Frederic Rzewski was one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. The themes explored in his late piano works are typical of his entire body of work in their uncompromising and universal nature. The intensely contrapuntal Ruins and virtuoso Wake Up are the last pieces in his vast piano cycle Dreams, while the War Songs weave together six war and anti-war songs from the last seven centuries. Winter Nights was written by Bobby Mitchell. Rzewski said of the three movements that they were intended to help with insomnia in a similar way to Bach's Goldberg Variations, though they are inevitably very different in the darkness of their moods.