With its promised sequel, this fourth volume is an important extension of the Mendelssohn Song Edition, which may have been thought completed with Vol 3. Eugene Asti, the pianist and leading spirit in the whole enterprise, has tracked down 46 previously unpublished songs and offers them here for the first time on records. As Susan Youens, writer of the authoritative booklet-notes, remarks, it is extraordinary that so many works of a major composer could lie unknown for some 150 years; and as Asti himself sees it, it is symptomatic of posterity’s attitude to Mendelssohn, who has been “misunderstood, underrated and under-appreciated”.

The songs are nearly all early, many of them dating from the 1820s with Mendelssohn (born in 1809) still in his teens. They are strong in ideas and wonderfully assured in their handling of the words and the medium. Youens makes a good case for regarding the Vier Lieder (1830) as a cycle. Some call for immediate rehearing (“Faunenklage”, for instance, and the tenderly melodious “Ich denke dein”). None deserves its former oblivion.

There is a wise and wide distribution among five singers, though it would have been better if one of the two sopranos had warmer tones, less bright and spiky. I find Katherine Broderick too often shallow in timbre and shrill when she adds volume and the music adds height. Anna Grevelius sings with pleasing evenness and more evident care for words. To the young Icelandic tenor Finnur Bjarnason falls the new-found “cycle”, resourcefully sung. And Stephan Loges satisfies most consistently with his understanding, beauty of tone and care for legato. Asti is the admirable pianist throughout and in two of the items is responsible for the completion of songs left unfinished.