Quick question: how many composers does it take to create a song-cycle? In the case of ‘Cloud River Mountain’, the answer is four: Lao Luo (the German-born Robert Zollitsch) and the co-artistic directors of Bang on a Can – Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. Their efforts add up to a compelling and varied work, judging from the excerpts on this new recording, with an emphasis on ‘excerpts’.

While the full cycle comprises 11 songs running 70 minutes, the disc contains only six  – as well as a Lao Luo selection, Tan Te, which has become an online phenomenon – for a total of 33 minutes. That’s a paltry amount of content for a compact disc, especially when the songs, performed so vividly by Chinese vocalist Gong Linna and the Bang on a Can All-Stars, seize the ears from start to finish.

The music heads in many stylistic directions, embracing Chinese pop, minimalism, folk and other idioms. Set to verses about nature, metaphysics and love by the Chinese poet Qu Yuan (c340-278BC), the collection presented here contains three songs in Mandarin and three in English; the vocal line in Tan Te is built on syllables.

Lao’s songs are suffused with Chinese contemporary elements, including popular influences, its music both relentless and reflective. Wolfe’s Into the Clouds has a driving intensity, Gordon’s River glistening sonorities and syncopated rhythms, and Lang’s Girl With Mountain otherwordly lines coloured by spare instrumental gestures.

Gong’s voice is at turns silken and penetrating, her ability to ‘scat’ remarkable in Tan Te. The Bang on a Can All-Stars animate every fresh, quirky and haunting phrase. Now, could we please have the rest of the cycle?