Here’s a fine, intelligently programmed, eloquently played debut on disc with an intriguing premise by the young Australian pianist, Rob Hao. Taking Schubert’s F-sharp minor Piano Sonata as his starting point, Hao glosses the unfinished fragment with his own notional completion before overlaying both with Chopin Nocturnes, a Schubert Impromptu and song (the latter transcribed by Liszt), Etudes by Alison Kay and three English Country-Tunes by Michael Finnissy.

The result is a well-argued and articulated sleight of hand implied by the album’s title with old and new entering into an ever-changing dialogue with each other. That intriguing notion of composers offering both commentary on and continuation of work by their predecessors is well mapped in Hao’s elegant trajectory from Schubert’s lyrical harmonic fluency through to Finnissy’s intensely virtuosic interrogation of his own English folk heritage.

Hao negotiates the multiple overlapping paths with aplomb, stitching in along the way his own Palimpsest 571, a nod to the catalogue number of Schubert’s early Sonata and a notional, dexterously textured completion (or continuation) of it, sensitive accounts of two late Op. 62 Nocturnes by Chopin (themselves glancing back to Bach), and meticulous delivery of Alison Kay’s contrasting miniatures, the hushed Orison II and lilting, porcelain-delicate Lullaby for Isabelle.

New layers are deftly added with Schubert’s pastorally accented Op. 142 A-flat major Impromptu and Liszt’s studied and artful transcription of Der Müller und der Bach from Die Schöne Müllerin before Finnissy’s atomised take on English folk tunes, Hao treating them to liquid, turn-on-a-sixpence playing rich in detail and feeling.

Adaq Khan’s pristine production and engineering in London’s St. George’s Headstone church, intimately cusps and frames the crisp clarity of Hao’s persuasively careful and considered playing. 

Title: Palimpsest
Works: Music by Schubert, Chopin, Finnissy et al.
Performer: Rob Hao p
Label: Divine Art DDX21140