HENRY COWELL. "Piano Music" (Smithsonian Folkways) A true American pioneer, Cowell slaps the piano with his palms, strums the strings, hits tone clusters with his forearms, and rubs a china darning egg across the keys--all in works he wrote from the 'teens and '20s. Some are quite terrifying, like 1925's "The Banshee" in which he rubs the piano strings lengthwise to evoke a ghostly wail. This reissue of a Folkways LP from 1963 also has Cowell's spoken comments about the works, so we hear him explain in his flat ... accent that 1914 "Anger Dance" (which instructs the player to repeat each phrase many times depending on how angry he or she feels) was composed after a doctor he consulted about a knee spasm told Cowell he should get his leg amputated immediately.