American artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko are familiar names. Their closest counterparts among composers—Morton Feldman and George Crumb—remain on the fringes, though their musical canvases aspire to a similarly abstract style.

A selection of the pair’s works for piano offers music of the utmost simplicity.

Crumb’s A Little Suite for Christmas imagines bells and carols in a child’s dream. Feldman’s Palais de Mari weaves a spare tapestry of isolated notes.

Played with extreme sensitivity by Steven Osborne, this is a disc for late-night listening—silence, peace, reverie.