Also available in this series by pianist Cecile Licad: Anthology of American Piano Music, Vol. 2: American Nocturnes and Anthology of American Piano Music, Vol. 3: American Landscapes

The history of music in America is very different to a history of American music, a fact borne out by this programme of piano sonatas written between 1786 and 1944 by four American composers. Each work is the first piano sonata written by their respective creator. The stylistic richness and formal diversity of the American sonata literature are immediately apparent. Reinagle’s and MacDowell’s sonatas are American by virtue of their composers’ nationality (though a hundred years separate them, the music is unmistakably and unapologetically European in its harmonic language), while those by Griffes and Siegmeister reflect the myriad influences that subsequently contributed to and shaped a specific and distinct American musical voice.