Som något av ett modernt repertoarverk framstår alltmer Anders Hillborgs suggestiva Liquid Marble, alla speltekniska komplikationer till trots. En originell idé förenas här med ett omedelbart uttryck, ett raffinerat förverkligande som högprofessionellt och respektfullt nöjer sig med att ta blott dryga tio minuter av åhörarens odelade uppmärksamhet i anspråk. Inte så underligt att verkets på en gång marmorhårda och flytande klangytor med sina harmoniskt centrifugala krafter sedan uruppförandet 1995 bitit sig fast i konsertprogrammen...
(Svenska Dagbladet -- Jan Kask 30/3 1999)
...the Icelander Haukur Tomasson's Storka and the Swede Anders Hillborg's Liquid Marble are constructed with iron logic, while their clear and distinct sound brings to mind the purity and austerity of the Northern landscape.
(Gazeta Wyborcza 21/10 1998 -- Dorota Szwarcman)
Anders Hillborg has been ranked with the celebrities, the greatest names in the world of composition.
(Sycyna 18/10 1998)
...A similar magnetic quality can be discerned in the compositions of the Swede, Anders Hillborg. There is in those works the sharpness of the Northern air, as well as a welcome brightness to penetrate the Scandinavian twilight.
(Zycie, Warsaw, 18/10 1998)
Two composers, soon to become my favourites, emerged during this concert:...Haukur Tomasson and Anders Hillborg. Both presented similar musical images: the former- of flowing, hot lava..., the latter - of Liquid Marble. Both are vast works which stir the listeners imagination, and which afforded a marvellous and well-used opportunity for a display of the orchestra's abilities.
(Ruch Muzycny 15/10 1998 -- Adam Suprynowicz)
Anders Hillborg's Liquid Marble...was one of those Proms' experiments worth giving a try. Woodwind howled like a Northern wind, rushing scales whistled through the orchestra and the score had soon blown away the pretensions of some of this season's other premieres. Hillborg is not ashamed to go out and seize the audince's attention.
(Financial Times 3/9 97)
Liquid genius from the nuclear age
...(The Swedish Radio Orchestra) then played the most beautiful piece of music yet heard at these Proms. Anders Hillborg's Liquid Marble, which was written two years ago and given its UK premiere here at the Proms yesterday, imitates in art the new sounds of a late 20th century world, just as Romantic music might copy nature or industrial-age compositions echo steam-driven factories.
Hillborg's is the music of the nuclear age. Woodwinds gurgle cleanly up and down micro-scales like science-fiction robots becoming excited. A scruff of low. slow-moving strings rise in pitch, aspiring to the noise of an aircraft revving up for take-off. Three piccolos cut like lasers. Reeds screech across a wasteland while large, distorted clumps of sound move like speeded-up clouds through the score. A slow section balances the picture. The cor anglais sighs over strings as still as death.
(Evening Standard 2/9 97 -- Rick Jones)
(BBC Proms 97)
Swedish gem set in marble
The Swedish Radio Orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, began...with the British premiere of an eight-minute work by the Swede, Anders Hillborg. His compositions, he declares, range from ¨conventional rock music to wild experiments with microtonal structures¨. Liquid Marble clearly falls into the latter category.
From the second bar on, microtones tease and torment the music's texture as first the dissonant interval of the tritone and then a consonant perfect fifth are successively distorted by brass and woodwinds, and whipped into hysteria by clarinets. Rising chords and fast scales alternate and interweave, the scales like veins in the static chill of the marble. As more distinct jazzy rhythms urged the work to its final accelerando, Salonen's understanding as a composer himself was revealed. He brought clarity even to a first hearing of this strange, anguished work.
(The Times 2/9 97 -- Hilary Finch)
...Radiosymfonikernas insatser i Anders Hillborgs Liquid Marble, ett virtuost framförande av ett virtuost konstruerat och instrumenterat verk. Som alltid hos Hillborg är uppbyggnaden tydlig men karaktären desto mer svårfångad. Här finns ett påtagligt drag av skräck...
Om Ligeti fått för sig att omkomponera ¨En natt på Blåkulla¨ hade det kunnat låta så här. Ett läckert stycke som visar att Hillborg inte låtit sig tämjas utan fortfarande söker roa genom att oroa.
(Dagens Nyheter 12/5 1996 -- Thomas Anderberg)
...Hillborgs Liquid Marble utformade sig till konsertens verkliga utropstecken. Hans fräscht odogmatiska och personliga tonspråk...firade triumfer på ett sällan skådat sätt och Hillborg hann med att säga mera väsentligt på drygt tio minuter än vad åtskilliga mindre skickliga tonsättare behöver minst det tiodubbla för...
(Hufvudstadsbladet 9/8 1995 -- Mats Liljeros)