Said Rome’s daily Il Messaggero “It is impossible to doubt Hoiby’s musical quality…the vitality of Chekhov could not be caught better than this.”
– TIME Magazine
“The Italian Lesson is a richly textured theatrical tour de force, requiring a brilliant actess. . . Although [Jean] Stapleton is on stage alone throughout, she is usually talking to someone and populates the scene with as many as seven or eight characters at a time. The carefully calculated interruptions and her comments on Dante (‘It’s divine!’) and on life in general gradually unfold a complex portrait—hilarious and pathetic at the same time.”
– The Washington Post
“Lee Hoiby’s Something New for the Zoo has animal passion, uproarious comedy, nine or 10 gorgeous, hummable melodies, magic potions, a diva, a Soviet general and a singing gorilla. But was it art? Any work that opens with a man-servant hamming “A pig in the parlor!” carries the burden of proof. Happily, this operatic monkey business provokes and stimulates the grey matter. If art is the communication of ideas through the prickling of the senses, then the answer is undeniably yes.. . . Its clearly stated libretto, and its meshed, exacting harmonies, plus the ‘extractable” sections from the charming score guarantees its future success.”
– The Washington Post
“One of the highlights of the New York area's opera season was the presentation of two of Lee Hoiby's operas —his 1992 one-act This Is the Rill Speaking and the New York premiere of the latest revision of his 1986 grand opera, The Tempest. Based on the play by Lanford Wilson, This Is the Rill Speaking is an opera without a traditional dramatic framework. It offers a series of vignettes of American small-town life as it was in the postwar era of the late 1940s and early '50s. Literary and dramatic touchstones would include Winesburg Ohio, Spoon River Anthology, Our Town and Under Milkwood. The music is delicate and nostalgic without being cloying, lyrical and emotional without overstatement. Hoiby's light, exquisite scoring adds tremendously to the music's impact. Since its 1986 premiere, The Tempest has undergone two revisions, each further streamlining the work to its essentials. This third version is perhaps the charm. The drama was taut without seeming truncated, and the musical flow seemed natural. . . . At the end of this marathon day, Hoiby and librettist Mark Shulgasser received a tremendous, shared standing ovation. It is hoped that their Romeo and Juliet (2004) will soon receive its overdue world premiere.”
– Opera News
“There is no question that Mr. Hoiby has theater in his blood.”
– Musical America
"He is is a marvelous composer, who writes piece after piece of insight, freshness, and delight. Those Leontyne Price recitals would include Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Barber ... and nothing would please more than the Hoiby.”
– The New York Sun
“To lines of special splendor [A Hymn to the Nativity, with a text by Richard Crashaw (1613-49)] Hoiby has written music of singularly apposite music. Alike in the ease with which he manipulates large orchestral resources and powerful choral sonorities, Hoiby marks himself as one of the most effective and impressive composers of large machines now writing.”
– The Washington Post
“The Sextet for Winds and Piano is a fabulous piece – melodically striking, harmonically compelling, formally cohesive yet unpredictable, idiomatic to the point that it even sounds like a delight to play. In the second movement a set of variations ever so gradually strays to far afield you can’t remember the theme – which returns exactly at just the moment you’ve forgotten it. The first movement drives on locomotive rhythms to a climactic chord, from which the winds descend on separate, simultaneous lines, like parachutists from an exploded plane.
– The Milwaukee Journal
“The sensation of the evening, however, was the Washington premiere of Lee Hoiby’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. . . Here is a major piece of American music and one that should soon become a staple in every violinist’s larder.”
– Musical America
“But the very best music came in [Three Women] the setting of three dramatic scenes by Hoiby, hauntingly sad and bitingly sarcastic.”
– The Washington Post
– TIME Magazine
“The Italian Lesson is a richly textured theatrical tour de force, requiring a brilliant actess. . . Although [Jean] Stapleton is on stage alone throughout, she is usually talking to someone and populates the scene with as many as seven or eight characters at a time. The carefully calculated interruptions and her comments on Dante (‘It’s divine!’) and on life in general gradually unfold a complex portrait—hilarious and pathetic at the same time.”
– The Washington Post
“Lee Hoiby’s Something New for the Zoo has animal passion, uproarious comedy, nine or 10 gorgeous, hummable melodies, magic potions, a diva, a Soviet general and a singing gorilla. But was it art? Any work that opens with a man-servant hamming “A pig in the parlor!” carries the burden of proof. Happily, this operatic monkey business provokes and stimulates the grey matter. If art is the communication of ideas through the prickling of the senses, then the answer is undeniably yes.. . . Its clearly stated libretto, and its meshed, exacting harmonies, plus the ‘extractable” sections from the charming score guarantees its future success.”
– The Washington Post
“One of the highlights of the New York area's opera season was the presentation of two of Lee Hoiby's operas —his 1992 one-act This Is the Rill Speaking and the New York premiere of the latest revision of his 1986 grand opera, The Tempest. Based on the play by Lanford Wilson, This Is the Rill Speaking is an opera without a traditional dramatic framework. It offers a series of vignettes of American small-town life as it was in the postwar era of the late 1940s and early '50s. Literary and dramatic touchstones would include Winesburg Ohio, Spoon River Anthology, Our Town and Under Milkwood. The music is delicate and nostalgic without being cloying, lyrical and emotional without overstatement. Hoiby's light, exquisite scoring adds tremendously to the music's impact. Since its 1986 premiere, The Tempest has undergone two revisions, each further streamlining the work to its essentials. This third version is perhaps the charm. The drama was taut without seeming truncated, and the musical flow seemed natural. . . . At the end of this marathon day, Hoiby and librettist Mark Shulgasser received a tremendous, shared standing ovation. It is hoped that their Romeo and Juliet (2004) will soon receive its overdue world premiere.”
– Opera News
“There is no question that Mr. Hoiby has theater in his blood.”
– Musical America
"He is is a marvelous composer, who writes piece after piece of insight, freshness, and delight. Those Leontyne Price recitals would include Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Barber ... and nothing would please more than the Hoiby.”
– The New York Sun
“To lines of special splendor [A Hymn to the Nativity, with a text by Richard Crashaw (1613-49)] Hoiby has written music of singularly apposite music. Alike in the ease with which he manipulates large orchestral resources and powerful choral sonorities, Hoiby marks himself as one of the most effective and impressive composers of large machines now writing.”
– The Washington Post
“The Sextet for Winds and Piano is a fabulous piece – melodically striking, harmonically compelling, formally cohesive yet unpredictable, idiomatic to the point that it even sounds like a delight to play. In the second movement a set of variations ever so gradually strays to far afield you can’t remember the theme – which returns exactly at just the moment you’ve forgotten it. The first movement drives on locomotive rhythms to a climactic chord, from which the winds descend on separate, simultaneous lines, like parachutists from an exploded plane.
– The Milwaukee Journal
“The sensation of the evening, however, was the Washington premiere of Lee Hoiby’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. . . Here is a major piece of American music and one that should soon become a staple in every violinist’s larder.”
– Musical America
“But the very best music came in [Three Women] the setting of three dramatic scenes by Hoiby, hauntingly sad and bitingly sarcastic.”
– The Washington Post
