This is the third movement of Steve Reich's collaboration with the Kronos Quartet called Different Trains, this movement is called "After The War". The story behind this work is that when Reich was growing up in 1940, his parents got divorced and he spent a lot of time taking the train from New York to Los Angeles. The title comes from his realization years later that has a Jew, if he had lived in Europe he would have been on the train to a concentration camp. This movement is my favorite of the three, it combines the themes of the bustling and energetic opening movement with the harrowing second. The result is a piece of music that is just hauntingly beautiful. Reich uses his usual doubling and layering techniques, multi-tracking the quartet to form the sound of a twelve piece ensemble. Reich also uses sampled snippets of interviews throughout all three movements, they are manipulated so that have a melodic and rhythmic quality to them, so instead of being played on top of the Quartet they are interlaced with it.
I know some people find Reich's music difficult to listen to, they find his looped melodic and rhythmic patterns monotonous and boring and just wait for something else to happen. If you've never heard him before, I ask that you focus on the music instead of just passively listen to it. That way, you have a better chance of getting swept away by it and catching all the subtleties inside the performance. Hopefully you'll come to love his work as much as I do.