‘The Sudden Pianist’ desperately wants you to believe in the dream that 40-something pianist/composer Michael Hersch is, as the cover blurb rhapsodises, ‘one of America’s most singular artists’ and a ‘leading voice among composers of his generation’. But just because a label big cheese decides to print that on the back of a CD doesn’t mean it’s true. And the truth is, in the great scheme of music, Hersch isn’t likely to cause anyone any upsets.

The idea expressed in the booklet-notes – apparently seriously – that Hersch’s piano music is ‘worthy of joining the ranks of such esteemed composers as Messiaen, Sorabji and Finnissy’ is a bold one but can be instantly dismissed once you hear the music. Which is not to say that Hersch’s multi-movement solo piano composition The Vanishing Pavilions is ‘bad’ music necessarily, just that the PR machine behind him needs to take a chill pill and get a sense of proportion. The stylistic lineage of Hersch’s music is easy enough to untangle. Motor-rhythms after Prokofiev and Shostakovich bump into cluster chains care of Messiaen. An awareness of Ives, Ruggles, Cowell et al roughs up the surface, a counterweight that is unfortunately neutered by a stifling underlying formality. No matter what happens above, reassuring repeating figures in the left hand normally glue everything together. And this music needs you to know that it’s riffing off a grand tradition that stretches back to Liszt, Chopin and Alkan.

Richard Anderson’s film adds up to little more than an advertorial. Hersch is filmed sitting in front of Ikea bookcases packed with neatly arranged Dover scores – an unwittingly fitting metaphor I thought – on message with platitudes galore about defining new relevance for the piano and, don’t you know it, there’s a whole orchestra inside that there piano. Most puzzlingly, we’re told that he performs only rarely in public and you genuinely expect some shattering revelation about why this should be so; not that he is obliged to reveal anything, but the question is left awkwardly hanging. Had I not been reviewing, frankly, I’d have bailed early. From the high-pressure sales tactics to the so-so music, I found the whole edifice deeply unappealing.