Made in USA

The Rhapsody in Blue, presented at its 1924 premiere as "An Experiment in Modern Music", made George Gershwin famous and he soon set to work on a version for solo piano, recorded here by Claire Huangci. With her first solo album for Alpha Classics, Claire Huangci wanted to celebrate this centenary alongside her roots in America, where she was born, studied music and made her debut as a concert artist at age nine. The brilliant improviser and transcriber Earl Wild (1915-2010) took Gershwin's songs (Liza, Fascinatin' Rhythm, Somebody Loves Me, I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You, Oh, Lady Be Good, The Man I Love) as the basis for his Virtuoso Etudes for solo piano. Equally virtuosic is the Sonata op. 26 by Samuel Barber, which Vladimir Horowitz (who gave its premiere in December 1949 in Havana) regarded as one of the few Americans capable of writing for piano. The composer Amy Beach, born in New Hampshire, was inspired by the folk music of the New World and the Balkans, but retained the harmonic language she had inherited from the Romantics. Her Variations op. 60 (1904) testify to these influences.