condition (record/cover): NM / NM (cut-out, in shrink)

Nonesuch Records did something specific and significant in the late 1960s and early 1970s: it placed American music - contemporary and historical, challenging and accessible - in a commercial context, at budget price, and treated it with the same curatorial seriousness that European labels extended to the European canon. This LP is a characteristic example of that project, spanning several generations of American piano music: Charles Griffes, the early modernist whose short career (he died at 35 in 1920) produced some of the most striking impressionist piano writing in the American tradition; Henry Cowell, the Irish-American experimentalist who pioneered tone clusters and string piano techniques decades before Cage formalised prepared piano; Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, the central figures of mid-century American neo-romanticism; David Del Tredici, then at an early stage of the neo-romantic turn that would define his mature career; and Lukas Foss, here in his more approachable guise. A survey that holds more historical depth than its anthology format might suggest.