Highly Recommended

It would be fair to say that I'm quite a fan of the Minimalist movement in music, especially its American strand. This goes all the way back to thinking that Terry Riley's In C was the bees' knees as a callow teenager, and then discovering the joys of Philip Glass's operas in the early eighties - notably Satyagraha which I thought of as a particularly precious object in its vinyl incarnation. Later came Reich and Adams, whom I now regard as the greater composers.

But I remain startlingly ignorant with regard to the sheer range of works these guys produced and one of the pleasures of my old age is discovering pieces that I really should know but for some reason managed to miss at the time I should have been listening to them. One such, which I chanced upon only yesterday, is John Adams's piece for two pianos Hallelujah Junction. I'm ashamed to admit I'd never even heard of this one before, yet I now realise just how well known and highly regarded it is by admirers of the composer.

The link provided takes you to a live version, by the way, which is sort of astonishing in its own way in that the musicians involved manage to pull off what sounds impossible without a sequencer and frequent re-takes. There's a bit in it, towards the end of what I take to be the opening movement, with some crashing, clashing chords that reminds me very much of the double trio version of King Crimson in their Thrak period. Quite a recommendation in its own way.