Summertime

For her second album, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason turns to American music for inspiration. Its name, <i>Summertime</i>, may be the title of one of Gershwin’s greatest songs—heard here in a joyful, virtuosic transcription by legendary pianist Earl Wild—but this collection is all about Samuel Barber’s great <i>Piano Sonata</i>, a mighty work that draws on 20th-century European modernism while stealing glances towards Hollywood and Broadway. It’s a work of staggering variety and its playful, sinister opening movement, doleful second and almost Shostakovich-esque finale earn it a rightful place in the pantheon of piano masterpieces. The versatile Kanneh-Mason is a masterful guide, as she is when showcasing other, lesser-known works by Amy Beach (a shamefully neglected giant of American music), Aaron Copland and 19th-century English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose arrangements of three spirituals provide an emotional coda.