Rolf Hind’s reputation as a pianist who ventures where others fear to tread is no less evident in his own music, with its inspiration in such disparate sources as fractal geometry and yoga positions. The latter is central to The Eye of Fire (2004), a sequence of 14 sections grouped into three parts, in which piano and string quartet unfold a representation of these ‘positions’ whose relatively increasing difficulty mirrors the cumulative momentum of the music. Such fastidiousness of expression is to be heard on a larger scale in Maya-Sesha (2007), a piano concerto whose three movements comprise an intensifying processional, a central span with elements of the chaconne underpinning its resourceful depiction of Indian street life, then a final recessional where the earlier activity is heard from a much more rarefied perspective.

Yet it is the earliest and shortest piece which also leaves the most lasting impression. The City of Love (2002) draws on brief texts from the 17th-century Hindi poet Bihari, its three songs setting the vocal line in a delicate but often animated context in which the violin acts as emotional intermediary between voice and piano. Music, moreover, that is tailor-made for the eloquent soprano of Sarah Leonard, though it is Hind’s incisive and dextrous pianism that dominates this disc as a whole. Unobtrusively fine sound (taken from three distinct sources) and succinct booklet-notes add to the appeal of a disc that further reinforces Hind’s standing as a composer of no mean substance.