Album: The London Steve Reich Ensemble, Reich: Different Trains; Triple Quartet; Piano Counterpoint (EMI Classics)

This programme of Steve Reich pieces has a satisfying unity due to the driving train rhythms that underpin all three compositions.

Triple Quartet opens with the Bernard Herrmann's urgent Psycho soundtrack, the sawing strings overlapping nervously, before growing more bewildered and distracted in the melancholy second movement. It's a fine companion to Different Trains, with the same sense of fraught journeys and uncertain destinations, but the frantic detail of Piano Counterpoint impresses most, its series of motifs emerging, rising to prominence and being subsumed again within the fluttering waves of six interlaced pianos.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Piano Counterpoint; Different Trains