The music on this disc is so good, you’d be tempted to proclaim it one of the best new-music discs of the decade were the pieces not 10 or more years old.
The M.I.T-based Machover spent the late 80’s and early 90’s developing hybrid electronic instruments, though this disc shows his greatest talent is that of a composer. More than Pierre Boulez, Machover composes for electronically generated sound as if it were his first language.
Besides having a staggering imagination, Machover has the ear of a French impressionist, which gives the music a dazzling clarity even when the composer piles on the layers, which in Song of Penance (the hyperviola concerto) includes a poem recited performance-artist style. There’s a lot in these pieces- even tunes, particularly in the violin concerto Forever and Ever- that makes every listening a new adventure.
-David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer