This recording, appropriately entitled Portrait, covers a good cross-section of Ruth Crawford Seeger's output, including her "serious" personal compositions, her folk-promoting work (Rissolty Rossolty), and her most famous piece, the String Quartet 1931. For the clip this month, I offer an early work, which happens to be the first work of Seeger's that I ever heard, the evocative Music for Small Orchestra from 1926 (also known as the Two Movements for Chamber Orchestra). For flute, clarinet, bassoon, four violins, two cellos, and piano, the work shows the composer already in great control of musical forces and effects. And even though she was, at the time, under the thrall of the works of Scriabin, in particular, a unique voice is already emerging (compare with, for example, the early works of the wonderful Szymanowski, some of which, as I mentioned 14 years ago, sound a little too much like Strauss). Seeger's eventual output, cut tragically short by a relatively early death, is nothing short of extraordinary.