Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who is represented here by two widely divergent compositions, has earned an international reputation for producing music that is at the same time recognisable, yet different. Like the great masters of bygone times, she creates works “with fingerprints”, pieces that are peculiarly American and that combine craft and inspiration in reflecting the composer’s optimistic and humanistic spirit. Encyclopedia entries do not often make judgements or assessments, but the Eighth Edition of Nicolas Slonimisky’s Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians effectively describes Zwilich’s position among contemporary composers: “There are not many composers in the modern world who possess the lucky combination of writing music of substance and at the same time exercising an immediate appeal to mixed audiences. Ravel was one, and so in a quite different way, were Bartók and Prokofiev. Zwil