Virgil Thomson’s more than 150 musical portraits span 60 years of creative activity. With few exceptions, he composed them in the presence of a sitter, just as a painter portrays a model. The process was simple: you silently posed, and Thomson composed directly on to manuscript paper, away from the piano and without interruption. The next day he’d make minor adjustments or revisions, if needed.

Whether or not they truly accurately portray the celebrated artists, close friends and casual acquaintances that encompass Thomson’s sitters, they do reflect the composer’s diverse stylistic proclivities. The Louis Lange, Betty Freeman and Anne-Marie Soullière portraits are models of simple yet self-aware tonality. Simple and self-aware bitonality informs the lovely Tango Lullaby. By contrast, the Florine Stettheimer and Pablo Picasso portraits string together seemingly unrelated and disjunctive ideas like a stream of non-sequiturs. For Thomson’s chord progressions at their gnarliest, go to the intense Willy Eisenhart portrait or the loopy Prelude and Fugue portrait of Agnes Rindge, which contains the world’s worst-ever fugue subject! Yet the ravishing nocturne that the composer came up with while his steadfast assistant Louis Rispoli posed may well be Thomson’s most gorgeous and sensual piano piece.

Although Craig Rutenberg is best known as an internationally acclaimed collaborative pianist and much sought-after vocal coach, he also is an exemplary soloist who also happened to be a friend and protégé of Thomson, as well as a portrait subject. He not only understands Thomson’s myriad idiomatic requirements but he also takes the composer’s scores on meticulous faith over the course of these two discs, which represent about half of Thomson’s complete portrait output, some of which have never been recorded before and, in certain cases, remain unpublished. In addition, Rutenberg includes excellent and perceptive readings of Thomson’s two early Sentimental Tangos, plus piano versions of selections from his ballet Filling Station and film score to The Plow that Broke the Plains. Composer Rodney Lister (yet another Thomson acolyte and fellow portrait subject) provides informative and affectionate annotations. While we ultimately need a complete Thomson piano music edition, Rutenberg’s generous and smartly curated ‘gallery’ closes a few gaping discographical gaps, and much more.