Concert music (what we are going to call "modern classical music" for this article) is alive and well in the United States and abroad. This is largely because of the efforts of Klaus Heymann and Naxos Records, who have created a new paradigm for marketing concert music, one that has left the big names (EMI, BMG) reeling. Naxos' two prong attack is based on one, providing affordable compact discs of the standard repertoire recorded by smaller orchestras, ensembles, and lesser known solo musicians. The second prong is the label branching out into the lesser represented repertoire not typically addressed by the larger labels.

The People United Will never Be Defeated! / Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by Frederic Rzewski is an example of the latter marketing prong of attack. Frederic Rzewski is a living American composer known for his dazzling piano technique, his militant composing, and his left-wing politics. The People United Will never Be Defeated! (1975) is an hour long set of 36 variations on the melody of El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido by Chilean composer Sergio Ortega (1938-2003), a likewise leftist fixture in South America. "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" is the fourth in four pieces composed by Rzewski under the title, Four North American Ballads (1979).

The pianist for this unusual recital is the Amsterdam trained Ralph van Raat. He also provides the liner notes for this release and opens them with the long acknowledged observation about modern classical music:

"If there has been a general opinion that musical modernism of the twentieth century has led a priori to inaccessibility of its compositions for a wide audience, then it is the composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski who has provided one of the strongest testimonies against this belief. A landmark in American piano literature, and perhaps one of the most important variation sets ever written, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! has a strong programmatic thread which is able to carry the listener through some very complex music in a natural way."