If Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is simply described in terms of its materials and organization – 11 chords followed by 11 pieces built on those chords – then it might seem utterly dry and monotonous. The actual music, though, is far from lackluster. When this recording was released in 1978, the impact on the new music scene was immediate and overwhelming. Anyone who saw potential in minimalism and had hoped for a major breakthrough piece found it here. The beauty of its pulsing added-note harmonies and the sustained power and precision of the performance were the music's salient features; and instead of the sterile, electronic sound usually associated with minimalism, the music's warm resonance was a welcome change. Yet repeated listening brought out a subtle and important shift in Reich's conception: the patterns were no longer static repetitions moving in and out of phase with each other, but were now flexible units that grew organically and changed incrementally over the course of the work.

Boris Yoffee was born in Russia in 1968. There, he studied violin and composition and before the breakup of the Soviet Union he immigrated to Israel, where he studied at Tel Aviv University. In 1997, he moved to Germany to study composition with Wolfgang Rihm. By 2009, he had amassed an enormous number of short works. Thus, the performers who had been asked to record his Song of Songs looked through approximately 800 of them in order to select the pieces they wanted to perform. The Rosamunde Quartet is a German string quartet that was formed in 1992; since the group disbanded in 2010, this is its last recording. The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet that is well known for its performance of Renaissance, medieval, and contemporary music. It has often performed the works of Arvo Pärt, whose music is somewhat similar to that of Yoffe.

This 2009 ECM disc containing the world premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Ninth Symphony, the composer's final work, will be mandatory listening for fans of post-modernist Russian music, or contemporary music in general. Begun after the premiere of Schnittke's Eighth Symphony in 1994 and unfinished at the composer's death in 1998, the Ninth existed only as three movements of manuscript (and indecipherable manuscript at that: a stroke had paralyzed Schnittke's right side, forcing him to write with his left hand) until composer Alexandr Raskatov deciphered the manuscript and conductor Dennis Russell Davies presented its premiere. As presented in this January 2008 recording, Schnittke's Ninth continues and extends the austere sound world of the Eighth into ever more severe zones. There's no denying this is the authentic voice of Schnittke: the etiolated textures, abrupt gestures, timeless tempos, and haunting themes have clear roots in the composer's preceding works. Davies and the excellent Dresdner Philharmonie appear acutely conscious that the Ninth was the composer's last work, but the tone of leave-taking is inherent in Schnittke's inward music.

Over a period of five years, Swiss directors Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer documented the activity of legendary producer Manfred Eicher, the founder and driving force behind ECM Records, whose advocacy of progressive jazz and of classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Meredith Monk, Valentin Silvestrov, and György Kurtág changed the landscape of contemporary music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The film Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher was released in 2009 and this 2011 soundtrack album is made up largely of tracks taken from previously released ECM albums that Eicher produced, some from as early as 1980. Most of the pieces are low-key and understated and feature chamber ensembles, although there are several piano tracks and several featuring orchestra or chorus. The album has a mix of selections from ECM's classical and jazz repertoire, and from the label's specialty, the many pieces that lie somewhere in between the two.

Recording the “Seis libros del Delphín” has been a long-held wish of the Argentine guitarist Pablo Márquez, who came to Europe almost twenty years ago to study renaissance repertoire and to delve into contemporary treatises on performance practice. “Troughout my artistic development, Luys de Narváez has remained a passion of mine, never failing to move me with the mystical nature of his music and the crystal clarity of his discourse”, he writes in his performer’s note to the present album which marks his debut on ECM New Series.

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.

Estonian composer Helena Tulve (born 1972) is one of the brightest musical lights to emerge around the turn of the millennium. The first collection of her work was a remarkable debut, and its centerpiece, the massive Sula, deserves to be counted among the most monumental and original orchestral works of the first decade of the 21st century. While none of the pieces on this album quite match the impact of that piece, they each reveal a very fine musical intelligence and imagination and an ability to evoke a sense of the unpredictable, primordial processes of nature, particularly in frozen and desolate landscapes. Her works unfold with an organic logic that defies easy analysis but that feels inexorable and true. Each of these pieces lasts about 10 minutes. À travers, for chamber ensemble, and abysses, for flutes and chamber ensemble, do not use large forces, but both conjure up a sense of immense space, and like Sula, sound very, very cold. Much the same is true of Lijnen, which adds voice to the ensemble with aphoristic texts by Belgian poet Roland Jooris that confirm the tone of nature's icy and impersonal power that is evident in the music.

Recorded by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and various soloists and ensembles in churches in Tallinn as well as the Estonian Concert Hall, the five compositions heard on Arboles lloran por lluvia (Trees cry for rain) give deeper insight into the unique sound-world of Estonian composer Helena Tulve, into music that is nourished by both contemporary and ancient currents. Tulve draws upon a wide-range of inspirational sources. She explores the raw fabric of sound and the nature of timbre in both analytical and instinctive ways, in compositions that are unmistakably her own, yet her work is inclusive - here incorporating aspects of Gregorian chant, melody from Yemenite Jewish tradition, and texts from Sufi, Sephardic and Christian mystic poetry. Reyah hadas 'ala (The Perfume of the Myrtle Rises) unites the ensemble of the Gregorian chant and the early music instruments. This is the only work in which Tulve has used a pre-existing melody, a song of the Yemenite Jews. Extinction des choses vues (The Extinction of the Things Seen) is an orchestral piece in which the musical ideas are derived from a text by the Jesuit thinker Michel de Certeau called Extase blanche (White Ecstasy).

This CD's title, Messe Noire, and its dark cover art may mislead some into thinking this album is filled with evil, forbidden things; but the only selection that suggests the diabolical is Alexander Scriabin's macabre Sonata No. 9, "Black Mass," and it comes at the very end, after Igor Stravinsky's light, neo-Classical Serenade in A, Dmitry Shostakovich's sardonic Sonata No. 2, and Sergey Prokofiev's witty but brutal knuckle-buster, the Sonata No. 7, which all have their dark moments, certainly, but not the same sinister mood found in Scriabin. If pianist Aleksei Lubimov's aim in bringing these Russian masterworks together points to some other unifying idea – perhaps the significance of the piano in these composers' thinking – then some other title might have been more helpful. As it is, though, this album seems most unified in Lubimov's vigorous style of playing, brittle execution, and emphasis on the piano's percussive sonorities, evident in each performance. This spiky approach works best in Prokofiev's sonata, and fairly well in Shostakovich's and Stravinsky's pieces; but it seems too sterile in Scriabin's music, which needs more languor and sensuous writhing than clarity or crispness.

Quasi Parlando is an important addition to ECM's documentation of the work of Tigran Mansurian, an often breathtaking account of highly original contemporary chamber orchestra music. Issued in the wake of his 75th birthday, the album presents four works for soloists and strings, and marks the ECM debut of the Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, winner of the 2013 Gramophone Awards 'Record of the Year'. It opens with the Armenian composer's fiercely-concentrated Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and String Orchestra, and proceeds to new music performed by its dedicatees: the lyrical Romance, dedicated to Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the intensely expressive Quasi Parlando, dedicated to German cellist Anja Lechner. Both are world premiere recordings, as is the Violin Concerto No 2, subtitled Four Serious Songs, which concludes the programme. Throughout, the soloists deliver committed performances, as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson.

These soulful Spanish and Argentinean songs arranged by violist Kim Kashkashian and pianist Robert Levin are well suited to their expressive and expansive playing. Most of the songs, ranging from works by Granados, de Falla, and Montsalvatge to early Ginastera, are written in a late romantic to early modern idiom, and many incorporate a strong folk element. The selections include rowdy, rhythmically charged dance-like songs, tender lullabies, and many flavors of love songs, from the exultant to the despairing. In addition to the better-known composers, Argentineans Carlos Guastavino and Carlos López-Buchardo make extraordinarily fine contributions. The choices of repertoire are excellent; each one of these songs is a jewel, and the ordering of the selections artful, including the surprisingly effective repetition of two songs at different points in the program. The transcriptions are inventive and imaginative, with the vocal lines idiomatically adapted for the viola's expressive capabilities.

ECM’s ongoing series of recordings with the Munich Chamber Orchestra continues with an intriguing album of new and recent pieces by Japan’s leading composer Toshio Hosokawa. Amongst the compositions are Sakura für Otto Tomek and Cloud and Light, both written in 2008, and Ceremonial Dance (2000). These 21st century pieces are brought together with Landscape V (originally from 1993 and for string quartet, meanwhile expanded into an orchestral version). Three of these feature the shô, a traditional Japanese instrument played by its leading exponent, Mayumi Miyata. Born in Hiroshima in 1955, Hosokawa was initially inspired by Western art music from Schubert to Schoenberg. He went to Germany in the 1970s to study with Isang Yun and Klaus Huber. As he strengthened his standing in European avant-garde he also put down deeper roots in Japanese traditional music. His work increasingly suggests a dialogue between East and West, between the archaic and modern, between ceremonial music and concert music.

Filia Sion is the first ECM New Series disc devoted entirely to the Estonian vocal group Vox Clamantis. From the beginning of its history, Vox Clamantis has focussed on Gregorian chant as the foundation of European music, but has also maintained strong connections to contemporary composers including Arvo Pärt, Helena Tulve and Erkki-Sven Tüür (members of the ensemble previously appeared on Tüür s Oxymoron album, singing his composition Salve Regina ). Their interpretation of medieval music is never purely historical. While always remaining true to the spirit of this repertoire, the approach to the work and the selection of pieces is contemporary, with sound and texture and the blending of voices as a focus. As leader Jaan-Eik Tulve explains, Gregorian chant is monophonic music which remarkably emphasizes the blend of voices.

Valentin Silvestrov is hardly a household name in the United States; however, in the Ukraine, he enjoys a similar standing to that of his Estonian counterpart Arvo Pärt. But that is where the resemblance ends. Whereas Pärt in his holy minimalism reinvents techniques that derive from Renaissance practice, Silvestrov's roots are planted in late Romanticism. His music is steeped in all of the emotion and drama that such a stylistic association would imply. Leggiero, pesante is a collection of Silvestrov's chamber music, and as an introduction to the musical world of Silvestrov, this ECM New Series release admirably fits the bill. Most impressive are the performances of the Sonata for violoncello and piano (1983) and the third Postludium by cellist Anja Lechner and pianist Silke Avenhaus. In these works, Silvestrov strives toward a synthetic union between the two instruments. Lechner and Avenhaus achieve this end spectacularly well and manage to blanket the performances in an emotional sensitivity that gives voice to Silvestrov's intentions, yet retains the personality of the performers.

This album is something of a legend in the annals of ECM lore, as it was the only ever recorded by the fantastically talented Steve Eliovson. With Collin Walcott on percussion for support, the since unheard-from guitarist carves lasting impressions that can now be thankfully heard on CD. The experience begins in “Venice” (as in California), where the guitar speaks with tabla like two continents connected by tectonic plates beneath an ocean. Eliovson’s sonorities are pristine, especially in “Earth End” and in “Slow Jazz,” where the precision of finger placement and the occasional bent note add a soulful turn of phrase. The album’s portal is “Awakening,” a submarine communion of gongs that closes one door while opening another. The title track is buoyed by a glimmering triangle and arpeggios from an internal guitar, while the external speaks in tongues with the various percussive accents that flit in and out of its view.