The Turkish star pianist comes across in this indifferent 2005 documentary as a likeable, self-effacing musician who is as diverse as he is inconsistent. He is on the hitting rather than stroking end of the scale as a pianist, whose performances of the Bach-Liszt Fugue in A minor and the first part of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne are less expressive than his facial and bodily gestures. These are filmed in the shell of a building overlooking the blue sunlit waters of the Bosphorus. The Istanbul rush hour provides the director with footage for the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata, Say’s performance disconcertingly brought to an abrupt halt by the evening call to prayer.

As to Say the composer, I was much drawn to his melancholy and atmospheric Black Earth with its ingenious keyboard imitations of the baglama and saz (Turkish string instruments), and to his haunting, atonal quasi-piano concerto Silk Road. These are of far greater depth and interest than the movement we hear from his oratorio Nazim, written in the kind of Euro-ballad tonal language that Andrea Bocelli revels in. Likewise his Paganini Variations are jejune, jazz-pastiche takes on the famous A minor Caprice in the same questionable taste as the various T-shirts that Mr Say wears.

That said, and though the film is little more than a promotional video, Say emerges as a searcher and a seeker, someone who dares to be different and is not afraid to step outside the concert pianist box to compose, improvise and experiment. We need more like him.