Reviewing the world premiere, A.Z. Madonna of The Boston Globe wrote, "The introduction evoked a sense of solemn ritual welcome, as the strings descended in a silvery haze before a solo clarinet introduced a leaping melodic gesture with avian agility. The specific Basho poem that inspired Time to Time describes observing the moon, but listening to the actual piece felt more like stargazing during a meteor shower. One must resolve to take in the whole experience, whether meteors appear or not. There weren't many meteoric moments during the piece, but the stars shone brightly."[2] Julie Ingelfinger of The Boston Music Intelligencer praised the piece, writing, "The single-movement composition enchants and enlarges audience listening with its imaginative employment of an expanse of percussion instruments. For some moments of this 20-minute sojourn, the audience seemed mesmerized as if during the onset, peak and resolution of a lunar eclipse."[3] of The Arts Fuse similarly opined, "The piece is a striking collage of sounds in which the full orchestra, with a huge percussion array, still spoke like a chamber ensemble, with bursts of solo and ensemble music framing a tonal center that came and went like moonlight occasionally obscured by the shifting of clouds."[4]
Luke Kim of The Tech was more critical of the piece, however, remarking, "While the piece featured many interesting ideas, it felt unnecessarily prolonged at times, and its emphasis on texture over melody left some listeners without a clear thematic anchor. The result came across as almost an atmospheric tableau — highly evocative, if perhaps more scene-setting than structurally self-contained."[5]