In the booklet Elena Fischer-Dieskau’s biography coyly says she was ‘born into a family of musicians’, which hardly sums up the fact that her grandfather was one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. This is her first recording and she makes the bold move of plunging into repertoire that has previously been recorded by the great and the good. Is it fair, then, to set her performances against comparisons? To my mind the answer has to be yes, for a review is after all first and foremost for the reader (and potential consumer) more than the performer.

Fischer-Dieskau is now based in Edinburgh, and made this recording in the city’s Queen’s Hall in September last year. From the start of the Op 116 Fantasies her determination to make her own mark on this music is clear, with the addition of rubato in the first Capriccio in sometimes unexpected places – somewhat at the cost of a sense of drive. The Intermezzo that follows is more effective, with the pianist combining intimacy with a sense of storytelling. To my ears she’s too studied in the gentle sadness that suffuses the fourth piece, but in the fifth piece she brings an apt breathless quality to its chordal writing, contrasting it with the richness of the sixth. The final number feels weighty texturally – compared to Jonathan Plowright, who manages to balance power and momentum more winningly.

She closes her recital with the Two Rhapsodies, Op 79. I have to confess that I find the B minor first piece a fairly trying affair and it’s a rare artist who manages to convince me otherwise (notably Plowright, who finds myriad colours). Fischer-Dieskau is, on the other hand, persuasive in the popular G minor second piece.

Fischer-Dieskau is entering an even more competitive arena in Kreisleriana. As with the Brahms, there’s no doubting the thought that has gone into making this music her own; but sometimes she focuses on details at the expense of the bigger picture, allowing, for instance, the left-hand writing undue prominence in the opening number. The second movement sounds somewhat ponderous, certainly compared to Géza Anda who, both live and in the studio, gives much more sense of the question and answer to the phrases, and in the extrovert interlude (track 9, from 2'52") she’s far less ebullient than him. Her interventionist approach also affects the fifth movement, into whose mix of darting energy and lyrical interludes she injects a rubato to the opening phrases that destroys the impetuousness that Uchida, for example, conveys so perfectly. The Sehr langsam sixth movement comes across as too slow, too, though it’s not down to tempo per se but rather the way she draws the lines. Uchida is even slower but her long-breathed phrasing sounds more flowing. The seventh movement has an apt drive to it but an over-emphasis on the left hand means the right hand’s falling three-note figure is all but lost, though when the textures thin out towards the end she is more convincing. The final number also sounds overly effortful, particularly when set alongside Uchida’s tripping ease.