Steve Reich's new album, WTC 9/11, is out this week on Nonesuch Records. The album includes the title piece, Reich's reflection on the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, which is scored for three string quartets, performed by Kronos Quartet, and pre-recorded voices, including NORAD air traffic controllers, first responders, and women who kept vigil over the dead. The album also includes Reich’s Mallet Quartet, performed by Sō Percussion, and Dance Patterns, featuring members of Steve Reich and Musicians, plus a DVD with a live performance of Mallet Quartet.

The new album, to which the Independent gives four stars, was featured in Saturday morning's edition of BBC Radio 3's CD Review.

"My own reaction to the content surprised me," admits the show's host, Andrew McGregor. "I wasn't sure I wanted to hear WTC 9/11 at all and thought I might dislike it or, worse still, find it inappropriate or even sentimental. Instead, I found it startling, emotionally charged and moving."

McGregor goes on to reference an earlier review from the BBC Music website, which found the piece too short, only to reject the notion. "WTC 9/11's compactness and the shocking abruptness of the first section," he explains, "mirrors the sudden, unexpected violence of the events themselves."

What's more, its pairing on the album with Mallet Quartet and Dance Patterns proves effective, according to McGregor: "The certainty of Reich's minimalist techniques offering reassurance after the impact of the speech rhythms of WTC 9/11."

To listen to the review and hear selections from the album, go to bbc.co.uk, where the review begins 1 hour and 24 minutes in to the program.

In the BBC Music review to which McGregor refers, written by Andrew Mellor, while the reviewer does find the album's title piece to be too short, he also recognizes that "Reich is as eloquent as ever" in the piece. "The exploration of the tiny inflections of sampled speech and Reich’s skilful knitting of the voices to one another ... is unfailingly moving." He also goes on to laud the other works on the album as "pretty much unfaultable in concept and execution," particularly Mallet Quartet. "Sō Percussion have it nailed," Mellor writes, "finding both the inner glow and the outer edge, and never letting the tapestry lapse into the flat or routine."

Also on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday, Hear & Now focused on Different Trains in its new "Hear & Now Fifty" series, in which “signal works from the second half of the last century” are nominated by figures from the world of new music and the arts. In this case, that is British electronic artist Matthew Herbert, who also happens to have remixed two tracks off the forthcoming Björk album, Biophilia, for the Crystalline Series of 12" vinyl releases. Listen to Hear & Now at bbc.co.uk; the Different Trains segment begins at 51 minutes in.

To pick up a copy of the new album, head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the title track today and the complete album starting tomorrow. You'll also find Kronos Quartet's recording of Different Trains there as part of Reich's Nonesuch catalog.