Born in 1938 into a musical family, John Harbison studied at Harvard, and with Roger Sessions at Princeton. He is one of America�s most accomplished musicians, with four symphonies, three operas and a Pulitzer Prize-winning cantata to his credit. Of his Piano Trio No. 2, Harbison writes: �[It] makes little contact with the Mozart-to-Shostakovich central trio repertoire, and a great deal with the transparency, ambiguity, and shiftiness of Papa Joseph Haydn�. The Gatsby Etudes, �pianistically challenging and fun to play�, were written while Harbison was preparing the opera The Great Gatsby for production by the Metropolitan Opera. The Violist�s Notebooks were inspired by Bartolomeo Campagnoli�s (1751-1827) Caprices for viola, Harbison�s own instrument. Other works on this disc include an earlier piano trio and a cello suite, which the composer describes as �baroque in origins, more private, and very compact�.

CADMAN: Piano Trio in D Major / Violin Sonata / Piano Quinte

Opposites abound in George Rochberg' music, never more so perhaps than in Carnival Music, his only piano work to employ popular musical idioms, where one encounters exuberance and introspection, great power and deep reflection.

There is a fire in the brain, in the mind, which comes from the universal fire that makes solar systems and galaxies, asteroid belts and comets, huge orbiting spirals, circles, loops that bend back on themselves in giant symmetries.

George Rochberg' relationship with the past is not one of nostalgia; it is one of intimate, living familiarity.

•Two compelling American Piano Sonatas.

This disc presents a survey of the piano music of American composer Carson Cooman, performed by pianist Donna Amato, for whom the virtuosic Fourth Piano Sonata was composed.

The music of award-winning composer Paul Reale has a truly authentic American voice: eclectic in it's cultural references and having a respect for tradition, but with a knife-sharp edge that keeps listeners alert. This collection of piano pieces represents the widest possible variety in his catalog chosen together with soloist John Jensen, a pianist with whom Reale has worked for most of his life and considers his ideal interpreter. Atmospheres of jazz-infused bar-life, Piazzolla's tangos and a comic pastiche on Beethoven's contrast with the dark and austere Stroke of Midnight, the chiming bells of which confront the harsh realities of mortality.

Recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer and Academy Awards, among other prizes and fellowships, Sebastian Currier composes 'music with a distinctive voice' that is 'lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new'.

• Two startlingly original works from one of the most influential figures in contemporary music. De Profundis has been described as a 'melodramatic oratorio' for speaking pianist.

EBERHARD: Piano Concerto / Prometheus Wept

Known for his large-scale compositions, Leonard Bernstein also wrote for his own instrument, the piano. The sequence of four Anniversaries, published between 1944 and 1989, are brief, deftly evocative vignettes written to celebrate his many friends, colleagues and family members. The early Piano Sonata is imbued with youthful self-confidence, and explores certain compositional techniques to which he was to return in more mature works. The rhythmically incisive Music for the Dance No. II is another important early work.

David Winkler has composed some two hundred works to date, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, choral music and song cycles. In recent years, he has developed a unique and powerful style which at once connects with traditional a.

The Phoenix, co-commissioned by the Seattle Symphony and Danish National Symphony Orchestra, was inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen tale, the mythical bird symbolizing for Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng "the muse of all peoples."

•This sixth Naxos album, Out of Darkness, from Music of Remembrance devoted to remembering Holocaust musicians and their art through recordings and commissions of new works, is a moving musical witness to survival in the face of unimaginable adversity.