Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic is a cycle of 15 piano miniatures. Eleven are respectively dedicated to specific segments of the American population affected by the pandemic, along with the virus itself. The other four pieces comprise four ‘Consolations’. Two of the Consolations serve as the cycle’s prologue and epilogue, while the other two function as interludes. If you listen to these pieces without looking at the booklet notes or publicity material, you’d have no clue about their subtext. The second piece’s gentle rhythmic asymmetry and attractively Sondheimesque harmonic interplay certainly don’t suggest ‘Caretakers & Research Physicians’ to my ears, No 4’s lyrical repeated-note phrases over sparse left-hand chords sound like what might have happened if Messiaen rewrote one of Bernstein’s Broadway ballads, rather than evoking the subtitle’s ‘Rabbis & Ministers’. I cannot fathom what ‘Journalists, Poets, & Writers’ have to do with No 6’s galvanising pop/funk ostinatos – but did I catch a hint of The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’?

Actually, the busy, scurrying patterns throughout No 11 do indeed provide a musical mirror to how ‘Documentary Filmmakers & Photographers’ are always on the move. Such keyboard-writing ought to lend itself to the pressures that ‘Doctors & Interns’ face, yet they receive a relatively sombre, chorale-like movement (No 12). Both ‘The Visible Enemy’ (No 7) and ‘The Invisible Enemy’ (No 9) expertly follow the mid-20th-century American Schuman/Harris/Piston playbook, while ‘An Elegy for Our Time’ (No 8) showcases Danielpour’s lyrical gift at its heartfelt and understated best. So does the epilogue Consolation.

Whether or not the pieces satisfy as a unified entity, their individual virtues ought to entice listeners and pianists. Danielpour wrote these pieces for Simon Dinnerstein, and one assumes that her sensitive performances satisfied the composer’s wishes. However, I could imagine more urgent and emotionally contrasted readings of Danielpour’s three Bach transcriptions than what Dinnerstein’s pretty yet rather generalised, tensionless playing conveys.