Budd’s sophisticated (and usually underrated) artistry sucks the listener hypnotically into our first piece, Madrigals of the Rose Angel, and as an introduction to a flow of music it is perfect. As always Budd has little physical melody but his music exists on a floating plane of pure sound and depth of feeling. Transcending any saccharine chill-out or cheap sentiment, Budd pulls us tenderly into Richter’s achingly melancholic On the Nature of Daylight, a pellucid and romantic interplay between violin and cello. From Budd’s hypnotic depth comes Richter’s intimate, melodic feeling, which leads us into Glass’ Knee 2, from his iconoclastic opera Einstein on the Beach. Sparer than either previous pieces, Knee 2 is as passionate as Richter’s, yet less obviously romantic. Glass’s cyclical, heavily rhythmical piece stands as counterpoint to Budd’s Madrigal of the Rose Angel, nevertheless we have managed to segue effortlessly from Budd’s abstraction, through Richter’s tense romanticism, to Glass’ mathematically constructed, cyclical music meshing voice and violin.

Though neither piece has much in common except Budd’s Madrigal and Glass’ Knee (originating from roughly the same period of the 70s), it is possibly to nevertheless flow gracefully and without excessive interruption or obvious jump quickly from one musical strata to another. Also, each piece has its own hypnotic quality despite the manifest differences in their nature. Budd as always uses his abstractions to suffuse his listeners with a sense of dreamlike grace; Richter, instead, achieves his aims in On the Nature of Daylight through his aching romanticism and Glass through his engulfing, all encompassing cyclical polyphony.