Press
‘A Holocaust drama that’s emotionally ambitious and vocally eloquent… there can be no doubt of the integrity with which the tight-knit company deliver it’
Sir Nicholas Kenyon, The Telegraph
‘All focused intensity and chaotic curls, long pauses and fast-talking, the composer, conductor, cellist, artist and poet is a fizzing creative fuse’
Alexandra Coghlan, The Sunday Times
★★★★
‘Intense, harrowing drama… [which] invites universal grief. The skilled Echo Ensemble create sonorities with much spiky interlacing, resembling barbed wire, but coalescing intermittently into more humane consonances’
Barry Millington, London Evening Standard
‘A cry of rage… striking, unforgettable’
Hugh Canning, Operalogue
‘Intense and lyrical’
Sean Rafferty, BBC Radio 3 ‘In Tune’
★★★★
‘A high degree of textural inventiveness… marvellously scored… the vocal lines [are] athletic and colourful. Max himself conducted the performance with clarity and complete commitment. A remarkable achievement for a young composer… he is in the first stages of a notable career.’
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk (for A Child In Striped Pyjamas)
‘Max handles the quartet medium with confidence and individuality. Challenging and complex, the three movements [are] strikingly differentiated in tenor and technique, the musical language dissonant and searching… the Tippett Quartet persuasively conveyed the music’s searing harmonic intensity [and] precise timbral effects’
Claire Seymour, Seen & Heard International (for String Quartet No. 2)
★★★★
‘An engaging production, sensitively handling the provocative subject matter in a way that lends itself well to the operatic art form’
Chris Omaweng, LondonTheatre1
‘Seriousness of purpose is crystal-clear from the outset. [Max’s] control of colour and texture is as impressive as it is wide-ranging’
David Benedict, The Stage
‘His keen harmonic awareness is foregrounded in the finale, where the music seems to move slowly towards the light. Bitonality gives Max’s music grit and his use of gesture and texture are carefully calibrated.’
Colin Clarke, Classical Explorer (for String Quartet No. 2)
‘One of nature’s artists’
John Wilson
‘Noah Max’s Sojourn, the overall winner… reminded me of Webern in its compactness, mercurial in character, detailed in its scoring and with echoes of Barber in its fragile slow movement’
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk (for The Clements Prize 2021)
‘A dazzling demonstration of stylistic versatility and musical confidence’
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill (for Songs of Loneliness)
‘This first album of [Noah’s] compositions is unified by the sense of loss pervading almost everything recorded here… That awareness of innocence forgone is characteristic of the music of many English composers in the first half of the twentieth century – Elgar, Finzi, Howells and Vaughan Williams… but the works of these composers that embody the notion of the transience of beauty were generally products of their middle and old age; that a composer just entering his twenties should tap into the same vein of sadness and elegy a century later is downright startling’
Martin Anderson, Toccata Classics
‘A rising star of contemporary classical music’
Classical Source
‘[Max’s] music… has a strongly serious and imaginative cast to it with a very profound approach to the drama’
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill (for A Child In Striped Pyjamas)
‘Telling juxtapositions of calm, static episodes with passionate outbursts sought to encapsuate the dedicatee’s sense of being at peace with herself as well as her spirit and expressiveness… a worthy salute and an engaging new work for an exacting medium.’
Paul Conway, Musical Opinion
‘Delightful and engaging… evocatively dark… a substantial and complex piece which captures the unsettling, depressive nature of Edward Thomas' poem.’
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill (for Rain at the London Song Festival)