REVIEWS
"...Freedom is present also in the political sense. Composers in their works take political themes, commenting on the current situation in the country and the world. An example is the composition of John McLachlan, whose title, Extraordinary Rendition, can be explained in two ways..."
http://www.glissando.pl/relacje/zblizenie-na-irlandie
Dublin-born John McLachlan provides Nine (2011), the title referring to the number of movements. The titles of these short movements come from a wide variety of languages, from Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to Finnish. Aphoristic, each makes its point with great economy and yet each speaks of a fresh compositional voice. The second movement, "Scala," of course concentrates on scales, but in a most interesting fashion (think slowed-down Ligeti), while "Ananda" reveals a Webern-esque attitude to silence and the importance of the individual sound event. Each movement punches way above its (durational) weight. The longest (at 3:13) is the angular, lop-sided dance of "Aurea" (movement 6), but maybe the most involving are the final pair, "Hikka" and Fretta." Fascinating.
Colin Clarke, Fanfare 2015
Nine , by John McLachlan, by far the lengthiest composition in the album clocks in at just over fourteen minutes. The work is made up of nine miniatures, given titles in Italian, Spanish, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Finnish. The titles hint at what's to come: harp…scale…bliss…waves…cloud…golden…illusion…hiccup…hurry . The style of each little piece sends one's imagination and musical memory reeling, some of them evoking French Impressionism, some jazzy in feel, some reminiscent of the miniatures for piano of Webern, and none of them in any way, shape or form derivative.
Rafael de Acha Music for All Seasons 2015
El estreno en España de Extraordinary Rendition – obra encargada por el Trío Arbós – contó con la presencia de su autor, el irlandés John McLachlan, obra con un gran fuerza espresiva en la que el Trío brilló.
Scherzo magazine. Nov 2008
My favourite piece was Dublin composer John McLachlan’s Wonder, a gentle and introspective work with little pleasant sounds squirting out of the ensemble.
Sunday Business Post, Dec 7th 2008(no by-line)
Adding to the seeping colours of a keyboarded background, silvery glockenspiel touches formed the most effective acoustic component in John McLachlan's drifting and enigmatic Wonder (2008).
Irish Times, Andrew Johnstone Dec 1 08
(About Octala and Incunabula)… John McLachlan isn’t loath to stand up and be counted with the best of the rest... The kinds of words McLachlan uses of his music – “athematic”, “quasi-algorithmic” and “statistical” – are reflected in ruthlessly logical sinews and fastidiously clear textures. A first hearing disclosed some distinctive features, but what really counted was the raw psychological effect.
Andrew Johnstone, reviewing Horizons, Irish Times, Jan 2008
McLachlan’s work centred on the problems of nurturing and confounding audience expectations when operating in the ‘athematic, non repeating’ language of complex music. After all, it is a lot to ask an audience to appreciate the twists of a carefully crafted plotline when they’re not familiar with the language in which it is being told. McLachlan maintained in his programme notes that a ‘strong hold on the statistical quality of how events at the micro level unfold’ and ‘quasi-algorithmic links’ guarantee the consistency that enables the listener to presuppose the probable direction of the material and restores the option of surprise to the composer’s armoury. Academic talk of statistics and quasi algorithms may not readily convince anyone of audible relationships in a piece but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. A marked consistency inhabited the materials of both Octala and Incunabula through a variety of textural and dynamic reworkings, generating enough drama for the listener to navigate the unfolding affirmation and contradiction of expectations without ever feeling that they were tipping into a world of either arbitrary numbers theory or rote predictability.
Rob Casey, Journal of Music 2008
McLachlan’s bounding Ghost Machine struck me as the first piece with any cojones to speak of. McLachlan wants- it seems – for his complex jigsaw puzzle to be entirely transparent and to these ears it couldn’t have been clearer.
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, Journal of Music in Ireland, July-August 2007
Four pieces employed more advanced techniques than the rest, among them….John McLachlan’s 2004 Ghost Machine, a playful representation of philosophy’s dichotomy between mind and body enacted respectively by violin and piano.
Michael Dungan, Irish Times, 11th Oct 2006
The compositions have a directness and clarity…in composing he appears to be concerned to pare things down. His compositional strategies are clear… The pieces appear to be simply, almost mechanistically driven.
Michael Dervan, reviewing Composers' Choice, Irish Times, April 2004
Radical Roots is an obsessive piece. In the first part, tiny, motivic fragments are repeated and extended. In the second part, related material appears as dense, slow chords…(it) kept you listening as it confounded expectation.
Martin Adams, Irish Times, October 2003
Irish Composer John McLachlan's Here Be Dragons was the high point, a clear and coherent work with well-controlled contrapuntal relations. The subtlety of this work was striking compared with the vapidity and over-extension of the remaining pieces that night.
Paul Steenhuisen, World New Music Magazine,
reviewing ISCM Festival 2003.
(The concert was in St Stanislav's Institution, Ljubljana, Slovenia).
McLachlan toyed with the idea of calling his concerto a piano concerto. His decision not to, and the consequent remote, sideways placing of the piano on the stage, led to the work's most memorable moments — slow, dreamy-sounding undulations on the piano, interrupted by more vigorous assertions from the rest of the orchestra.
Here Be Dragons, dedicated to the composer's baby son, was originally written for organ. The orchestration is blunt and bold, the material resolutely revealing its keyboard origins in a piece where striding lines yield to wind flurries over held strings that recall Ives' The Unanswered Question.
Michael Dervan, reviewing Horizons, Irish Times, Feb 2003
…(meetings with remarkable men) shows the composer's self-confessed pleasure in the instruments' possibilities for sheer beauty of sound.
Martin Adams, Irish Times, June 2002
The other premiere of the evening was John McLachlan's The Red Thread for guitar and tape, a work with a well thought out strategy....
Michael Dervan Irish Times, Jan 2000
CD review
The Two Lyric Sketches are, in effect, another string quartet and the composer regards this as his first mature work. It won the Sligo Composers Competition in 1991. There is humour and, at first, a robust cello line. It is the slow music that reveals the lyricism.
David Wright, June 2000