Hashirigaki - Guardian names it Musical Theatre of the Year 2001:

Andrew Clements, the music critic of the Guardian, writes in his article The year in Classical Music (December 21, 2001): "Best of all for me, though, was Heiner Goebbels's latest theatre piece, Hashirigaki, a highlight of an Edinburgh festival otherwise full of operas in concert performance; Goebbels brings together Gertrude Stein and the Beach Boys in a magical synthesis that, like all the greatest art, is utterly unclassifiable." Also the WIRE defined the performance of Hashirigaki at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival as the highlight of the festival: "Goebbels is a man of the theatre as much as a composer, and music and words were unified in a delightfully absurdist, make-believe world of play"