Piano Sonata No. 1 (1990)
Piano Sonata No. 2 (1997)
Piano Sonata No. 3 (2007)
Piano Sonata No. 4 (2019)

During my initial listening session of these recent Piano Sonatas by Australian pianist and composer Carl Vine (b. 1954), my jaw almost dropped to the floor out of unalloyed amazement. These are piano works which during the initial learning process, must require patience, determination and complete and unreserved focus. And once they're entrenched in the memory banks, the pianist needs to perform them with complete and unfettered expressive abandon.

This is the type of piano music that would be right up Marc-André Hamelin's alley. At its most exuberant it's wild, complex, thorny, and intensely passionate. And at the other end of the emotive spectrum, when it turns inward, it becomes liquid crystal. If you are familiar with the piano sonatas of Alexander Scriabin, these could be exactly what he would have composed were he living today. Music very much of today, but firmly ensconced in traditional form and structure. Even within the wildest passages, whipped up into a maelstrom of notes, you can discern the motivic cells at work, and hear the music's narrative thread.

Plaudits and a "virtual" standing ovation to pianist Xiaoya Liu, a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of Michigan and a recipient of many competition top awards, for simply contemplating this recording. I mean, just the final movement of the Piano Sonata No. 4 subtitled 'Fury' (short audio clip below) would be enough to bring any pianist to its knees. The level of technical wizardry and physical stamina required to give it full justice is astounding, but Xiaoya Liu makes it seem as easy as if she was playing "Chopsticks". Bravo!