'…a rapturous threnody, a dramatic lament of macabre joy… The gradually and subtly shifting atmosphere of Miss Hemingway’s mellifluous poetry… offers a musical potential to which Matthews has responded with a work of striking power and sensibility. For one thing, his setting of the words is instinctive, felt from within; the moods and inflections are heightened with imaginative precision. Nor is the orchestral writing merely illustrative but rather senses the depth of sentiment in the vocal line and complements it with a score of penetrating insight and immediacy'
Daily Telegraph (Geoffrey Norris), 29 July 1988