The present CD features five great works by five great Afro-American musicians. The first piece is the Overture from the opera Treemonisha, which Scott Joplin completed in 1911, centred on the fight between good and evil, between the light of reason and the darkness of superstition, which obsessed Joplin in the last years of his life. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue voices the youthful self-confidence of the new era, it exudes modernity, rhythm and speed. By James P. Johnson there follows the rhapsody Yamekraw (1927), a piece of monumental beauty and power thanks to Johnson's granitic piano writing - which in passages makes the piano vibrate like an organ - and the stately efficiency of his themes. Africa by William Grant Still, the greatest Afro-American symphonic writer of the 1900s, draws the picture of an imaginary Africa using the music material at hand: the work's fabric is woven with beautiful themes, often in the fashion of blues or spirituals. Last in chronological order, New World a-Comin', is one of the most admired works by the mature Ellington, that of the great "suites". This work beautifully blends a noble inspiration and the graceful humour of everyday life, sharing, with the works of Joplin, Johnson and Still, a powerful religious inspiration.