This is potentially one of the important recordings of our time. Violinist Johnny Gandelsman presents 24 new works by American and US-based composers, of which 21 were commissioned for the project. ‘This Is America’ is described as an anthology that documents the tumultuous years of 2020 21 (though three of the works are from 2018, they resonate with the larger themes). We have an incredibly fine-looking – and clever – object designed by Christopher Kornmann that recalls the collage, scrap-book-like booklet notes of the Anthology of American Folk Music (1952). Kornmann’s frayed-from-use design predicts this album’s likely fate in the Seow household: here are performances so addictive, mysterious and sad that they demand listening time and time again.

Gandelsman’s label describes ‘This Is America’ as a set of ‘new violin works’, but this sells the album short. For also featured is Gandelsman’s playing of tenor guitar, electric tenor guitar and a five-string violin alongside his more regular companion. In this anthology of riches, the best I can do for you is a whistle-stop tour of its standout moments. Comprehending this album’s significance is a job for the much longer term.

First, there are works in which Gandelsman is so uniquely at home in embodying the musical language. Kinan Azmeh’s Sahra be Wyckoff is the first such work: the violin lines swirl and gather in energy, and pretty soon wildness takes over. When Gandelsman begins to stomp (6'31"), this is freakishly organic: music emanates from his being like joyful beams from a lighthouse, and its pulse usurps any control I have over my own body to stay still. It then makes complete musical sense that a choir joins in for the last minute. This is not just a piece of music: Azmeh has composed a gathering of energy, life and belief.

The opposite plays out in A City Upon a Hill? by Rhea Fowler and Micaela Tobin. Its chaos leaves a sadness difficult to swallow. The music, poignant at first, churns grotesquely into the violent: electronic sampling eradicates any trace of nostalgia, and Gandelsman’s violin becomes white static itself. When and how this becomes the Appalachian-green song of Rhiannon Giddens’s New to the Session is a thing of serendipity – the anthology arranges the works alphabetically by composer over the three discs. Gandelsman’s fiddling breathes the forest air and the smoke of the campfire: it is free and practically glows.

And if that wasn’t enough from the foot-stamping, fiddling Gandelsman, in With Love From J by Marika Hughes he sings. Its blue-bruised harmonies conjure the folk-song resistance, and as Gandelsman turns to whistling, I’m reminded of the dream-laced optimism of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. There’s a similar intimacy, as if we’re privy to a soundcheck, in Bojan Louis’s Dólii. But it is not until Surrender to the Adventure at the heart of the third disc, an achingly beautiful four-movement work by Anjna Swaminathan, that I’m stopped in my tracks. Its layered evocation is stunning. The listener feels immersed in the mix – outdoors among the flowers and birds – while Gandelsman’s violin spins its own fragrant breeze.