Oleg Marshev is to Danacord what Michael Ponti was to Vox, having given us such scintillating concerto obscurities as Winding’s A minor, Pabst’s E flat and Malling’s C minor. We have heard far too little from him in recent years so it is good to know that he has lost neither his appetite for works that have fallen by the wayside nor the sparkling joie de vivre that is a hallmark of his playing. Marshev himself describes the works here as ‘an extreme joy to perform and incredibly good in terms of writing for the piano, full of charm, brightness, elegance, fun and melodic beauties’, qualities he conveys in spades throughout the 245 minutes of this set. If anyone else has recorded all 10 of Mendelssohn’s works for piano and orchestra then I’ve missed it.

Ten? The five titles on disc 1 are well known (with the exception, perhaps, of the Serenade and Allegro giocoso), none more so than the much-recorded Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2. On the other three discs are the four concertos Mendelssohn wrote as a teenager between 1822 and 1824, most impressively the A flat and E major works for two pianos. No less assured is the very first piano concerto he composed with string orchestra (A minor, 1822) and the exuberant Concerto for Violin and Piano (D minor, 1823), its first movement alone longer than the whole G minor concerto, its final Allegro molto movement reminding one at times of Hummel’s Piano Quintet. Least familiar is Piano Concerto No 3 (1844), left unfinished at Mendelssohn’s death and only completed in 2006 by Marcello Bufalini from the composer’s sketches and drafts.

So altogether a tremendous package (Anne Mette Stæhr is Marshev’s like-minded partner in the two-piano works, Rumen Lukanov eagerly engaging in the Double Concerto’s quicksilver question-and-answer passages)…except, alas, for disc 1. Marshev plays with effortless brilliance but has been scuppered by a dismayingly wayward recorded balance: the orchestra is distantly recorded, with a booming bass register, and the piano sounds disconnected from the ensemble. This is a real shame because on the (later?) sessions for the five works on discs 2 4, the recording is everything we have come to expect from this label.