"Weill's sprawling score incorporated an astonishing variety of orchestral styles, from Jewish folk-songs and rabbinical chants to the polyphony of Bach, the orchestral grandeur of Wagner and the atonality and chromaticism of his own late Romantic period . . . Mr. Harsh's reduction of Weill's score kept the action of this work moving inexorably forward . . . Powerful, and a work worthy of revival and further performance."

"In fourteen musical numbers, which occasionally flow directly into another, the composer manages to create gripping images of happiness, struggle, doubt, hope. . . [Weill's] musical idiom is lively, understandable, immediately appealing. . . that's what one wants from good contemporary music--and that's why the audience in Dessau rewarded the performers with long, heartfelt applause."