Given the relative unfamiliarity of the works on this disc, I decided to audition each selection first without knowing the composers’ identities.

Regarding the opening three-movement Sonata in C sharp minor without a scorecard, so to speak, you’d guess that pianist Hanni Liang had discovered the love child of Schumann and Tchaikovsky (perish the thought!). But it’s the Ethel Smyth Sonata, a work abounding in the composer’s declamatory earnestness and harmonic sophistication. The piano-writing itself is not so ingratiating as the strong musical content, but that matters little.

The next work sounded like one of those numerous bitonal rumbas that Darius Milhaud churned out like hot cakes, only to lapse into a harmonic sequence straight out of the Stevie Wonder playbook circa 1973. I’m not sure if the progression of interesting ideas adds up to more than the sum of its parts, but at least Liang brings idiomatic ‘swing’ to the syncopations. Still, Errollyn Wallen’s I Wouldn’t Normally Say is pleasantly catchy and fun to hear.

Imagine if Elgar had been assigned to edit a previously unpublished variation set by Brahms that was typically lush and rigorously contrapuntal. Again, Ethel Smyth is the composer. Does the ‘of an Exceeding Dismal Nature’ in her title refer to the variations themselves or only the theme? Certainly nothing sounds remotely dismal to this reviewer!

The first three minutes of Sally Beamish’s Night Dances are sparse and stark, giving no indication of the jagged asymmetric gestures up ahead, nor the long stretches of petulant percussive phrases displaced between registers. To my ears, the 13-minute piece goes on too long for what it has to say, but Liang’s masterly control of dynamics and pacing holds your attention. By contrast, the next set of variations subjects the theme to a variety of imaginative transformations and stylistic allusions that suggest yet never give away their influences. No, this is not a newly uncovered Benjamin Britten work but rather Chen Yi’s Variations on the Uyghur folk song ‘Awariguli’. The final selection, entitled Cwicseolfor, begins with a virtuosic onslaught of Charles Ivesian energy that segues into more relaxed and lyrical fluidity, where Claude Debussy and John Adams figuratively break bread. After a dark and desolate slow-motion episode, the music gradually works its way back to where it began, and builds to a final climax featuring both hands battling it out with clusters in the highest and lowest registers. This is Eleanor Alberga’s most powerful piano piece yet, and Liang plays the living daylights out of it. Indeed, the pianist does full justice to the five women whose works on this disc add up to one of the most unhackneyed, unpredictable, well-constructed, musically diverse and interpretatively gratifying piano releases I’ve encountered. The sound lacks immediacy, yet conveys a palpable concert-hall ambience.