University of York Music Press

Stearns praises the work for having much effective compositional strategy, with motivic repetition, naggingly obsessive long-held notes in the winds and just plain alchemy. His review follows a string of other highly favourable reviews of the release on Metier:

Hughes's music fizzes with invention... there is a Stravinskian sparkle to the writing.

...one of the more arresting and distinctive chamber operas to have emerged in the UK over recent years.

Brilliant, energetic music, whose most immediately noticeable quality is its clarity... the language is open and attractive, very harmonically inventive... all the ingredients for a production of high standing.

These and other reviews can be read in full here. The reviews come amid a very active year of composition for Hughes. His commission by Lake District Summer Music Festival, a trio for mezzo soprano, viola and piano, will be premiered on 5th August. Hughes will give a pre-concert talk on 'Against that time... against my love', a setting of two Shakespeare sonnets, before its performance by Kathryn Rudge, Duncan Glenday and Garfield Jackson. Hughes is currently working on settings of John Donne for the Aquarius Chamber Choir, who performed his A Buried Flame at the ISCM Festival. Aquarius will premiere the new work in Ghent on 14th September. Meanwhile, Alison Hughes will premiere Hughes's new clarinet concerto with the Sussex University Orchestra in early June.