Star rating: *****

IN the early seventies, American minimalist guru Steve Reich and his musicians brought Reich's then-new epic composition, Drumming, to Scotland. It was an otherworldly affair, all white kaftans, long hair, long beards, ritualistic in its presentation and very much of its time.

On Saturday night a new generation of musicians resurrected Drumming and brought it to Perth for a wholly different - and staggering - musical experience.

Colin Currie put together an elite team of top UK percussionists and led them in a stunning, dramatic version of Drumming. This was a very different platoon to Reich's mob, who resembled characters in a Jack Kerouac novel. This lot are young, fit, lean, lithe, fantastically musical and mind-bogglingly virtuosic. And there they all were, pulsing with their professorships, their Young Musician of the Year and BBC New Generation Artist awards: Joby Burgess, Sam Walton, Adrian Spillet, Andrew Cottee, Richard Benjafield, Dave Jackson, Owen Gunnell, Tony Bedewi, with the great Colin Currie, two vocalising singers, and Rowland Sutherland on piccolo.

In their hands, Drumming was a continuum in four parts, not just a hypnotic meander through fields of dreams and out-of-phase rhythmic adventures. This had direction, powering through the multi-bongo first section, beguiling the senses with the marimba marathon of the second, piercing the brain with the golden rainburst of glockenspiels in the third and culminating in an apocalyptic fourth section with everybody piling in.

It was a tour de force for Currie, as organiser and player. And getting it to Perth, exclusively, was a massive artistic coup for Scotland's youngest and brightest concert hall: the real alternative to Edinburgh's wounded leviathan of a venue.