsodic and elegant. The third is emancipated, explosive, monolithic, nattering frantically like music from a charnel ground. Vivid and strong work." - SHOWTIME.CA
"Supernatural Love began with silent, haunting keys accompanied by sad strokes on the violin. The strokes of sorrow tied together as the piano chimed. Nancy Dahn used her violin to amplify an inner, womanly call, gradually slowing the music to a still point. Then, the composer created a music of “empty sound.” It was an extraordinary moment, showing emptiness, or loss, as a triumph over sorrow, clearing away an obstruction to life. Therein lies the Supernatural Love.” - THE VERNON MORNING SUN
"Encases the text’s lament in music of fluidity and austere beauty" - THE BOSTON GLOBE
“The work requires two sopranos to sing in straight tone, evoking the history of medieval liturgy. The sopranos, Lisa Bielawa and the composer herself, captured this mysterious historiocity with their gorgeously clear voices” - SUITE 101 CLASSICAL PERFORMANCES
"Brief, straight and altogether beautiful" - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION
"Phrases that leap and float, and sound both ancient and contemporary" - GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE
“A delightful piece…the two voices blend superbly, their vocal lines weaving and hovering over the sumptuous orchestral musings” - MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
"A setting of psalm 137, the lament of a people in a foreign land who can no longer bring themselves to sing the hymns of their homeland....the piece is haunting and reflective…" - THE DAILY GAZETTE, SCHENECTADY, NY
"A spiraling work for 12 female voices and chamber orchestra. A glimpse of any given moment exposes waves of Krzysztof Penderecki-like vocal clusters, pulsing chant, flurries of Baroque trumpet and sumptuous Late-Romantic orchestration....It's an overwhelming plate of emotion and color...The music's subject matter is, after all, the Passion of Christ. Agócs filters and rearranges the story through lenses of Hungarian poet Szilárd Borbély, Kabbalistic prayer and ancient Latin, Hungarian and Georgian religious texts. But it's more than a sum of disparate influences. The Debrecen Passion is high-craft, high-drama music that, in certain ways, goes down like an old-school Hollywood score cut to fit the fast, ADD-inspired edits of modern television: think chase-scene drums against big-band orchestral statements, intensely unsettling a cappella drops and religious fervor at its most intense, all within a few bars... or at the same time." - WQXR NEW YORK, Q2 ALBUM OF THE WEEK
"Agócs pays tribute to her Hungarian heritage in the disc’s titular score, The Debrecen Passion. As she melds the 12 female voices of the remarkable Lorelei Ensemble with glowing orchestral sonorities, Agócs also suspends vocal lines on Latin and Jewish texts. The 23‑minute work is an iridescent wonder." GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE
"A mystical confluence of the sacred and secular illuminated by the superb Lorelei Ensemble and BMOP." - THE BOSTON GLOBE
"Agócs’s adventurous score employs 12 female voices, a chamber orchestra, whose percussion section includes a cimbalom, and vocal texts drawn from diverse sources. Ambitiously constructed, this visceral work is expertly orchestrated, Agócs achieving a myriad array of instrumental colour and texture. The vocal writing, calling for solos, duos, trios and chorus, is expertly crafted. All told, this work delivers a moving, spiritual experience, both powerful and uplifting."– MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
“The Debrecen Passion an ambitious new score by the Boston-based composer Kati Agócs. Debrecen was the home city of the gifted writer Szilárd Borbély, who committed suicide last year and whose poems form the spine of Agocs’s “Passion,” surrounded by other texts, of medieval Latin, Hungarian, and Georgian origin, as well as a mystical Hebrew prayer. It is a striking work that places a complex sonic palette at the service of a visceral intensity of expression, one that can be glimpsed from the descriptive markings in the score, where Agócs writes at different points: “In large waves,” “Sheets of sound,” and “Arriving – Radiant.” Her billowing vocal writing is likewise highly expressive in an instrumental sense yet also subtle; at one point the chorus divides to sing three different texts simultaneously. As a result of this broader approach, at Saturday’s initial hearing, the precise meanings of the chosen texts felt less clearly distilled, and in some ways less important to Agócs, than the heterodox richness of the sound world she has fashioned for them. Under Rose’s direction, the excellent Lorelei singers and the unflappable BMOP players gave this work a dazzling first performance." – THE BOSTON GLOBE
“Effective writing for women’s voices–solo, and in trios and choruses…Who can resist the sound of women’s voices climbing high in close harmony? Agócs certainly couldn’t, as time after time she twisted rising vocal lines into radiant cluster chords, a sound capable of expressing either intense lament or exultation… the music was animated by a kind of Song-of-Solomon like merging of spiritual and earthly ecstasy…Agócs’s score remained unpredictable to the end, swinging between thoughtful violin solos to broad statements for the full orchestra to unison chants in the chorus. The composer seemed to pick up her texts and look at them from all angles….” – BOSTON CLASSICAL REVIEW
“Last came the other premiere, The Debrecen Passion by Kati Agócs, a Canadian of half-Hungarian-extraction who now teaches at New England Conservatory and has garnered a good deal of attention. Her work is not a passion in the sense of the oratorio-sized works of Bach and other Baroque composers, or in the revived style of Penderecki’s, but is a setting of seven lyric-sized texts…in these settings Agócs examines passions of several sorts, the fragility of love, the greatness of God, and, oh yes, the death of Jesus. While far from inaccessible, her writing is intricate and layered. Much of the choral treatment draws on earlier Ligeti techniques of “micro-polyphony,” densely packed, close dissonant harmony that, in the vocal writing, sounded ravishingly beautiful. The orchestral writing was fluent and often did its job well of adding emotional depth to the texts and the vocal lines; in two instances there were orchestral interludes of great power and beauty. – THE BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
"About 23 minutes long, The Debrecen Passion blends the voices into instruments, and the instrumentalists into the voices. Lorelei Ensemble sings sections of starkly beautiful solo sections, duos and trios, but also vocalizes wordless melismas and dissonant pitches that challenge the mood. The orchestra performs many solos — flute, trumpet, snare drums and violin among them — but also chants some of the text alongside the singers......In the simplest way, everyone is a musician, serving the cause. Integrity in this case means that the accessibility of the lyrics is secondary to the sound-world. The feeling is religious, deeply spiritual; but it’s the sound that tells you this, not the words." - WBUR'S THE ARTURY
"Agócs typically assimilates several different cultural influences and multiple languages into her powerful and attention-getting style. A perfect example is the amazing Debrecen Passion. Thematically centered on the work of contemporary Hungarian poet Szilárd Borbély and influenced by the particular qualities of the Hungarian language and culture, The Debrecen Passion takes Christian and humanist texts and utilizes them in a unique read of the Passion story but without the usual voices in roles. In many ways I found this approach both refreshingly different and quite moving. This is a strong, dramatic and, occasionally unsettling work." -AUDIOPHILE AUDITION