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There are two multi-movement works by Philip Glass and one by Michael Nyman on the new album released by the Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet. 

The "Mishima" quartet is actually an adaptation for saxophones of a work Glass originally wrote for strings, part of the soundtrack for the movie Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Many critics, myself included, often excoriate Glass for the lack of harmonic development in his pieces. It helps that they are short pieces; none of the six movements is longer than three and a half minutes, and the second and fourth are barely more than a minute each.
The next work, also by Glass, is simply entitled "Saxophone Quartet," and it is a somewhat strangely organized four-movement piece. The first movement is sad and minor. The main melody carried on the soprano sax is lyrical enough, but the accompaniment is generally uninspired. As a longer work, around five and a half minutes, it does suffer from a bit of that Glassian repetitiveness. The second movement is considerably more energetic and daring. The ensemble works together more effectively here; rather than one instrument having the melody while the others play repeating patterns, there is a great deal of trading back and forth, and phrases of powerful homophony as well, particularly towards the end. Unfortunately, the third movement is both the longest and the dullest. It has neither the excitement of the second nor the lyricism of the first. Glass also returns to a much more straightforward arranging technique for much of the movement, with each of the players getting their turn having the primary melody, while the others play the same old interlocking pulse pattern. Luckily, the fourth movement makes up for the flaws in the rest of the longer work, and then some. It is amazing, probably my single favorite piece by Glass. The stuttering, syncopated rhythmic motive is inseparable from the driving melodic line, that here undergoes actual transformation and development as the piece goes on. 

Michael Nyman's collection "Songs for Tony," also a four-movement work, begins very promisingly. The warm, Renaissance-like concluding cadence is a nice touch as well. The other three movements, regrettably, never attain the same vitality as the first. The third movement's main theme is memorable, even catchy, but the transformations it undergoes are unconvincing and ultimately not very, well, transformative. While in the fourth movement, Nyman aims for real subtlety with an extremely quiet main melody in the bari sax, that is only lightly accompanied. 

This Sonic Art Quartet's album is, overall, pleasant but uneven. The second and third works presented have beautiful moments, but in most of the cases there is too much dead air between them to allow the music as a whole to come alive. For fans of the original version of the "Mishima" quartet, the reworking for saxophones is worth hearing, and the strongest movements of each of the two other offerings deserve to be entered into the canon of literature for the sax quartet.