CLASSICAL20.COM

The Kronos Quartet is ensconced at Carnegie Hall for a Perspectives series that explores the expansive, stylistically borderless repertory for which this ensemble is known, with master classes and a program by student quartets along the way. The group made a down payment on this minifestival in November, when it performed Tan Dun’s “Ghost Opera” and the pageantlike “Chinese Home” during Carnegie Hall’s festival of Chinese music. But the series got under way in earnest on Thursday evening, with a program of Terry Riley’s music at Zankel Hall.

Single-composer programs are rare for the Kronos, but the Riley program celebrated a relationship that dates back 30 years, to Kronos’s early days, and has yielded 26 works. Kronos built its program around three of the latest, with glances back at two earlier scores as well.

All this music addresses, however abstractly, Mr. Riley’s longstanding interest in fostering peace. And two of the new works focus more specifically on how children see the world around them and what they will make of the planet they are inheriting.

Read the full review in The New York Times here.