One usually thinks of something by Copland or Bernstein when the two words American Ballet are mentioned. But here we have no less than three examples of the genre by other significant composers from the immediate post-war years. All of these works were premièred by American Ballet Theatre and it is this orchestra that performs them here.

Perhaps George Antheil (1900-1959) is best-known for another of his ballet scores, the Ballet Mecanique of 1924. The score for Capital of the World dates from 1953 and was based on an Ernest Hemingway short story with the same title.

The exciting Violin Concerto is another example of how good a composer William Schuman (1910-1992) was: it can be found on a disc in the first issue of EMI's American Classics series. Undertow was written in 1945 for the important English dancer/choreographer Antony Tudor, who had moved to New York in 1940 to join the American Ballet Theatre.

Morton Gould (1913-1996) wrote the score for Fall River Legend for the American Ballet Theatre. The story concerns one Lizzie Borden who, in August 1892 at Fall River, Massachusetts, was accused of murdering both of her parents. Although she was subsequently acquitted the event is commemorated in this pithy little rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

And when she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.