Repetition of motifs within a composition is nothing new: Soler’s Fandango, Bach’s Chaconne and Pachelbel’s Canon, to name just three examples, all make use of it. But for Dutch composer Jeroen van Veen it is the most important element - the essence, as it were - of music. Rooted in tonality, and subject to the interaction and choices of the performers, it can prove immensely powerful.

Indeed, it was on this premise that van Veen launched his compositional career with two volumes of 24 Minimal Preludes; this exciting 5-CD release contains follow-up pieces to those works, ones that reflect the composer’s approach to music as the structuring of LEGO® bricks – the individual components that create variation within a composition. As well as Incanto – a series of compositions for two or more keyboards in which the music develops slowly, utilising techniques such as fluctuation of speed – the release also includes NLXL, a musical illustration of Holland’s landscape patterns as seen from the air, based on a book of the same name by Dutch photographer Karel Tome¨. The work is created by way of a multitrack recording with a variety of keyboard instruments, with large segments versus smaller segments of The Netherlands’ landscape expressed through longer and shorter note values.

The composer himself is the main performer here, assisted by Frank Steijens on the carillon and his wife for works requiring four hands or two pianos. Described as ‘the leading exponent of minimalism in Holland today’, van Veen’s hypnotic, trance-inducing music makes for an experience unlike any other, transporting the listener to ‘another place’ through ever-changing soundscapes.