‘If I pass him by, who will praise Moritz Moszkowski?’ asked JB Priestley in Delight, his life-affirming collection of essays reflecting on why, though he had many triumphs in his day, ‘every garland has been dust these many years’. Martin Eastick tells us in his quite excellent booklet accompanying this release that ‘over two-thirds of Moszkowski’s total output is for piano solo, which in turn numbers well in excess of 250 separate pieces’. How many of these do any of us know? Four? Five? A dozen at most. Why do so few pianists play his music?

For the composer’s many devotees who admire his music more than our more highfalutin commentators, the prospect of this chronological survey is like Christmas six months early. Not since Seta Tanyel in the late 1990s has anyone issued a Moszkowski survey (42 original works and a few transcriptions spread over three discs on the now defunct Collins label, reissued on Hyperion). Ian Hobson, winner of the Leeds International Competition in 1981 and currently an Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Illinois (where this recording was made) has already conducted two volumes of Moszkowski’s orchestral music for the ever-enterprising Toccata label.

He opens with the pastiche Conservatoristen-Polka, Op (Moszkowski was renowned for his sense of humour) before proceeding to Op 1 (Scherzo, 1874), Op 2 (Albumblatt, 1875) through to Op 14 (Humoreske, 1877), omitting the two-hand versions of works that first appeared as piano duets (perhaps we’ll have them at a later date). Six titles (11 separate works) of the nine presented here are first recordings.

The benign shadows of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin hang over these early works. By no means are all of them unknown masterpieces but there are, nevertheless, some real gems among them. Likewise Hobson’s performances, which vary from the inspired to the dogged. I wish he’d varied his dynamics a little more and been far more daring in places, more willing to respond con brio and con feroce as requested in the Caprice, Op 4, and con strepito and con agilità round the più presto section of the Fantaisie, Op 5.

The first real signs of Moszkowski the master melodist and salon composer par excellence come with the three enchanting Moments musicaux, Op 7, and Skizzen (Vier kleine Stücke), Op 10 (1875 and ’76 respectively). And they also bring out the best in Hobson with some delightfully affectionate performances that show the music in the best possible light. Sadly, in the final ‘Humoreske’, dedicated to Moszkowski’s friend Xaver Scharwenka, he reverts to efficient reading-from-the-piano-rack mode. Still, I am grateful for this first disc in a much-needed series, one which will give ‘delight, hours and hours of it, glittering like the Carnival at Nice and yet as innocent as a baby’s birthday’ (Priestley).