"Recommended: Jin Yin ("Golden Tone") celebrates the musical cross-fertilization between China and the USA. The recording includes works by five composers with a musical foot, as it were, in both countries, performed by several US-based musicians, several of whom are of Chinese descent ... From the Chinese we get the insistent repetitions and extreme bendings and manipulations of pitch, as well as the metallic ringing of the prayer bowls which symbolically introduce moments of reflection, while from the Western traditions we get the strong harmonic and rhythmic roots as well as the extreme technical virtuosity. There is a sense of continually evolving colours - something which belies the relatively modest forces of the instrumental line up - and, as a performance, the Civitas Ensemble and Yihan Chen prevent a powerfully committed and compelling performance"

"This recording featuring world-premieres of new instrumental chamber works by five contemporary Chinese composers ... creating unusual sounds by simply using instruments uncommon to the ears of most Western listeners-for the most part they do it with such "conventional" instruments as violin, cello, flute, piccolo, clarinet, and piano. Percussion of various kinds is an important element of several works, as is the pipa (the popular four-string Chinese lute), which, in the hands of virtuoso Yihan Chen, is one of the stars of the show ... I'm just losing myself in the music without thinking about meaning or context. A journey into another dimension - a wondrous land that if you choose to enter, you won't experience casually or with indifference"