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�.