The instrumental work is equally impressive. Ma, as is well known, must have sold his soul to the Devil to be able to make a cello sound like that, but the others are hardly outclassed. The very first cut, with Bell on violin, accompanied by Meyer, Bush, and Marshall, playing Meyer's "Shot Trip Home," is just about perfect, and the piece itself, with its lovely original melody, is a contribution to the Mountain tradition, not merely a borrowing of it.

Meyer's 1B, which starts out with a very catchy theme that sounds like a folk melody, fairly quickly segues into what is fairly obviously art-music rather than folk-music, but to my ear Meyer is more successful than Dvorak or Copland in making the combination work. O'Connor's violin work is distinctly country fiddlin', though of a very high order; Ma's cello is just Ma's cello, with not a hint of drawl, but somehow the two don't clash at all. If Meyer decided to work in longer forms, he might yet give us the folk analogue to Gershwin's symphonic jazz pieces.

[Heartland is a compilation drawn from several albums, all on the Sony Classical label: Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey (Ma/Meyer/O'Connor), Liberty and Midnight on the Water (O'Connor), and Uncommon Ritual (Meyer/Fleck/Marshall).]