'The musical textures are simple, austere, the tragic story-unfolding like a tropet plainchant-broken by sinister fortissimo sound-clusters or sustained by soft murmurs, eddies of wind and snow, the sound of distant guns, the narrative detail pointed and contrasted by short vocal solos.  A work of powerful pity and anger, compassion, and quiet, sad beauty...'
Dominic Gill, Financial Times, 20 May 1969

'...the final comment on the children's death- 'Searching for a land where peace is' -was as compelling as anything in the War Requiem'.
Edward Greenfield, The Guardian, 20 May 1969