Nebelsteinmusik
"Then came a deeply sensitive account of HK Gruber's second violin concerto, Nebelsteinmusik, a work in which light music and constructivism miraculously coincide."
The Sunday Times, February 2007
"H.K. Gruber's 1988 Nebelsteinmusik [is] a muscular, fast-striding composition, ecstatically sonorous in places, that pays homage to Gruber's mentor, the 20th-century German composer Gottfried von Einem, through a quirky postmodern prism of jazz influences."
The Times, February 2007
Hidden Agenda
"The UK premiere of the strikingly scored Hidden Agenda suggests an inspirational turn towards Berg."
The Guardian, August 2006
"The new, 10-minute Hidden Agenda took his preferred modes of polyphonic density and relentless, Bergian, jazz-inflected tutti to a scarcely credible extreme. This was music as tantalising as it was substantial. "
The Sunday Times, August 2006
3 MOB Pieces
"…it's always good to hear that dazzling trumpeter Håken Hardenberger cascading through the James-Last-goes-neoclassical romps of HK Gruber's Three MOB Pieces ."
The Times, August 2004
"Say what you like about Gruber, but it would take a heart of stone to actively dislike this engaging pastiche of bossa nova, Beatles and baroque, especially in Hardenberger's hands."
The Guardian, August 2004
Manhattan Broadcasts
"These are two scores of infinite fascination, superbly presented. Definitely one of my discs of the year."
The Times, October 2003
"Gruber's music is a serious response to the Viennese traditions he was born into, but his ever-present grin outweighs any solemnity."
Evening Standard, August 2003
Dancing in the Dark
"The Helsinki Philharmonic began with a scorching account of HK Gruber's recent Dancing in the Dark, that comically ferocious elegy for gemütlich Viennese music."
The Financial Times, March 2004
"Dancing in the Dark … is monstrously touching with its incessant 1920s and 1930s overtones."
Financial Times, August 2003
"First came a multilayered dirge, then a slow-motion foxtrot, plus a bizarre, even menacing, homage to Fred Astaire's tap-dancing feet. I couldn't detect Arthur Schwartz's title song in the stew, but Mahler, yes, and Berg, and other glories of the Viennese tradition whisked to the edge of madness. …The BBC Phil, at any rate, gave this trembling and troubled new score a rousing send-off."
The Times, August 2003
"The British premiere of the Viennese HK Gruber's profound, neo-Mahlerian, neo-Ivesian diptych, Dancing in the Dark …"
The Sunday Times, August 2003
Zeitfluren
"HK Gruber paid us a welcome return visit last week. At the season's final Green Umbrella he unfurled his Zeitfluren, a new piece co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. … Its major strength is its marvellous scoring and the clarity as inner voices seem suspended in space. Wit and wisdom form an impeccable counterpoint."
LA Weekly, May 2003
"HK Gruber conducted the world premiere of his Zeitfluren, a totally absorbing work contrasting an overtly Romantic nocturne with one of his typically raucous orgies of dance music as finale."
BBC Music Magazine, February 2002
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
"HK Gruber, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is second to none in this music, playing up to its amalgamation of jazz and neo-classicism for all it is worth."
The Guardian, September 2000
"…He made the music and the Ensemble Modern quiver with instrumental detail. …This was a carefully crafted texture of sound, pointedly articulated so that such evocative sonorities as the plink-plonk of the banjo and the whine of the saxophone peeked through and asserted their piquancy."
The Daily Telegraph, October 1999
Frankenstein!!
"What raises Frankenstein!! to "classical" status is its combination of brilliant word-setting with uncannily apt, thoroughly "composed" music, fraught with suggestion and macabre humour - like Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with more jokes."
Financial Times, August 2006
"Frankenstein!! is an event, a piece of theatre as much as of music. It needs to be experienced live. Frankenstein!! was first performed nearly thirty years ago, but is still fresh and vivid. "
musicweb-international.com, August 2006
"Gruber's delivery was no less a tour de force. Employing a "speech-song" vocal style and armed with an array of toy instruments, Gruber's merriment was contagious."
Winnipeg Saturday Free Press, February 2000
"Frankenstein!! is a virtually uncategorizable work, a zanily bedazzling collge of different influences and styles, ranging all the way from bar-room cabaret to parodies of operatic declamation."
Classic CD, January 1998
"both grisly and bizarre, and altogether an extraordinary conception. …The score is often hilarious, but Gruber's own delivery, a tour de force of vocal gymnastics, reinforces the underlying seriousness."
The Times, December 1997
"hugely entertaining and devilishly clever. … How to describe it to anyone who has never heard it? The music touches all those areas of culture to which the texts (in which Frankenstein and Dracula rub shoulders with James Bond and Goldfinger) refer. So pop music and hints of folk-song, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler are all thrown into the mix to fuse with Stravinskian neo-classicism and the long tradition of Viennese cabaret. The humour is black but quizzically genial, Gruber's own performance is gleefully exuberant, but there's something to the musical style of Frankenstein!! which taps deep roots and protects it from being no more than an entertaining jeu d'esprit."
Gramophone, November 1997
Aerial
"The highlight of the BBC Proms Brass Day was Håkan Hardenberger's scintillating account of a modern classic among trumpet concertos, HK Gruber's Aerial."
The Telegraph, July 2007
"Irresistible fun, and as usual, Gruber's idiosyncratic harmonies lend it a strange poignancy."
The Financial Times, August 1999
"Gruber weaves a musical tapestry bristling with wit and invention, punctuated with telling silences and animated by syncopations that suggest a world out of kilter… A dazzling display of compositional technique."
The Times, August 1999