Hummel's last piano song cycle to date (autumn 1995) occupies a special position: his 4 Haiku op. 99b. In this Japanese poetry genre, Marie-Louise Stangl writes here - completely true to form (3 verses with a total of 17 syllables). The dense brevity of the model also leads to a concentration on the essentials of the structure in the music. Thus - in the first piece - a blurred twelve-tone total, formed from four triads layered one on top of the other, is followed by fulfilled days in a pure or only slightly "enriched" major, only to plunge painlessly back into the quiet sea of sound at the end. In the same form, this "sea of sound" swells to fortissimo in the fourth piece after "Song of Creation". Despite its brevity, a haiku contains the most comprehensive image, feeling or wisdom possible. Hummel's singing voice reflects this - moulded in three parts - perhaps most happily in the third piece. Far Eastern colouring can only be found in a few whole tone passages, for example in the second piece, where the whole tone scale on E flat is used for one bar to the word silence, and the whole tone scale on D a bar later.

Wolgang Osthoff ( in "Zu den Liedern Bertold Hummels", Tutzing 1998)