In many ways, the 34-year-old Turkish-born pianist Fazil Say is a throwback to an earlier pianistic age – not in his playing style so much as his commitment to composing music as well as performing it. The past century has seen a firm line divided between those disciplines, such that anyone not content to specialise in one was destined for a reputation for dilettantism in both.

Say’s music, though, clamours to be taken seriously. Despite a thoroughly current soundworld, it shares with the pianist’s Romantic forebears a solid pianistic grounding. Music composed by non-performers may have the advantage as far as sonic innovation is concerned, often leaving performers to learn or even develop new techniques to keep up, but performing composers have a distinct advantage in writing music with greater technical and emotional connection with the instrument.

That said, Say is at his best the further he gets away from the solo piano, in these works at least. His two concerto-like works, the Silk Road for piano and chamber orchestra (1997) and his Two Pieces for Piano and Orchestra, ‘Silence of Anatolia’ and ‘Obstinacy’ (2001), are both knowing, percussion-heavy tributes to the earthy Modernism of Bartók and Stravinsky. His Violin Sonata (1997) takes its folklore more at face value, matching a fine gift for melody to rather colourfully violinistic technique.

Of his solo works, Black Earth (1997) opens the recording in a fusion of sources sounding rather like a Turkish folk song jointly rendered by Rachmaninov and Art Tatum. Those same influences return toward the end of the disc in the Paganini Variations (1995), which starts firmly in Rachmaninov territory in Paganini’s 24th Caprice.

Say’s unapologetic love of improvisation comes through on a broader canvas in Dervish in Manhattan (2000), where Sufi music and western jazz meet across rhythmic and cultural divides. With a Turkish ney amid a more conventional jazz trio, the players find a strong sense of immediacy that clearly resonates with the audience in this live recording.

That response, in fact, calls attention to Say’s biggest disadvantage as a composer – the need for immediate gratification and the constant temptation to play to the crowd. Short solo encores may have the biggest payoff on the applause meter, but his extended works are the ones that show the most compositional range.