"A Haunted Landscape truly lives up to its title. It is a grandly evocative tone-poem of myriad colors that seems a perfect synthesis of Crumb's entire composing career, executed with individual purpose, imagination and exquisite refinement ..."

Bill Zakariasen, Ovation, August 1984

"Haunted Landscape by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Crumb radiated through the San Jose Center for Performing Arts with jeweled delicacy; its beguiling chemistry of unconventional sounds and even less familiar aesthetics coalesced into a compelling musical experience under the baton of Leonid Grin.
   ...
   "In a season that hosts few works of our time, Grin made a discriminating choice with Haunted Landscape. What appealing modernism Crumb creates, as pointed out by Grin beforehand, Crumb's treatment of the orchestra is painterly, and his visions are gorgeous to behold.
   "The usually foreboding prospects of amplified instruments (piano, two harps and hammered dulcimer), not to mention a massive percussion battery, proved tantalizing in Crumb's hands. Like brushwork in a Japanese landscape (or paintings by Miró and Klee), Crumb's orchestration is poignantly sparse, and silence plays as great a role as sound.
   "Crumb's far-reaching palette of timbral ideas offer delectable evidence of what an orchestra can do. The plucked strings and sound-board knockings on amplified piano and harps; the silvery breezes made by bowed cymbals, gongs and metal rattles known as crotals; the vaporous melodic gestures that emerge unexpectedly, then disintegrate beneath newly sounded layers -- these and numerous other sonic delicacies combine to make Haunted Landscape a musical experience of timeless fascination. All this would not amount to much, however, if not for Crumb's profoundly musical intentions.
   "Among the myriad finds in Crumb's soundscape is a nested tribute to the late American experimentalist Edgard Varèse. A short melodic turn by the oboe in its highest tessitura (quoted from Varèse's Intégrales) works its way into the fabric through periodic repetitions before climaxing in a triple clarinet statement of shrill vibrancy.
   "Grin's direction of Haunted Landscape was detailed and articulate, vividly communicating the music's subtle tempo alternations while staunchly maintaining the score's atmospheric poise."

Philip Collins, Metro, April 18-24, 1996