The title of ECM's release of works by three composers born in the former Soviet Union perfectly captures the mood of the CD – it is truly mysterious. Although more than half a century separates the first of these pieces from the most recent, they share a sense of otherness that defies easy explanation. The pieces are not so much mysterious in the sense of being eerie (although there are several moments that might raise the hairs on the back of your neck if you were listening alone in the dark); they are unsettling because they raise more questions than they answer.

With SOLO PIANO, Glass presents himself "unplugged" - no electronic keyboards or synthesizers, and no overdubs, either - just solo piano. Here, Glass' connection to the established "classical" tradition is most evident. Though his pieces are "minimal" (subtly altered repeated patterns or melodic motifs), yet they have an unsentimental beauty and heartfelt grace that one would hear in J.S. Bach's English Suites, as well as the piano music of Chopin and Erik Satie.

This 8CD set bring the listener back to the roots of Minimalism, all works were written in the seventies of the 20th century, a time when the new aesthetics and perception of music, sound, repetition and time experience were creating a new chapter in music history. The longest piece is the 5 hour “November” by Dennis Johnson, a work in which the player is free to build the intervals and chords according to his own timing and spacing. The other composers in this set are Philip Glass, Tom Johnson, Peter Garland, Terry Riley, Harold Budd and La Monte Young. Recorded in his own studio by the most important protagonist of Minimalism today, Dutch pianist Jeroen van Veen. Van Veen has a myriad of recordings to his name, notably the multi CD boxes Minimal Piano Collection 1 and 2, complete Satie, Einaudi, Tiersen, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Simeon ten Holt and many more.

Violinist Irvine Arditti, pianist Claude Helffer, and the Spectrum ensemble conducted by Guy Protheroe produce consummate performances of the Greek avant-gardist's unwieldy chamber music. If you're familiar with Xenakis's career you'll know he was trained in mathematics and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. Such background might prepare you for the music's preoccupation with line, volume, and form in an unusually abstract way, but it won't prepare you for its visceral, almost primitive power. On Akanthos, the singer Penelope Walmsley-Clark must cope with what is surely one of the most ridiculous soprano parts ever written.

Viola Space in Tokyo is one of the world’s most important musical festivals dedicated to the viola and the music composed for it. Founded by Nobuko Imai – well-known to BIS followers as well as to lovers of the viola – it celebrates its 10th anniversary, and BIS was invited to document some of the 150 works that have been performed over the years. The program spans over more than 70 years, and the list of composer includes Schnittke, Per Nørgård, Penderecki and Oedoen Partos. Nobuko Imai herself performs two of the most exciting works on the two discs: György Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola Solo and Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VI for Viola and Strings. This last piece was composed only last year, and is dedicated Nobuko Imai. It forms part of a series of concertos “in which the soloist symbolizes man while the ensemble represents the universe, nature and world that surrounds us within and without”, in the composer’s own description. Among these a modern classic such as György Kurtág’s Hommage à R. Sch. – in which violist Junji Suganuma is joined by a clarinet and a piano – may be mentioned, as well as Viola, Viola, a constantly surprising duo by George Benjamin.

In 1986 Mr. Glass was commissioned to create and bring a piece to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Adelaide, Australia. He chose to write a piece based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story "A Descent into the Maelström" and invited collaborators dancer/choreographer Molissa Fenley, set designer Eamon D’Arcy and theatre director Mathew McGuire to participate. They transformed Edgar Allan Poe's vertiginous short story of being swept into a huge and terrible whirlpool by a raging hurricane that "the oldest seaman in Norway never experienced" into a Musical/Dance/Theatre extravganza. This compelling, propulsive piece of music premiered in March, 1986 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts and was only performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble during the week of the festival in Australia. Consequently, it has had very little exposure to Philip Glass' audience. This little known recording of this powerful piece of classic Glass music was made when the Philip Glass Ensemble was at one of its peaks. It was also done in possibly one of the best settings for Philip Glass and his musicians– musical theatre.

Recorded over a six-month period in his Suffolk studio, Roger Eno's album Long Walk contains many of the ambient landscapes that have defined his career. Spiritual and spare, the album contains many minimal pieces along with more detailed and complex compositions. The younger brother of the more famous Brian Eno, Roger has shown with this album and others that he is capable of unique expressions of his own.

Roger Eno has always played the melodist to elder brother Brian Eno's atmospherics. Where Brian Eno traffics in intellectual concepts and ambient, diffuse landscapes such as Music for Airports, Roger Eno crafts emotional, melodically rich chamber works heard on albums such as Voices and the underrated gem, Lost in Translation. The Night Garden, however, finds Roger harvesting a sound that's closer to his brother's ambient works than anything he's previously recorded.

Itaipu (1989) is something of a cantata-cum-symphony-cum-oratorio with no clear text. Its topic is the world's largest hydroelectric dam, built on the Rarana River between Paraguay and Brazil, and the piece–in Glass's trademark punctuating minimalism–is filled with distinct South American instrumentation, particularly in the percussion. The music itself is noble, conjuring the human endeavor to build the five-mile-wide dam near the town of Itaipu. The Canyon (1988) is about no canyon in particular but tonally suggests the mystery of canyons in general. Both these compositions are among Glass's better works.

GRAMMY WINNER, 59TH AWARDS: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Third Coast Percussion has been saluted by the Washington Post for its virtuosity and precisely timed wit, and was called by the New York Times a commandingly elegant ensemble. The group, which is ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame, teaches and performs a concert series in Chicago, and has commissioned dozens of new works. This album is the ensembles Cedille label debut, and is an 80th birthday acknowledgement to American composer Steve Reich, the founding father of musical minimalism. This recording features four of Reichs most notable percussion works.

First released in 1994 by All Saints Records, 'Lost In Translation' is another stunning album from Roger Eno. 'Ne Cede Mella' is archaic in feel, but still a beautifull piece of vocal work underpinned by contrasting strings, piano and the buzz of electronics. 'Mariachi Funeral' is playful, taking the music of the title and turning it into something peculiarly enigmatic while 'The Green Grass' carries on that same, lilting, processional tone.

All Saints Records release one of the best known works by British composer Roger Eno, a collaboration album with Kate St. John. Eno's trademark reworking of chamber music under the influence of new age and ambient is apparent here, the playful orchestral sweeps and gentle touches of opening track 'Our Man In Havana' a fine example. 'We Stay Still' shows Kate St. John's vocals at their most angelic, a light lullaby that compliments the sumptuous instrumentation perfectly.

Godard/Spillane is a compilation album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn consisting of music created through Zorn's file-card compositional process. He first released the composition "Godard", a tribute to French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard whose jump-cut technique inspired Zorn's compositional approach, on the French tribute album The Godard Fans: Godard Ca Vous Chante? in 1986, "Spillane was first released on Zorn's Nonesuch Records album Spillane in 1987 and "Blues Noel" was first released on the compilation album Joyeux Noel - Merry Christmas Everybody! on the French Nato label in 1987.

This Belgian composer is not well known among U.S. audiences, although he has made several highly regarded appearances at the New Music America festivals. In Spain, however, where he was the subject of a major television special, he is a new-music celebrity. Mertens's style employs mesmerizing minimalist techniques with a sense of the romantic that appeals to both serious music aficionados and more mainstream listeners. The keyboardist uses a certain amount of electronics along with some acoustic instruments like violin, flute, and saxophone.

One can imagine how a composer like Wim Mertens could appear on the Windham Hill label and – to some people's surprise – in the late '80s he appeared twice. Whisper Me is a compilation of tracks from his other Crepuscle releases, a mini-overview of his style, and a way of hearing some tracks from the then-impossible-to-find Maximizing the Audience. Mertens has more depth to him than other pianists on the label, and a darkness creeps in at the edges of these works.