Reviews

• Duets is [an] essay in tone, utilizing a number of duo-combinations in its eventful progress through a number of climactic points surrounded by dynamic recessions. It is busy and attractive and seems to be seeking, through an unexpressed musical narrative, a point of rest it never attains.
  Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times
• The evening opened with [a] contemporary piece — Joan Tower's Duets, scored for big orchestra, yet often reduced to solo pairs (as the title suggests). Duets grew in scope with dramatic sweep, fell back into lyrical repose (with a thoughtful segment scored for cellos), and then exploded again in the full power of Tower.
  Marc Steingold, Rocky Mountain News
• Duets...offers the listener a dissonant platform, upon which various instrument pairs strut and fret through their moments in the spotlight.

  Tower's prodigious array of textures, her thematic inventiveness, her pristine orchestration and command of materials combined to give this most discordant work an impressive grandeur.
  Peter Lefevre, Orange County Register

• Duets is a stunning work, pairing cellos, flutes, horns, percussion, et al in duet configurations, at times soli, and at other times accompanied by the orchestra...
  

  The musical ideas, both melodic and rhythmic, grow organically out of themselves and give Duets a logic that enables the ear to focus on the unfolding musical drama. There is a rise and fall of dissonant density, and with dynamic levels that similarly move, not by contrivance, but by music's natural flow from tension to release.
  Howard Vogel, Woodstock [NY] Times