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".... there occurred an astonishing musical fusion with the architectural structure of the Cathedral. The instinctive character of Patrick Harrex's Instruments and Voices required many musicians and individual singers to move around the Cathedral nave, constantly merging with the choir, based in the transept. As this steadily intensified, the Cathedral's spatial qualities - and its five-second reverberation time - were accentuated by sustained, gradually escalating and highly beautiful sound."
John Wheatley, Tempo
Sonata for female voice, flute & percussion - four poems of E E Cummings
"Patrick Harrex [has] the ability to take delight in sounds for their own sake."
William Littler, Toronto Daily Star
"a stylish, effective and deeply felt work."
Anthony Payne, Music and Musicians
"...consistently interesting."
Anthony Payne, The Times
"…a precise imagination, sensitive ear, accomplished technique, and economy in the textural treatment and working out of ideas. Harrex’s Colloquy, a near-static piece with inside piano sounds, is guided over its short single movement construction by complete integrity. Colloquy is indeed the nicely proportioned and eventful study in statics that it seemed to be when it won the BBC Composers’ Competition."
Gerald Larner, The Guardian
"A cleverly devised sequence of pianistic images gave it a compelling interest."
Neil Tierney, Daily Telegraph
"...a clearly imagined and effective composition which made its mark with strict economy of material."
Neil Barka, Liverpool Daily Post
"Economy of effects and an acute oral sense were its chief characteristics."
PMD, Liverpool Echo
"...well-argued."
Denis Arnold, The Listener
"This proved to be an atmospheric work, full of experiments in tone quality, with large percussion sections, chorus, soprano soloist (Noelle Barker), who sang the poem by René Char, and speaker (Eric Hawkins) who recited the poem by du Bartas…a sincere and deeply felt work."
FW, Yorkshire Evening Press
"Up to date in its choice of sonorities."
Brian Newbould, Times Educational Supplement
"This work [employs] a small, fragmented and sometimes whispering chorus and a most effective battery of percussion – an intelligent work, full of beauty and strength."
Josephine Rayner, Northern Echo
"[I] was much taken by Harrex’s piece prompted by the grid-like structure and subtle colouring of a Paul Klee picture."
Peter Grahame Woolf, Musical Pointers
"‘Rhythm of Black Lines’ was worth the admission fee on its own."
Lindsay Parkin, Latest 7 Magazine