...The brilliance of the piece is that besides the individual novelty of each unrelated section, the "random" episodes fit remarkably well with each other, and achieve a balance of characters... The piece reached a very intense climax as the percussion battery took over Verizon Hall. Conductor Alan Gilbert assumed a fencing stance, pointing his shoulder to the orchestra, knees slightly bent, slashing his rapier at the drummers in the back. Bongos, bass drums, timpani and an array of other bangables joined forces in an African-sounding rhythm frenzy... The piece's title and its background story may be appropriate for its variety and allusions to other composers, but the dramatic arch is too good to be blind or random.

(Broad Street Review,  Feb 12, 2008 -- Beeri Moalem)

Lately I've grown increasingly impatient with gentle, inoffensive contemporary music, especially recent American music- music that seems so eager to apologize for the sins of the late avant-garde. So it was wonderful to hear this lushly orchestrated adventurous blast of a piece, 14 minutes celebrating the best of the 20th Century with hardly a nod to traditional tonality.

(Broad Street Review,  Feb 12, 2008 -- Dan Coren)

Konsertens stora behållning var Anders Hillborgs "Exquisite corpse". De som regelbundet besöker Berwaldhallen kommer under vårens Hillborgsatsning att bli varse att Hillborg aldrig någonsin blir tråkig. Runt nästa
hörn ligger alltid en överraskning på lur, men de närmast psykedeliska klangvärldarna hålls alltid samman av en genomtänkt struktur.

(Dagens Nyheter,  Jan 16, 2007 -- Thomas Anderberg)

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Hillborg has a beautiful, liquid way of moving the piece from one section to the next, mindful of a larger emotional arc. And he is extremely skilled at evoking not just stabs and jabs, but also the feeling of being smothered or caressed.

(Philadelphia Inquirer,  Feb 9, 2008 -- Peter Dobrin)

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall

Offered with apparent pride on Sunday afternoon was Anders Hillborg's "Exquisite Corpse." The title is a literary reference to the Dada movement's irrational, luck-of-the-draw word connections. "Exquisite Corpse," on the other hand, acted quite reasonably: holding our attention with entertaining and well-managed music of what one might call the floating-cloud school of composition. Held notes build slowly into chords and then drift on to new situations: first to big, shuddering climaxes, later to shrill aviary masses of wind sound, later still to pounding drums reminiscent of a half-time marching band. At the end, sweetly tonal chords emerge.

(New York Times,  October 25, 2005 -- Bernard Holland)

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Hillborg's "Exquisite Corpse," composed in 2002, is a work with multiple, often clashing layers and well-hidden references to composers as disparate as Stravinsky and Sibelius. But Gilbert's clean, crisp direction exposed the lyrical, expressive heart beneath the sometimes disjunct surface...

It's easy to take the modern orchestra's astoundingly varied sonic palette for granted. We expect glittering, brassy climaxes in Beethoven symphonies and moments of transparent quiet in Debussy. But a new work like "Exquisite Corpse'' ............. can shine a fresh light on the orchestra, reminding us exactly how magical its reach really is.

...Never indulging in merely noisy or clever sound effects, it had numerous moments of transcendent beauty, from warmly sonorous trumpet calls to a hushed undercurrent of delicately shivering strings.

(Chicago Sun-Times,  Feb 26, 2005 -- Wynn Delacoma)

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in Albert Hall

...The end result could be described as the sonic equivalent of one of Salvador Dali's paintings, in which familiar objects melt and buckle in glutinous, viscous landscapes. It formed a remarkable vehicle for the virtuosic Stockholm orchestra with its coolly sexual sound, and the audience loved it.

(The Guardian,  August 7, 2004 -- Tim Ashley)

...The point of Hillborg's conceptually intriguing work is that it tries to reproduce this creative process, quite difficult, one can imagine, when he is the only artist involved. He pretends that other composers are putting a work together, using his own material and mixing in references to Ligeti, Stravinsky and Sibelius's Seventh Symphony.

It is therefore an exercise that asks if there exists for Hillborg an "under-language", a musical language not grammar-based but founded in thought and intent.

This confidently executed, solid piece, richly varied variations in colour, texture and pace, certainly felt like an organic unity.

(Evening Standard ,  August 6, 2004 --  Stephen Pettitt)

"Exquisite Corpse ... is a typical product of Anders Hillborg, in that it is utterly untypical."

The piece is richly scored, with tripled woodwinds and a strange variety of instruments (sadly, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra neglected to bring the cimbasso, a tuba being substituted). However, in contrast to many a new piece to which I have listened, these forces sounded balanced and complete. The sound of the orchestra is delightfully sultry at times, and this worked well with the decadence of the piece itself.

The pace of the work varies quite intiguingly, various sections are pulled out from the overall sound and raised above the rest in turn, now and again something familiar strikes one where the composer quotes from the styles of others (notably Ligeti, Stravinsky and Sibelius). At the end of the work I felt unusually satisfied, and I look forward to listening to the repeat of this performance on the radio".

(Proms Reviews,  August 5, 2004 --  Gary Evans)

I was so astounded by a concerto for orchestra by Anders   Hillborg that I am ready to do violence to its predecessor on the San Francisco Symphony program...

By some miracle, he has managed to make a series of drastically contrasting sections fit together like stones in Machu Picchu, the whole a monument of sound structural principle.  Part of this genius must come from his mastery of electronic music, where transitions are crucial and can make or break a piece.  And what orchestration! Hillborg has evidently benefited from the Spectral Music movement in Europe, which entails analysis of instrumental sounds by frequency and deliberately highlighting selected component frequencies to create new sounds...And recognize Hillborg as a master for our age.

(San Francisco Classical Voice,  Nov 6, 2003 --  Jeff Dunn)