Selected Extracts From Reviews
Volte-Face
... tones of menace are slow to infuse the whip-crack, sawdust flavour of the music's wit ... when (the menace) breaks out in the music the naked sense of shock startles us into the realisation that we have been in the grip of a remarkable and confident imagination, sure of its purpose, succinct in its expression. Has Mr Rhys written any other mini-operas? I very much want to hear them.
Max Loppert, The Financial Times
Capriccio
... the result of an adult of Haydnesque intelligence and wit playing with children's building blocks, indubitably the product of an original and lively imagination.
Nicholas Kenyon, The Financial Times
... Ravel in L'Heure espagne mood might not have disdained some of Mr Rhys' glistening, tick-tocking scoring; the sounds were charming without being precious; the material unfailingly apt for such treatment.
Max Loppert, The Financial Times
Aquileia
... (the entry of the strings) evokes a wonderfully spacious ambience... Marlow Rhys's orchestration is marked by a prevailing clarity and purpose even in the final enormous outburst, the inevitable outcome of a glittering iridescent build up.
Kenneth Walton, The Daily Telegraph
... an attractive and witty piece presented with such aplomb, such colour, and such sharp articulation via sonorous chordal complexes to a powerful climax.
Conrad Wilson, The Scotsman
Disconsolate Chimera
... The material (of this piece) is tightly drawn - the harmonic progress of the work seems entirely inevitable, the climax when it arrives in an impassioned cello cantilena beautifully discharged into chiming piano refrains.
Andrew Clements, Financial Times
From An Article on Rhys' Music
... his work is uncommonly intelligent and inventive; serious yet engaging. (Aquileia)..is crammed with felicities yet more than just a mosaic of these: it has the authority to hold its own against major orchestral statements by Rhys's coevals, Davies's Second Fantasia, Birtwistle's Triumph of Time.
Paul Driver, The Financial Times
Two Portraits
... altogether a cleverly crafted piece of character delineation.
Merion Bowen, The Guardian