The USA as a great "melting pot" - this also applies to music. On an "American Road Trip", Augustin Hadelich and his piano partner Orion Weiss explore the spirit of a nation that speaks a wide variety of musical languages, from jazz and blues to romanticism and avant-garde to folk and pop. With selected works from around 150 years of American music history, the album American Road Trip is a very personal homage to the country in which the German-born violinist found a new home many years ago. With Amy Beach's Romance op. 23 and the "Cakewalk" Louisiana Blues Strut by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, the album begins with works by a woman and an African-American composer that are only now beginning to receive the recognition they deserve. Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, on the other hand, have long since become classics, and Augustin Hadelich lets them have their say on this album, as well as the great eccentric of the 20th century Charles Ives. The NETSUKE cycle by Stephen Hartke - another contemporary composer in this selection alongside the minimalist master John Adams - shows that not only Europe and Africa have had an influence on US music, but also Asian countries such as Japan. Atmospheric highlights, on the other hand, represent the great folk tradition of the USA: in Daniel Bernard Roumain's "Wild Fiddler's Rag", for example, Hadelich, whose playing, according to The Strad, blends the "passion, brilliance and coherence" of the American school with the "thoughtfulness, expressiveness and nuance" of the European school, is transformed from a virtuoso violinist into a virtuoso fiddle player.