The music doesn't leap with the brass ensemble's singularity right off the bat; and the percussion is positively menacing, laden with shock and power. Dennis Russell Davies has done wonders to draw out the most evocative possibilities of each work: the former with its hills and troughs--bright blasts interspersed with moments of atmospheric calm--and the latter with its juts and peaks of string-mixed energy, unwoven in the interceding, chromatic quietudes. The music has all the spiritual power of Kancheli's Abii Ne Viderem/Two Prayers and a great deal more frontal power. --Andrew Bartlett