Here’s a brand new Reich recordings whose energy and accuracy is impressive … Ensemble Signal conducted by Brad Lubman [are] impressively exact both in this and the coupling, Reich’s Double Sextet.

Ensemble Signal’s playing in Double Sextet is so crisp and precise that it’s easy to forget its rhythmic and contrapuntal complexities. At the same time the harmony’s slightly gritty qualities are preserved, and just the right amount of articulation given to the sustained pitches and chords, which quite literally bind each section together.

both scores full of finesse and detail, both still bobbing to that definitively Reichian thrum that was once so game-changing...Brad Lubman keeps the music lucid and elegant, if rather low-key; you’ll find peppier recordings of both works, but I enjoyed the warm sounds and lack of hysteria here.

The slow fourth movement has a louring intensity and — highly unusually for Reich — we don’t finish with bouncy rhythms but an unexpectedly threatening question mark. The New Yorkers serve it up with fastidious elegance. They partner the piece with the Pulitzer prize-winning Double Sextet, a three-part gem whose dark heart is a Kind-of-Bluesy middle movement that gleams powerfully.

Performances are astute and well balanced, with all the assertive clarity these scores require. Steve Reich fans will have no trouble connecting with this music