Three gardens, one cycle: from birth to maturity, from mystical ecstasy to the return to the earth. On Le Jardin de l’Abîme, Roberta Pandolfi turns that cycle into a botanical self-portrait built from three rare works for piano. Croatian composer Dora Pejačevi0’s Blumenleben (1904/05) is the garden in bloom: eight miniatures, from Snowdrop to Chrysanthemum, each carrying a symbolic meaning. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji’s Le Jardin Parfumé (1923) is the garden at its most intense and sensual, its extreme pianism demanding countless kinds of pianissimo.

Jonathan Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen (1994) closes the journey, setting the pianist’s touch against a spectral electronic tape in homage to Messiaen, written two years after his death. Pandolfi, whose Odradek album devoted to Wolfgang Rihm earned a double five-star rating from BBC Music Magazine, describes this first solo album as a musical self-portrait: rare flowers, offered with respect. Recorded at Officina 440, Milan, on a Steinway D.