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Csapó's music answers the timeliest questions with works of exceptional quality. His musical language is highly original and strikingly powerful. His integrity and creative imagination, far beyond the merely fashionable and the trendy, represents, in my view, one of the most important contributions to the field today. (György Kurtág)

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So much new music is written without regard to the space it will be performed in, a potential audience (appreciative or otherwise), or that the very fact a piece of new music is performed in a space for an audience is somehow anachronistic or full of historical significance. This is not the case with the music of Gyula Csapó, judging from the five varied works on this disc. I'm hesitant to call these works theatrical, since that connotes non-musical distractions, and is an adjective often plastered on the works of second rate composers and musicians. But Csapó's work is theatrical in that his music grapples with the issues that a performance only has meaning in a context, a context of space, audience, or what comes before or after in a performance or the historical context of the piece. Regardless, Csapó's music sounds nice too: It is always a relief that regardless of the extra-musical connotations and intentions that the music itself is interesting to listen to. Hard, Edvard… -- hommage à Grieg, for two dulcimers, piano and contrabass encourages us to reconsider Grieg over its nearly twenty minute unbroken span. A string of chords extracted out of context from Grieg's piano works are irregularly spaced, and there is no melody or interchange of voices. The bass contributes an independent bass line, which enhances and obscures any potential harmonic function the piano chords are supposed to have (Csapó calls this a ring modulator effect). The piano combined with the intrinsically out of tune dulcimers creates a quaint pianola or church basement piano effect, which exactly suits my conception of this aspect of Grieg's music. Arpeggios appear now and again which confound and regularity. It's a long and not very varied piece, you could say Csapó deconstructs Grieg, but that's too easy. As the title suggests, it's more like an appreciation of Grieg. Krapp's Last Tape -- after Samuel Beckett is Csapó's take on Beckett's one-man short play of the same name. Instead of an actor confronting himself on tape, it's a violinist. Csapó has the violin play simple material whose manipulations are easy to follow. While we don't get to see the lighting effects which are an integral part of the piece's theatricality, there is an omnipresent high F# sine tone to remind us that we're listening. Some effects processing permits the violinist to play against a grainier recording of himself, and there are taped and live effects of sound being sped up and repeated. A detailed program note gives an indication as to what is actually happening. The title work, Handshake After Shot opens the disc. It is an endearing fanfare for two trumpets, an oboe, an electric organ holding two pitches throughout, and someone tapping a cardboard box. The closing work, BirdDayCage, is a tantalizingly brief 71-second birthday tribute to John Cage for cello and piano.

     —Grant Chu Covell , La Folia

'[John] Cage told me that this piece [Handshake After Shot] appealed to him most in the entire programme. Delighted and embarrassed, I asked him to tell me what he liked about it, whereupon he said: 'the way it sounded.' The answer, of course, is pure Cag

     —Raymond Tuttle , ClassicalNet