Album: Brad Mehldau, Kevin Hays, Patrick Zimmerli, Modern Music (NONESUCH)

A real puzzler, this. US star Mehldau presents a duo with his fellow pianist Kevin Hays, produced and arranged by classical composer Patrick Zimmerli.There’s heroic pianism aplenty butsometimes it seems all piano and nolife, dominated by the rather brittleapproach established in Zimmerli’s“Crazy Quilt”, where repeated patternsare modulated to no great effect. Themost successful pieces Reich’s “Musicfor 18 Musicians” and a brooding“Lonely Woman”