"[5] The authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz awarded the album 3 stars, and stated that it is "poignant as a first sign of Dolphy 'going single', working the more open European scene with pick-up bands.

This one was better than most, not just because Bailey's tense, boppish sound occasionally recalls [Booker] Little, but also because Auer and Smith lean hard on the beat and push things along briskly... A curiosity, and a significant one in the foreshortened Dolphy canon, but certainly not one for casual buyers.

"[6] Critic Robert Christgau described the album as "two astonishing sides and two more than adequate ones," and praised "Hot House," calling it "a fluent, unselfconscious synthesis of bebop and 'free jazz' that sounds entirely up-to-the-minute in 1979.

"[7] The Washington Post's Lester Bans remarked: "The unearthing of The Berlin Concerts is a god-send because these tapes were made at the height of [Dolphy's] powers... what comes across throughout this set... is the warmth and intimacy of those rich, jugular vocalisms.

Ornette Coleman may have been closer to the spawning barnyard and John Coltrane may have cornered the fire sermon for all time, but Eric Dolphy was the sparrow's heart, pulsing in the briefest of springs.