Selected Reviews:

The Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Lukas Foss, premiered Heliotrope at the Cooper Union. Hagen's Heliotrope, premiered just four months ago by the Brooklyn Philharmonic [performed tonight by the Oakland-East Bay Symphony conducted by Michael Morgan] provides further evidence of his distinctive American voice, the wide-open intervals of the opening section evoking Aaron Copland's America of dreams and stern pioneer morality. But Hagen's vision is more complex than that. Before it's through, Heliotrope has engorged itself with the sounds of a smoky jazz club, complete with walking bass, and the cool sophistication of contemporary minimalism with repeated figures in the xylophone.

— David Gere, The Oakland Tribune, 3/3/90

Heliotrope is a brightly-colored spunky piece built largely out of one little jazz snatch, taking it through several adventures, clearly Copland to start, boldly Bernstein later on, and ending on a nice tag. It's a natural for a ballet, and fun.

— Robert Commanday, The San Francisco Chronicle, 3/3/90

The influence of Leonard Bernstein's theater style could be heard in the brief motto that Hagen used as the basis of his  Heliotrope [performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Lukas Foss], a set of variations in an array of orchestral, theater and jazz styles that showed how far a composer can run with a simple theme, given the right combination of imagination and skill.

— Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, 10/29/89

Program Note:

In 1989 I was living in Europe, not eager to return, when ASCAP commissioned a new orchestral work to commemorate the organization’s 75th anniversary. If ASCAP’s Vice President for Serious Concert Music Frances Richard had not commanded me to return to attend the premiere, I might have remained in Italy for the rest of my life. In any event, I was deeply-engaged in psychoanalysis at the time. I had a vivid dream that I was at a wild, chronologically-crazy cocktail party, engaged in breezy shop talk with several generations of composers—some quick, some not. We were chatting about how far one could go with a string of fourths—a salute, in part to the great Scott Joplin, the composer whose Heliotrope Bouquet is one of the pieces that inspired me to become a composer. The piece is a musical transcription of that dream. Each of the 75 super-short variations (one for each year of ASCAP’s existence) celebrate a different composer’s voice or musical style. That Morton Gould (who used to greet me in the hallway when I’d run into him on the occasional visit to visit the team in the Concert Music office by whistling “Heliotrope’s” theme) was the first composer to predict that I’d take a lot of flack for having written it, he would not be the last. Now, in the end, all the skirmishes between the “-ists” are over; I’m reminded of Quincy Jones—or was it Ellington, or maybe Bernstein?— who noted, “There is only good music and the other kind.” As W.H. Auden wrote, “In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.” If I were a dog, in this piece I’d be wagging my tail.