Just when you thought that R.E.M.’s three-legged dog don’t hunt no more, in "Accelerate" they turn in their most powerful and cohesive work since 1992’s "Automatic for the People", a record brimming with all the things that made them great in the first place: clangy autumnal melodies, droney proto-emo vocals, trippy nuance, the haunted poetics of regret, the routine eschewing of the obvious and the familiar in pursuit of the sublime and the unexpected.

Symphony No. 3 (1995) was commissioned by the Würth Foundation for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; première February 5, 1995, by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Künzelsau, Germany. Composed for the 19 string players of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Philip Glass's Symphony No. 3 was designed to treat every musician as a soloist. "The work fell naturally into a four-movement form," Mr. Glass has written, "and even given the nature of the ensemble and solo writing, [it] seems to have the structure of a true symphony."