Opera in Two Acts "The score is often beautiful, even flamboyant...a very fine show, which certainly deserves to experience a much wider international distribution."
- ForumOpera.com (Performance at Opéra de Massy, Paris)
"Reise's score...serve[s] quite nicely to underline and reinforce the dramatic events on stage. Especially effective is Reise's use of traditional tonality -- including quotes from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" and the Russian imperial hymn -- for the music of Nicholas and Alexandra, as well as atonal dissonance to conjure up what he calls, in a program note, the brutal and chaotic new world of the 20th century'."
- Moscow Times (Performance at Helikon Opera, Moscow)
"The new opera is a spellbinding, challenging and profoundly beautiful creation."
– The Washington Times
" audaciously colorful opera"
- Philadelphia City Paper
“In the epilogue in particular, dissonance rules, wild string glissandi prevail and a masterful rhythmic polyphony carries the music to a stunning climax…opera lovers can anticipate a challenging but entirely rewarding experience.”
- The Opera Critic
"Typical of the Penn-based composer, his choice of notes was elegant and, more important with percussion, his ear for timbre was incredibly precise. This short, winning piece doesn't take easy ways out.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer
"... fluidity and mastery that creates an optimum showcase for his attractive thematic ideas."
- Philadelphia Inquirer
"One hesitates to burden any recent composition with the designation “masterpiece”, but Memory Refrains is surely music that deserves to be taken up by other major quartets so as to become a post-Romantic repertoire staple."
- Philadelphia Music Makers
"Satori …with its starlit rotations and seemingly suspended atmosphere, makes a striking impression. Six Pictures from The Devil in the Flesh..[is] a fine group of virtuoso pieces…[with] a riotously sizzling finale."
- American Record Guide
"... nature in its most songful state."
- Philadelphia Inquirer
“… the kind of transcendence that lets you know you’re in the presence of greatness.”
- Journal of the Scriabin Society of America
"It had epic quality. The full organ, the rolling timps and the squabbling brass at the start had weight. A clumsy giant's angry dissonances were peeled back to reveal strings pulling anguished chords."
- Evening Standard (London)
"..magnetism was immediate in the heart-grabbing opening violin solo of the sextet… the piece unfolds with a reasoning that's hard to explain but great to feel ... melodic lines of almost Wagnerian breadth… inflected with the kind of emotional eventfulness that doesn't require a slow buildup.."
- The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Jay Reise’s skillful transcription was such that it lacked nothing of the original sounds. That took quite a bit of doing by Reise, and indeed a good deal more from pianist Gary Graffman. Yet it all worked out beautifully.”
– The San Francisco Classical Voice
