The hunt for buried treasure is quite an industry these days, but coming up with gold is far from guaranteed. No problem, it appears, for Robert Treviño and the Basque National Orchestra. American Opus is the sequel to 2021’s excellent Americascapes (Ondine ODE 1396-2) and once again the Mexican-American conductor demonstrates a gift for sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Where volume one programmed rarities by Loeffler, Ruggles, Hanson and Cowell to demonstrate the outward influence of the United States on European music, for his follow up Treviño adopts a more inward-looking approach. “What is America?” he asked himself. But since America is so many things to millions of different people, the question boiled down to, “What is America to me?” The result includes works by three very different composers – one Black, one White, and one from Latin America – and with two of them Treviño had a direct artistic relationship.

George Walker (1922-2018) is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance these days. A fearlessly uncompromising artist, Walker became friends with Treviño while preparing the premiere of his Fourth Symphony....