Pianophiles will probably remember Can Çakmur’s exquisite Schubert-Liszt Schwanengesang along with the four Valses oubliées from just a couple of years ago (12/20). Çakmur, who turns 25 this year, was then the freshly minted laureate of the 2018 Hamamatsu competition.

Dimitri Mitropoulos’s extraordinary success as a conductor, including a fruitful tenure at the New York Philharmonic (1949 57), led him to neglect composition. Çakmur has sought out this work from Mitropoulos’s late twenties. A formidably austere Passacaglia is followed by a vaguely jazz-inflected, minute-and-a-half Intermezzo and finally by a more exuberant if unostensibly polyphonic Fugue finale. Enescu is represented by his richly evocative Third Sonata, an emotionally varied, often light-hearted piece. The haunting nature of its Andante cantabile derives from the most delicate melodic embellishments imaginable, to which Çakmur brings the most refined calibrations of touch.

Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907 91) might legitimately be considered a composer of significant gifts, which he lent in support of Atatürk’s creation of the Republic of Turkey. Çakmur has chosen Saygun’s last work, completed just days before his death. He brings an extraordinary psychological intimacy to this highly pianistic work. Interestingly, Saygun was but 28 when, in 1935, he accompanied Bartók on his ethnomusicological researches in Turkey. Of course, it is the Bartók Sonata that enjoys pride of place on the recording in this strikingly original performance. Constructed with the rusticated sandstone that alludes to its folkloric essence, the architecture everywhere expresses the composer’s inspiration and craft, all of which this pianist lends such burgeoning vitality.

As on his first release, Çakmur plays a Kawai concert grand, and his sound is unique: clear, precise, crystalline. He is the master of any and all textures, the exponent of varied styles, each replete with a specific palette of colours. His sense of rhythm is both poised and plastic. Above all, Çakmur is a musician with ideas and sophisticated beyond his years. Moreover, he’s blessed with the means to express the richness of his imagination. Keep an ear cocked for what’s next.