John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction (1996) has had at least half a dozen recordings since the first, by Nicolas Hodges and Rolf Hind, which I reviewed nearly 20 years ago (Nonesuch, 8/04). That interpretation has remained my touchstone, largely for the ecstatic, mesmeric qualities that the duo bring to the score. Pianists Steven Beck and Susan Grace of Quattro Mani take a very different tack, yet one I find equally compelling. They start the first section at a more measured tempo, which gives the music an easy swing. Hodges and Hind are dreamier in the lyrical central section but Quattro Mani’s drier reading (and recording) offers an appealing wash of Debussy-like colour (start around 9'11"). And in the final section I very much like how gradually yet insistently this performance builds towards the work’s Nancarrow-esque peroration. The miniatures that make up the remainder of the programme are nicely varied. Paul Creston’s Rumba-Tarantella (1964) sounds to me as if Gershwin and Bernstein’s love-child was improvising drunkenly at a party. Paul Bowles’s charming Night Waltz (1949) clearly reflects his years in Paris – it’s elegant, with a healthy splash of insouciance. Paul Moravec’s Quattro Mani (2017) begins as a kind of flitting perpetuum mobile but becomes more serious and quite touching. Bent Sørensen’s Six Intermezzi are also effectively varied. In the first, the pianists play inside as well as on the pianos to create delicate, guitar-like sonorities. Schumannesque harmonies hover behind the second’s tremulous surface, while the fourth is closest in texture to the Adams yet yields different emotions: ruminative and angst-ridden. All in all, this is an enjoyable, wide-ranging programme – I only wish there was more of it.