"Celestial Mechanics continues Crumb's exploration of the altogether otherworldly colors and sonorities -- in astonishing variety -- that can be coaxed out of a piano. The four-movement work is more adamant, assertive, brutal than its predecessors, at least in the first and third movements. But characteristic passages of breath-holding delicacy culminate in a final section in which space seems expanded and time slowed down. The work is carefully shaped around the two extremes."

Shirley Fleming, New York Post, 19 November 1979