The latest record by Angeleno pianist Gloria Cheng is about lineage: What Esa-Pekka Salonen—known as the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but increasingly coming into view as a composer—and Steven Stucky share is a direct musical line from the great Polish modernist Witold Lutoslawski. One hears the elder figure’s influence on the younger composers in their effervescent-yet-biting music, which is unafraid to sing, scream or inspire giggles.

Salonen’s Yta II is a glamorously constructed mishmash of keyboard antics—hysterical in its trajectory, especially the flip ending. In contrast, Stucky’s “Sereno, Luminoso” (from Four Album Leaves) is a baleful nocturne: contemplative, gorgeously unsettled, a quiet cri de coeur sung to nobody. Lutoslawski’s three-movement Sonata for Piano, from 1934, is the work of a restless and inventive young man. One can almost hear a new, more violent world about to barge in on these quiet thoughts, as the forgotten work reveals fleeting glimpses of a fiercer aesthetic to come.

The real star of the record is Cheng, who handles this daunting stuff with such humble precision and so wide a range of hues that it hardly feels “modern.” Missing is the “hey look at me—I’m doing something hard” ethos that drains most contemporary programs: Cheng might as well be playing Chopin. Like any virtuoso, she makes it seem easy—the hardest thing for a performer to do.

Gloria Cheng’s CD is out Tue 22.