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Textura

Australian pianist Rob Hao deployed an interesting concept as a template for his debut album, whose title alludes to the act of writing over an existing work but not so completely that the original is effaced. In leaving visible traces of it behind, a startling juxtaposition remains that allows the earlier and later treatments to co-exist. The idea applies equally well to literary, visual, and musical contexts, but Hao’s focus is obviously on the latter. To that end, the sixty-five-minute set includes his own elaboration on a Schubert sonata, a Liszt transcription, and Michael Finnissy’s reimaginings of English country-tunes. The palimpsest concept, in short, enabled Hao to devise a programme that while ranging widely and adventurously is still held together by a central theme.

The concept lends itself naturally to artistic practice when every creator builds on what’s come before. As Hao notes, the score for a piece of music acts as a palimpsest when any and every performance is an act of interpretation and thus superimposition. Even the most exhaustively detailed score can’t prevent the performer from personalizing a treatment, Glenn Gould’s two recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations merely one illustration. A fertile dialogue between past and present is effected every time a new performance occurs.

Recorded at St. George’s Headstone Harrow in London during February 2025, Palimpsest augments Schubert’s unfinished Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor (and Hao’s “completion” thereof) and Finnissy’s material with Chopin’s final nocturnes, two etudes by British composer Alison Kay, an impromptu by Schubert, and Liszt’s piano transcription of Der Müller und der Bach. Hao, born in Auckland but raised in Sydney, delivered his first concerto performance at the age of sixteen and later graduated from the Royal College of Music where he specialized in both composition and piano. He’s performed at the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Recital Centre, and in the UK. All such experiences readied him to meet the many challenges this debut release poses.

Palimpsest opens with the unfinished sonata fragment Schubert composed in his early twenties. Classic Schubertian brooding initiates the setting as undulating left-hand patterns lend the music an enticing lilt. Oscillating fluidly between major and minor tonalities, the haunting material glows with a gentle incandescence, and Hao’s performance is distinguished by sensitivity to touch, tempo, and dynamics; however, as only the work’s exposition and development were completed, it lends itself perfectly to his three-minute “extension.”Hao understands that the idea of completing Schubert’s fragment is impossible—no one can ever sufficiently inhabit another’s sensibility that fully—but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of creating a continuation that credibly extends its tone and style. It helps that the transition from the original to Palimpsest 571 is effected seamlessly, though the more abstract sound world of Hao’s treatment is audibly different than the one fashioned by Schubert.

From that contemporary realm, we return to an earlier one via Chopin’s final nocturnes and a reinstatement of the lyrical tone of the fragment. Composed three years before his death, the two entrance with their delicate flowing lines and vulnerability. Both the B Major first and E Major second grant Hao ample time to give eloquent voice to their introspection; they’re both also long enough that structurally they allow for an opening section to be followed by a contrasting central episode and then eventually return at the end, though this time in a more resigned state. The dignity with which the tender E Major setting is executed speaks highly on behalf of Hao’s artistry. Leaping back to the present, Palimpsest continues with two short etudes by Kay, the poetic first, “Orison II,” severely minimal and intensely atmospheric, and the second, “Lullaby for Isabelle,” written for her daughter and in its dreamlike character a compelling evocation of the liminal space between waking and sleep.

The second piece from Schubert’s Impromptu in A-flat major returns the recording to the place from which it began, though now with Hao’s exquisite rendering of material written in 1827, a year before the composer’s death. Drawn from the cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, the final Schubert setting is Liszt’s transcription of its penultimate song “Der Müller und der Bach” (The Miller and the Brook), which segues between tragedy and affirmation. Much like the fragment at album’s start, the way “Der Müller und der Bach” moves between major and minor tonalities enhances its hypnotic allure.

For the final time we jump to the present day with three pieces from Finnissy’s set of English Country-Tunes (1977/1982-85), considered to be one of his most notorious and uncompromising creations. That said, there’s little overly daunting about “Midsummer morn” when it begins in a largely tranquil mode; it grows increasingly shadowy and convulsive, however, when its melody is subjected to violent deconstruction and transformation. Tranquility reasserts itself for “My bonny boy,” with this time a single melodic line alluding tangentially to the original as it advances across slowly modulating terrain. “Come beat the drums and sound the fifes,” the aggressive concluding movement of the eight-part work, rumbles threateningly when the extreme upper register evokes the fifes and the combative lower the drums.

Palimpsest is a fascinating album for its set-list, as well as a terrific document of Hao’s pianistic prowess, and the range he demonstrates in tackling stylistically contrasting works by composers from different time periods impresses too. As importantly, it successfully accomplishes its goal in showing how fundamental the palimpsest idea is to music’s evolution and to the way in which material becomes, in his words, “a living canvas for contemporary performers and composers to interact with.”