Stephen Sondheim's music [for "Pacific Overtures"],… is simply formidable—a huge amount of it built into sung sequences so extensive and cubic they rise from and engulf the show. Sondheim didn't pretend to write Oriental music, but instead grasped its texture and, much more importantly, the show's purposes. This is true theater music, much more melodic than one hearing suggests, and tremendously varied. The score places him at the very pinnacle of American stage composers and entirely apart from conventional theater songwriters.

His lyrics assume a great responsibility, telling as much of the story as the John Weidman-Hugh Wheeler book. They are not merely impeccable in terms of lyric writing technique, though. They seem the work of a lover of Japanese poetry and never phoney about that. I only wish they might have been as open hearted as some of the music.

Martin Gottfried, "'Overtures'—A Remarkable Work...