The curtain rips apart with brash glissandos, followed by syncopated bitonality that cries out ‘Busoni in Trinidad!’, only to morph into propulsive Bartókian chords and wild percussion dancing the night away. The themes are closer to ‘hooks’ than melodies, but that’s perfectly fine, because you’re listening with your body. And we’re only into the first of the five movements comprising Callaloo, Stewart Goodyear’s exciting, inventive and smartly scored suite for piano and orchestra.

The second movement gives the percussion section a respite, adding horns alongside the strings. The tempo is slower and the mood is calmer, while Goodyear’s characteristically busy and energetic piano-writing gains breathing room. Goodyear likens the third-movement Ballad to the kind of lilting moderate-tempo mento that Harry Belafonte popularised (think of the singer’s treatment of ‘Jamaica Farewell’).

The solo-piano fourth-movement cadenza begins lyrically yet traverses the whole keyboard; again Busoni’s harmonic ambivalence informs Goodyear’s aesthetic but with a sensual component distinctly his own. The cadenza ultimately builds into a frenzied yet strongly profiled fifth-movement finale with full forces present. Here Goodyear’s penchant for counterpoint conveys more focus (the fleet trumpet and clarinet lines against the piano, for example). I find the extended percussion-only passage towards the end a tad audience-baiting and ‘showbiz’-orientated but it admittedly works – and, besides, the public can’t resist a drum solo! Under Wayne Marshall’s sympathetic leadership, the Chineke! Orchestra sound as if they’re having the time of their lives.

Goodyear’s three-movement Piano Sonata stems from his 18th year, and he confesses that he wanted to show off and write the most difficult piano work ever. While the outer movements’ pop influence results in stretches of predictable syncopations, I hear sheer creativity and joy rather than youthful hubris in Goodyear’s wonderfully idiomatic piano-writing. The slow movement works best when Goodyear sings out simply, yet works less well in his fatiguing deployment of high-register block chords. Still, we hear a real composer in the making, not to mention an ‘unreal’ pianist; those effortless double notes and ricocheting chordal jumps alone will make mortal key-pushers green with envy. And with so many pianists these days mistaking Rhapsody in Blue for Rachmaninov’s Third, Goodyear’s bracingly forthright and ever-fresh interpretation is a welcome corrective.

If you only know this musician from his Beethoven sonata cycle and complete Nutcracker ballet transcription recordings, be prepared for another extraordinary example of Stewart Goodyear’s wide-ranging gifts.