COMMERCIAL CD REVIEWS
Updated 6 August 2026
WISDOM's Sources / 'O'o
BBC music
American composer Roger Reynolds is an artist of rare imagination and conviction. This powerful new disc of his music is almost overwhelming in its intensity, but rewards concentrated listening.
WISDOM’S Sources was written in 2024 and is scored for violin and viola duo. Conceived by Reynolds during the early months of the pandemic, the work explores the notion of ‘wisdom’ in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Cast in three parts, the work draws on Ancient Greek philosophy and Tamil religious thinking, with its third and final part taking flight from W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 essay collection The Souls of Black Folk. Reynolds’s complex score demands a dazzling range of sonic effects from the two musicians, including some deeply affecting use of voice. Irvine Arditti (violin) and Ralf Ehlers (viola) give two powerhouse performances which embrace the intricacy and precision of the work while also giving free voice to its explosive intensity.
There follows ‘O’o, a substantial one-movement work scored for flute and string quartet. Written in 2018, the piece takes as its starting point the plight of the last surviving pair of ‘ō‘ō birds – a now-extinct species of Hawaiian honeyeater. Eschewing any hint of sentimentality, the work moves from pointillistic scatterings of tones towards a more sustained and lyrical texture. The work’s depth and power is matched at every turn by outstanding performances from flautist Robert Aitken and the Bruno/ Lee/Mcleod/Rutt Quartet.
This is a disc conceived and performed with integrity and mastery. Highly recommended.
complete 26 March 2026, Kate Wakeling
GRAMOPHONE
The veteran American composer Roger Reynolds – 91 at the time of this writing – could scarcely have found a more elegant band to bring forth the two highly articulate works on this record: the duo of violinist Irvine Arditti and viola player Ralf Ehlers, compeers from the Arditti Quartet; and the quintet of flute and strings, featuring Reynolds’s longtime friend and collaborator Robert Aitkin.
WISDOM’s Sources, for violin and viola, which leads the track-list, is a three movement showcase of impeccable ensemble playing and vocal gestures by Arditti and Ehlers. The first movement, dedicated to Aeschylus, opens with a severe chorale comprised of heavy double stops, then lightens as whistling Sciarrino-esque harmonic and pizzicato passages make their entry, sometimes with a bit of singing by the duo themselves. Conceived as a video in collaboration with film-maker Kyle Johnson, the work is described as containing a number of performative aspects that are reserved for the camera, though there is also the occasional groan or yell from the duo that is hard not to smirk at, reminiscent of wrestlers on the cusp of pummelling each other (though perhaps some will hear instead the ‘full-body arousal’ by which these sounds are vividly characterised in the booklet note).
excerpt
April 2026, Jennifer Gerston
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CLASSICAL MUSIC DAILY
A new album from US composer Roger Reynolds which continues his collaboration with producer Mathias Reumert and features all first recordings. Each work discovers in sound – and in the case of WISDOM's Sources, in imagery as well – a way of thinking through the conditions of being alive in the twenty-first century. Together, they testify to the depth of Reynolds' friendships and the range of his imagination, with both works growing out of collaborations with performers long entwined with Reynolds' creative life.
complete March 2025
CLASSICAL MUSIC DAILY
Spotlight. Quite Compelling. GEOFF PEARCE meets the music of American composer Roger Reynolds
'... a rare talent.'
14 June 2026
THE PROMISES of DARKNESS
Presto Music
The Promises of Darkness marks the next chapter in the visionary collaboration between Roger Reynolds and Mathias Reumert.
This landmark album showcases world premiere recordings of four major works, tracing four decades of Reynolds’s trailblazing contributions to contemporary music. The title work, The Promises of Darkness (1975), pays homage to Reynolds’s mentor Roberto Gerhardt. Scored for an ensemble of 11 players, this piece masterfully conjures vivid colours and an almost cinematic sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. This release follows the critically acclaimed Wind Concertos, the first in the Reynolds/Reumert series, which earned Album of the Year (The Five Best) from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 2024.
With The Promises of Darkness, Ekkozone solidifies its reputation as a home for groundbreaking contemporary music, curated with Reumert’s exacting vision.
complete July 2025 Presto Music About
Fanfare
In my review of an all-Reynolds disc on the Neuma label, I
described my initial acquaintance with Reynolds’ music (his
music has a smaller reach in the UK; it was via a Proms
performance), and welcomed with open arms performances of
four of Reynolds’ scores (Fanfare 47:2). Imagine my joy
when I saw not only more of Reynolds’ music (now on the
Ekkozone label) but, as performers, the Mathias Reumert
Group. Reumert has impressed, too, in the past, perhaps most
notably on a disc of Ferneyhough, Jodlowski, Xenakis,
Donatoni, and Henze on Metier (Fanfare 40:4), not to
mention a simply phenomenal disc of music by Philippe
Manoury and Ravel, also on Ekkozone (Fanfare 46:6).
Manoury shares with Reynolds a need for more exposure.
There is a previous piece by Reynolds titled Watershed I that
was performed by Reumert himself on a Métier release,
reviewed in Fanfare 43:2.
Read more
excerpt September/October2025 Colin Clarke
Classical Music Daily
[The lead work on this CD is an] homage to Reynolds' mentor Roberto Gerhardt. ... this piece conjures vivid colors and a sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. Although Mistral for strings, brass and amplified harpsichord, was inspired by an encounter with the forceful Mediterranean wind... [Whil as] A relentless exploration of the interplay between two harmonic strata, Dionysus involves 'a blend of metaphor and pragmatics'... [In] Positings, where the Mathias Reumert Group is joined by computer musician and Reynolds collaborator Paul Hembree, blending live performance with electronic textures.
complete March 2025
Fanfare
This particular Reynolds cornucopia, all 82 minutes of it, launches with The Promises of Darkness, a 23-minute piece in four sections that uses both specific and graphic notation. ...
Despite the complex processes, or perhaps because of them, the music is deeply emotional, and nowhere more so than in the thrid large section, quiet yet pervaded with keening sounds, of nots more melting then glissandoing. The demands on performers must be huge. ....
excerpt March / April 2026 Colin Clarke
Fanfare
With 31 listings in the Fanfare Archive (a most valuable research tool for the serious collector), Roger Reynolds (b. 1934) has received fairly consistent critical support in these pages, not surprising for a composer who is a 1989 Pulitzer Prize laureate as well as the recipient of numerous other accolades and awards. This disc of four works for chamber ensembles of rather substantial size will richly reward his fans.
Opening the program is The Promises of Darkness, in which four instrumental groups meld three simultaneous sonic streams of unique and distinctive character. One of these is disjunct and shot through with sforzando accentuation, ornamentation, and sharp dynamic contrasts, while another contrasts this with uniform durations and dynamics. A third evidences evolution in its gestures, which include glissandos, chromatic progressions, and the like. Occasionally throughout the work, there are points of arrival by all three groups, serving to delineate 10 short “movements,” although these are grouped into four “sections” in the 23-minute work. The conflation of all these elements forms a fascinating and aurally stimulating mélange of sounds that characterize this composer’s musical voice. Its score employs both traditional and graphic notation, and its opening is reproduced in the booklet, with everything clearly specified and delineated.
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David DeBoor Canfield
Amazon Editorial Review
The Promises of Darkness marks the next chapter in the visionary collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds and conductor/producer Mathias Reumert. Released by Ekkozone, this landmark album showcases world premiere recordings of four major works, tracing four decades of Reynolds's trailblazing contributions to contemporary music. The title work, The Promises of Darkness (1975), pays homage to Reynolds's mentor Roberto Gerhardt. Scored for an ensemble of 11 players, this piece masterfully conjures vivid colors and an almost cinematic sense of dread, revealing Reynolds as a composer unafraid to probe the edges of musical and emotional experience. From 1985 comes Mistral, for strings, brass, and amplified harpsichord. Although inspired by an encounter with the forceful Mediterranean wind, the piece is "neither illustrative nor programmatic," according to the composer. Mistral has previously been released in a lo-fi live recording, but the highly refined score – with its crystalline articulate harpsichord – is finally brought to life in this new version, which Reynolds himself has hailed as "a triumph." A relentless exploration of the interplay between two harmonic strata, Dionysus (1990) involves "a blend of metaphor and pragmatics" and is captured in a breathtakingly precise performance, with expressive solos from flutist Helene Navasse and trumpeter Laszlo Molnar. Closing the album is the electroacoustic Positings (2013), where the Mathias Reumert Group is joined by computer musician and Reynolds collaborator Paul Hembree. Seamlessly blending live performance with electronic textures, Positings embodies Reynolds's innovative spirit, pushing the boundaries of sound and structure. This release follows the critically acclaimed Wind Concertos, the first in the Reynolds/Reumert series, which earned Album of the Year (The Five Best) from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 2024. With The Promises of Darkness, Ekkozone solidifies its reputation as a home for groundbreaking contemporary music, curated with Reumert's exacting vision.
complete
Journey
The Double Reed
The Oboe has been described with variety of adjectives: haunting, nasal, velvety, and piercing to name a few. But when Pulitzer Prize winning composer Roger Reynolds talks about the oboe, "rum-flavored" is how he chooses to describe the sound. In his latest work, JOURNEY for oboe and large ensemble, the soloist Jacqueline Leclair explores the many colors and timebers the instrument offers to great success.
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Vol. 48, No. 1 (2025) Keve Wilson
International Double Reed Society IDRS
excerpt
Double Reed News
A new concerto for the oboe is always to be welcomed and, when it is a concerto of this quality, it is even more exciting! From the outset I was gripped, both by the music and by the quality of the performance. It was wonderful to listen to music which is both emotionally powerful and at the same time intellectually stimulating and satisfying. The material of the concerto is beautifully conceived and expertly structured. The orchestration is colourful, imaginative and has tremendous clarity. I was particularly impressed by the careful interplay between soloist and chamber orchestra, the soloist at times dominating the music while at other times flowing in and out of the texture almost as a member of the ensemble.
Read more
Christopher Redgate
excerpt
2024 Danish Radio P2 Album of the Year
The composer describes JOURNEY as a work that “does not give up its secrets easily”. Written for the pre-eminent modern oboist Jacqueline Leclair, who is featured as soloist on the recording, JOURNEY is a work of immense subtlety, in which the solo part weaves in and out of the polyphonic orchestral texture. The unusual harmonies of the ensemble writing are based on Leclair’s trademarks oboe multiphonics, which are captured with stunning richness in this state-of-the-art recording.
Read more
excerpt About
Review Excerpt Archive
Review of Kairos Apspeiation two CD set
"And also that the Kairos CD set “It is exploratory and virtuoso in its subtle dash, and it seems tailored to what corresponds nicely to the musical personality of Arditti himself, not showy for its own sake, very much imbued with the urge toward expressive elegance and brilliance of means, and in a harmonically expended High Modernist idiom for which of course Reynolds is a natural master. This is not music as contrived in some arch manner by the composer. It is as natural as speaking and as eloquent as brilliant wordflow.
After a few listens one falls into the spell of it all, the beautiful rightness of Arditti's playing, the perfect thus-ness of accompaniment and the spare profundity of the solo space.
This program is in every way a winner – with excellence of sound and sound staging, performance brilliance and compositional inspiration, together sequencing and smarts.
2- page editorial profile
"Excavating layers of myth – as Harrison Birtwistle and Helmut Lachenmann have both discovered in their own music-theater works – can be a useful ground plan for journeying through a piece of music ... george WASHINGTON deals in muddled layers of truth – of purely orchestral sounds against orchestral music transformed electronically, purely musical information mulched into real-time narration, and visual imagery beamed around the hall.... symbolizing how different aspects of Washington's personality and thinking work in unison.
... [Reynolds]
is motivated to cultivate long relationships with musicians – whether Steven Schick and, in recent string pieces, Irvine Arditti, composer and instrumentalist stepping into each other's worlds, feeling towards new ways of hearing though mutual listening and discussion."
Philip Clark, Gramophone, March 2016
FLiGHT
Music America
3 November 2016
Bruce Hodges
Most of the time, the unexpected juxtapositions of words, music, and visuals had a dreamlike affect, the mind was pleasantly awash in free association. One 20ish man said later, “It was more unexpected than I expected.” … the most engrossing moments occurred when all elements were percolating together. The best solution was to simply sit back with Reynolds at the controls, letting his airborne fantasy race through the mind.
[Whispers Out of Time involves]… an impressiveness of sound masses in constant motion which provokes outbursts of noteworthy force and power. … The nearest point of reference here is Xenakis, for the universal and mythic grandeur that one hears … in Reynolds’s music. … This is a front-ranking composer ..."
REYNOLDS & TECHNOLOGY
"Reynolds keeps changing his game, but his influence on music began to build in the 1960s, with a theatrical, musical rendition of Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” in which he moved sound around the stage by passing voices among eight singers. That, perhaps, is the Reynolds signature: pushing the boundaries of sound creation, later with the aid of computer processing, as he incorporated theater, text and visual images. “He’s breaking the barriers of technology and its relationship to music,” explains Harvard University composition professor Chaya Czernowin. Of course, Reynolds puts it differently: It’s using technology to realize the sounds that his mind can imagine – increasingly, these days, with the help of a few friends."
Steven Butler, OZY.COM, an International Online News Magazine, 2015
Performance
New York Classical Music Review
24 Feb 2014
George Grella
Miller Theater Portrait Concert
Mesmerizing and beguiling, Roger Reynolds’s music receives its due at Miller Theatre
Hearing the sounds is what makes things happen,” said Roger Reynolds during the on-stage discussion at his Composer Portrait concert Saturday night at Miller Theatre.
That simple phrase gets to the core of Reynold’s music. His career has been shaped by epiphanies and happy accidents: hearing a Horowitz record as a boy, taking a composition for non-majors class with Ross Lee Finney at University of Michigan, hearing the digital music being explored at Stanford University. Reynolds kept discovering just what he needed to find his way forward.
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Roger Reynolds, Process and Passion
Gapplegate
"Roger Reynolds has been going about his art for many decades. By now he is one of the premiere living composers in the United States today. Through recordings he is especially known for chamber orchestra and vocal works. Not much of his more intimate chamber music has become widely available.
The gap has been nicely bridged in part lately by the three-work program on the CD Passion and Process (Pogus 21032-2). The three works are "Kokora" (1992) for violin, "Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward. . . " (1989) for cello, and "Process and Passion" (2002) for violin and cello. Performing the demanding parts are Mark Menzies, violin, and Hugh Livingston, cello."
Continue Reading
April 30, 2013 by Grego Applegate Edwards
SANCTUARY
"An epic work of intoxicating beauty for four percussionists and electronics, 'Sanctuary' is meant for a great space. ... subtle, exquisitely textured, often suprisingly muted and compulsively listenable music. ... over the span of an hour and a quarter, you might sense the brain of a lyric poet coming to sizzling life."
"Culture Watch: Roger Reynolds' 'Sacnctuary'", Los Angeles Times, 28 September 2011, Mark Swed
"SANCTUARY" IN DC, National Gallery of Art
"… in the vaulting atrium – where Alexander Calder's 76-foot-long mobile famously turns – a strange and almost otherworldly ritual will start to unfold. Grouped around a bizarre-looking piece of metal called the Oracle, a quartet of percussionists will begin to play, passing fragments of sound back and forth, posing 'questions' to the Oracle and responding to its answers. And slowly, gradually, as the percussive clatter begins to cohere, intricate melodies and complex harmonies will emerge – as if song, or maybe even language itself, were first being born."
Stephen Brookes, The Washington Post, 18 November 2007
ABOUT the 2-CD set by the ARDITTI QUARTET on Montaigne:
"Reynolds projects a particular sort of American artistic idealism: His music has connections to both the 'transcendentalist' tone and imagery of such composers as Cowell, Varèse, and Ruggles, and also has roots in more recent experimentalist movements: While a student at Michigan, he was a part of the legendary ONCE group ...
The composer always anchors his music at any given moment on a note or collection of pitches, which becomes a sort of axis the ear relates to (one hears this very clearly in the 11th piece of Kokoro; there a recurrent tremolo chord in the violin performs this function). In fact, the notes always make sense to me, precisely because of the "gravity" that these harmonic fields exert.
Formally, the works tend to be a collection of precious moments, often miniature in size, strung together jewel-like to make larger structures (this emphasis on the moment seems an aspect of Japanese aesthetic influence upon Reynolds). The composer has certain processes embedded in the music to give it continuity, and, in turn, groups of these short movements coalesce to form larger formal entities.
The solo-cello piece [Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward...] is particularly elegant, and uses the least 'extended effects' of any piece in the collection, so that every pitch counts as a pitch (and de Saram plays with an effortlessness that is perfectly suited to it). Ariadne's Thread is remarkable for its blend of the instruments with the computer generated sound. In addition, it features some of the most strikingly aggressive and ugly electroacoustic sounds I've ever heard (except for Xenakis!), but that is not negative, as they are terrifying in their impact, and as such memorable. ... I find the opening of Ariadne's Thread truly beautiful in its gradual unfolding line, and was sad to see its composure disrupted – at the same time, the dramatic richness of the narrative that follows seems to justify the rupture.
...I have found this music increasingly rewarding over repeated listenings. It has personality, expressive power, and a deeply questing nature."
Robert Carl, Fanfare, January/February 2001
KYLE GANN
"One can say that, just as Elliott Carter came from neoclassicism and became Europeanized, Reynolds became Europeanized from the direction of experimentalism, perhaps especially after his residencies at Ircam (Pierre Boulez's electronic music institute in Paris) in 1981-1982. ... It is a telling detail of Reynolds's career that he became, in 1989, the first composer since Ives from an experimentalist background to win the normally conservative Pulitzer Prize for music."
Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century, Schirmer Books, 1998
Los Angeles Times
25 March 1998
Mark Swed
"Arditti Quartet Deftly Turns Carter’s Thoughts Into Deeds”
“[Reynolds] uses strong gestures full of rich content and then goes inside them. It sounds like late Beethoven. It doesn’t go into visionary Beethovenian outer space but instead goes deeply into the sound world of a phrase and doesn’t let go. It is strong, gripping music."
The Sunday Times
10 August 1997
Paul Driver
"A Festival of Generosity”
"The Red Act Arias is a kind of anthropological brooding; a secular oratorio in which the theme is the dark forces at the foundation of civilized society … a deep, demanding work.
The Strad [London]
February 1997
Paul Cutts
“… An incessant, insistent darkness throbs through the heart of [Ariadne's Thread] capturing the neurotic and sublimated sexuality of the Ariadne myth in a strikingly original way. The result was a truly astonishing musical voyage.
The Emperor of Ice Cream
"While the works of many composers have focused on and explored the potential of a single technique, Roger Reynolds has created a body of work that encompasses nearly every major musical development in the 20th century.
As well as incorporating new techniques into his music, Reynolds is responsible for initiating many of the new developments. The theater piece The Emperor of Ice Cream, for instance, became the model for a new genre, and its influence is evident in the numerous imitations it spawned. ...
Reynolds is one of the pioneering composers of his generation, with provocative, expressive work. One can be sure that he will continue to produce interesting works, explore the bounds of human perception, and inspire younger generations of composers."
Ciro G. Scotto, Contemporary Composers, St. James Press, Chicago/London, 1992
...Roger Reynolds's setting of Wallace Stevens's The Emperor of Icecream, for eight voices, two percussionists, and double bass. Reynolds's graphically facinating score includes new kinds of vocal notation...and ingeniously maps out the physical movements across the concert stage of both singer and players. ...The Emperor of Icecream was full of impact. No "game" here...Reynolds emphasizes the hectic, riotous imagery in a piece that rises in intensity to a final (and literal) scream...
The Music Quarterly, "Current Chronicle", H. Wiley Hitchcock, July 1965
"... an extraordinary work by a former member of the ONCE Group, Rodger Reynolds, titled The Emperor of Icecream (1962)
This is an elaborately complex, quasi-surrealic audio-visual setting of the poem of that title by Wallace Stevens. ... The score itself - in itself a facination work of graphic art - indicates not only the sounds but also the movements and configuration of the singers and instrumentalists on stage... an emotionally and artistically valid and effective setting of a powerful and moving poem about death."
America's Music, Gilber Chase
Aspiration demands your attention and rewards with high complexity-in-continuity. It is a Modern gem for all who want to know where we are today.”
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
"Reynolds's [Ariadne's Thread] proved the most aurally exciting of the evening. An incessant, insistent darkness throbs through the heart of the work capturing the neurotic and sublimated sexuality of the Ariadne myth in a strikingly original way. The result was a truly astonishing musical voyage."
Paul Cutts, The Strad [London], February 1997
"Roger Reynolds is a composer who has remained strongly committed to the experimental spirit ... Symphony[Myths] gave no specific message to the listener, rather one had to use one's imagination. The music, which accumulates an increasing level of activity throughout, makes a listener feel as though he is experiencing the same complicated, multidimensional object from three perspectives in turn. The process is filled with the joy of discovery."
Akimichi Takeda, 6 November 1990, The Mainichi Shinbun
The New Yorker
9 July 1984
Andrew Porter
"Muiscal Events: Sound-Houses"
"New sounds can in themselves be eloquent, and the discovery of New instruments and of new sounds is important. But what matters more is the use that composers make of them...Reynolds is at once an expolorer and a visionary composer, whose works lead listeners to follow him into new regions of emotion and imagination."
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