“AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC OF OUR TIME, VOLUME...

“AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC OF OUR TIME, VOLUME II.” Ursula Oppens, piano. Music & Arts CD 699. Following up her 1991 Grammy-nominated disc, Oppens explores further in contemporary American piano music, here in works commissioned by or dedicated to her. This engrossing collection includes Conlon Nancarrow’s typically playful and quirkily ratioed “Two Canons for Ursula,” Tobias Picker’s quietly rapturous “Old and Lost Rivers” and Charles Wuorinen’s exuberantly clanky “Blue Bamboula.” John Harbison’s Piano Sonata No. 1 and Andrew Davis’s “Middle Passage” seem dry and cerebral in this company, but Oppens’ playing is always a treat to hear: so entirely effortless that even the most convoluted conceptions unwind with grace.