With the (re-)discovery of women composers the hot topic de nos jours, it is quite mystifying that more pianists have not championed Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s 12 Charakterstücke für Klavier before now. Composed in 1841 and whether played as a cycle or cherry-picked, they are every bit the equal of her brother’s much-played and -recorded Lieder ohne Worte. Of the six versions of Das Jahr (‘The Year’) currently available, five are by female pianists. The Danish pianist Christina Bjørkøe is a sixth.

Apart from the titular binding of the pieces (completed, be it noted, 35 years before Tchaikovsky’s similar conceit, The Seasons), Das Jahr is welded by a clear key sequence of sharp and flat keys. Furthermore, it is strongly linked to the German Protestant calendar. Hence March (Easter) has a chorale treatment of Christ ist erstanden; December (Christmas) incorporates Vom Himmel hoch; while the brief Nachspiel that Mendelssohn appends to the sequence cites another chorale, Das alte Jahr vergangen ist. There is an unmistakable stylistic similarity to her brother’s music (try February and the first part of December for some of Felix’s fairy music) but Fanny also, rather mischievously, litters Das Jahr with quotations from his works (listen to April, in which she borrows the second theme of the Capriccio brillant).

You will glean little of the above information from the lacklustre booklet accompanying this release written in approximate English. As to the performances, Bjørkøe plays elegantly with an alluring, singing tone and has been well recorded. There is an intimacy and affection here that is most attractive. However, too many of the more virtuoso numbers (August, say, and December) are way too cautious, like driving behind someone who has their foot hovering over the brake round every slight bend in the road. Her rivals are the more assertive but less alluring Wolfram Lorenzen (Troubadisc, 5/99), the young Belgian Els Biesemans playing a Pleyel fortepiano (Genuin), Lauma Skride (Sony, 7/07), and Diana Sahakyan on a label called Kaleidos Musikeditionen who I marginally prefer. But frankly, it’s a close-run thing between any of them and the newcomer.