“The pianist imagines an old artist, one Franz Liszt, troubled by that spiritual sickness known as nostalgia. At the piano, he strikes up a waltz – Valse oubliée No 1 – but perturbed by his melancholic mood, the waltz trails off…” Thus begins Olivia Sham’s fantastic journey into the creative soul of Liszt à la Berlioz’s semi-autobiographical text for the Symphonie fantastique.

The Australian-born Sham is currently based in London and has a special interest in 19th-century pianos and their music. She recently completed her PhD on Liszt performance practice at the Royal Academy of Music. Quoting directly from Berlioz and Liszt, her programme note imaginatively links works, from across Liszt’s lengthy career, which she performs on two silvery-toned Érards (1840 and 1845) and a modern Steinway model D.

In a nod to the compositional procedures of both Berlioz and Liszt, Sham uses Liszt’s four Valses oubliées, played on the Steinway, as an idée fixe of sorts, to interrupt the aged Liszt’s reveries which take him back variously to the prodigious youth, the virtuoso “at the height of his prowess”, the iconoclast and the champion of new music.

The earlier works are performed on the Érards, and they are among the highlights of this highly imaginative recital. Sham even manages to evoke Liszt’s suavity and youthful arrogance in her selection of the Etudes d’exécution transcendante  (1851); but it is in the Marche au supplice from Liszt’s 1833 transcription of the Symphonie fantastique where her supple technique and ear for colour and drama come into their own as she elicits waves of oneiric sonorities from the 1840 Érard.

A magnificent debut and a worthy companion to Michele Campanella’s Brilliant Classics recital of late works played on Liszt’s Bechstein.