This debut recording by husband-and-wife piano duo of Lukas Geniušas and Anna Geniushene (runner-up to Yunchan Lim at the 2022 Van Cliburn competition) beats a revealing path through 20th-century Americana.
Four works date from the 1930s, including Gershwin’s Cuban Overture and Copland’s El Salón México. Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks was the composer’s first US commission; played in the composer’s two-piano version rather than by chamber orchestra, it seems less an 18th-century homage and more a direct link between the baroque and 20th-century minimalism. A complete contrast comes with Balinese Ceremonial Music by Colin McPhee, who was mining the potential of gamelan music decades before other western composers followed.
