Following his first album of North American piano music of 2014 (AUDITE92702), Ulrich Roman Murtfeld now presents a second CD showcasing the boundless wealth of this repertoire. The pieces presented here span 150 years, ranging from sonatas by the British-born American composer Alexander Reinagle, written in 1790, to works by Roger Sessions (written around 1940), one of the most significant representatives of academic American modernism.

By including works by Edward MacDowell and Charles Ives, Murtfeld contrasts two composers working at the turn of the twentieth century whose artistic response to the question of national identity in American music could not be more different. George Antheil’s brief and brilliant Jazz Sonata concludes the programme: it served as a musical calling card for the “bad boy of music” in 1922, unambiguously declaring the American avant-garde’s call to be heard by the Old World.