"Classical album of the week: As Esa-Pekka Salonen's beautifully modulated performance demonstrates, [the work's] inconsistencies do not matter at all when the music is unfolded with such meticulous attention to detail. Nothing is forced, and all the elements, sung, played and spoken, are integrated so carefully ... There are moments when the sound of the orchestra seems recessed slightly too far behind the voices, but every morsel of detail in the scoring, which uses a large orchestra with chamber music-like fastidiousness, is there, and glowing".