Every year, the Ruhr Piano Festival releases a 3 CD box-set of live performance highlights. From the 2017 festival, they present “The Americas” performed by pianists Joseph Moog, Sergio Tiempo, Anna Zassimova, Plamena Mangova, Zhang Zuo & Hanni Liang. The first CD presents the spirited, colourful music of several South American countries, including works by composers such as the Brazilian Heitor Villa- Lobos or the Argentinians Astor Piazzolla and Alberto Ginastera. The second CD takes us to North America. The music of Edward MacDowell, a New York native, exudes a thoroughly European, Late Romantic flair. His Sonata No. 2 grips the listener with a great variety of ideas and overflowing virtuosity which Joseph Moog plays with admirable ease. With Samuel Barber’s Hesitation Tango and George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, we enter the world of American dance music and early 20th-century jazz. These pieces have found a congenial interpreter in Bulgarian pianist Plamena Mangova. The second CD closes with rarities for two pianos. Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell perform Henry Cowell’s Celtic Set, William Bolcom’s Sonata for Two Pianos, and the splendid Hallelujah Junction by John Adams, who has celebrated his 70th birthday this year. The world premiere recording of Manfred Trojahn’s ‘Missed Opportunities’, commissioned by the festival and based on thirteen short texts by author Michael Kruger, completes the set.