“ ... Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat captures the energy and frequent sensuality of Adams's piano music, while never flinching at the technical demands. The poly-rhythmic power of Phrygian Gates is as powerful now as when the piece was written 30 years ago. Top track: Hallelujah Junction, from 1996, captures the full breadth of the composer's style and magnetism. Includes help of pianist Maarten van Veen.”  ***½

“...The performances by Ralph van Raat, joined in Hallelujah Junction by Maarten van Veen, are a triumph of deceptiveness: that is, playing these pieces must require the utmost concentration as you count the bars past, avoid those little modifications to rhythm that a pianist will instinctively deploy to bring a performance alive, but van Raat obtains a near-hypnotic control in the two early pieces, almost mechanical in its reliability, and he bubbles with life in the later two. The recording engineer, Michael Ponder, has given him a rounded piano tone in the warm acoustic in Potton Hall, Suffolk.”

“...This is the third CD of Adams's piano music to appear in recent years and Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat fares well against competition ... Phrygian Gates and China Gates (1977-78) document Adams at a formative stage, experimenting with embedding his Romantic impulses into the cerebral world of Minimalist process music. Van Raat shapes the onward trajectory forcefully, while deploying a fat, meaty piano tone that's entirely appropriate. The two-piano Hallelujah Junction (1996) is a joyous affair, while American Berserk (2001) telescopes boogie-woogie and jazz riffs into unusual perspectives.”

“... It is all thoroughly entertaining and well worth exploring, especially by those (amongst them myself) who took against the earlier manifestations of the minimalist movement after the first excitement of Reich bursting on the scene wore off. A propitious Naxos debut.”