If you are already a Michael Nyman fan, you can skip all this and just start downloading any tracks you don't already have (if you own the soundtrack to the Peter Greenaway film Drowning By Numbers, you won't need tracks 3-8). If you've come here following the trail of Mozart, though, read on.

These days, Nyman is best known for his film scores, including the evocative and best-selling score for the Holly Hunter film The Piano. But Michael Nyman is, along with Gavin Bryars, one of the founders of a distinctly British branch of minimalism. Taking a page from America's Philip Glass and, to a lesser extent, from Steve Reich and Terry Riley, Nyman began creating splashy, rhythmic, tonal music back in the 1970s — a terribly unfashionable thing to do in “Serious Music” circles at the time. Nyman was also a critic, and has claimed to be the first to actually apply the term “Minimalism” to Glass, Reich, etc. But Nyman has also had a career-long obsession with Mozart, and this album brings together most of his Mozart-derived works. If you are a Mozart fan, you will recognize much of the thematic material here.

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