"Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death is a work that has been orchestrated many times by great names including Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Shostakovich, which made me very curious as to what Theo Verbey’s 1994 orchestration would sound like. It stayed rather close to the original piano score (definitely more so than, for example,…

This wasn't just another concert. It was Liebestod, a truly unique exploration of Berg's Lyric Suite. Berg's piece is a compelling work, whose mysteries were only revealed about twenty years ago when the composer's letters to his lover Hanna Fuchs-Robettin were released ... Again, it's the Lyric Suite but not quite as we're used to. This time,…

"Regina van Berkel is one of the most outstanding Dutch choreographers. For her superb theatrical choreography, with the seemingly contradictory title "Frozen Echo", her fellow countryman, composer Theo Verbey, expanded an earlier orchestral piece into an extremely expressive triptych."

"...Theo Verbey’s “Man Ray — La Retour à la Raison” begins with repeating figures in the manner of 1970s Minimalism and morphs gracefully into a rich, atonal piece."

"Theo Verbeij's LIED for trombone and orchestra seems, in fact, to be a succession of four 'songs' in which the soloist Jörgen van Rijen, the orchestra's principal trombone player and the composer's fellow Dutchman, makes his instrument sing with an overall gentleness and expressiveness that denies any popular impression of its bombast…

"Theo Verbey's orchestration of Alban Berg's Sonato for piano Op.1 from 1984 sounded Mahleresque in its ability to carry one away. The beauty of sound is not only astonishing, but also serves to shine a beacon on Berg's romantic roots."

"For a composer the challenge is to write music on a complicated foundation which is for the audience immediately understandable and a pleasure to listen to . Theo Verbey has reached new heights in succeeding in this task. This work in five movements is captivating for its full 30 minute duration."

"By far the most substantial piece of the evening was "Expulsion" by the Dutch composer Theo Verbey. Like many other composers from the Netherlands, Mr. Verbey obviously appreciates the pulse and clarity of Stravinsky, in combination with the ruder dynamism of popular music as mediated by, again, American minimalists. But his music is unusually…

"Mr. Verbey's piece was distinguished by nice junctures where the instruments took over the same note from one another. Perhaps there was an allusion here to the ensemble's name, for the three string tunings the instruments have in common: G-D-A, or sol-re-la, euphoniously reassorted."

In a famous story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges the Aleph is mentioned, ‘the place where all places of the earth come together, seen from all corners, without merging’. In the music of Theo Verbey one sees the same aspiration to universality. His oeuvre is less staggering and its diameter is less compact than the two or three…