'Maw has contributed a work of stature and substance to the repertory … Despite the virtuosic rhetoric of its technical demands – ghostlike harmonics, contrapuntal lines punctuated with left-hand pizzicati, and darkly shaded tremolos … a vehicle for an expressive intimacy, richly inventive and many voiced. It plausibly echoed the strain of spiritual questing that can be heard in Bach’s pioneering examples of the genre.'
The Washington Post (Thomas May), 4 March 1998'… an epic achievement … Maw’s discriminating relationship with traditional material is one of the most intriguing and most rewarding aspects of his creativity.'
The Times (Gerald Larner), 26 July 1999