Leave it to a British band to come up with a really first-rate album of American works. The Academy of St. Martin In The Fields and conductor Neville Marriner have chosen pieces that, aside from the ubiquitous Barber Adagio For Strings, are just slightly, or in some cases completely, off the beaten track. But all are vital, accessible, and distinctly American. Ives' Symphony #3 is a genial if challenging exercise in what Ives himself called "ear stretching" — a musical kaleidoscope of American hymn tunes, folk songs, and up-to-the-minute (for 1910) compositional techniques.

The Barber is the album's biggest draw, and the Ives its biggest piece, but the real gems are the other three scores. Copland's "Quiet City" is a marvel — a sonic poem about a city (presumably New York) late at night, when everything is closed and dark. Maybe there's a lonely trumpeter practicing, perhaps under a highway overpass. You can practically hear a lone car passing by on a distant street left wet by an earlier shower. Henry Cowell, an important figure in 20th-century American music but woefully underrepresented on disc, wrote a series of Hymns and Fuguing Tunes, works that predated by almost 50 years the revived… read more »