Though rarely heard in concert these days – more’s the pity – Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words have delighted generations of amateurs and, at some point in their careers, most of the great pianists…at least, a selection of them. That is how they were intended to be heard. As an intégrale, the same figurations and cadences crop up repeatedly, and the melodies of the best-known ones occasionally seem to have been recycled for less familiar titles. Best to cherry-pick. Who would be without Ignaz Friedman’s 1930 selection of nine (Naxos) or, in a different vein, the 17 Walter Gieseking recorded in 1956 shortly before his death (EMI)? Sebastian Knauer (Berlin Classics, 3/09) and Nikita Magaloff (Accord) also offer superbly played selections on their Mendelssohn recital discs.

But I seem to have wandered, much as my attention did during this succession of all 49 numbers (Szokolay includes ‘Reiterlied’ in D minor, without opus number) played in an order of the pianist’s own choosing. Szokolay, a polished, unshowy technician, works his way through the volumes in dependable fashion choosing more judicious tempi than Daniel Barenboim with his impatient andantes in his 1973 chronologically ordered cycle (DG) but with none of his personality and subtle touches. Unfair, perhaps, to compare Szokolay and Friedman but, as an illustration of two different worlds, in Op 38 No 6 ‘Duetto’ is to hear a pretty piano piece competently played by one, and two singers (baritone and mezzo) magically accompanied by a third party played by the other. Szokolay does not manage to enter into that realm of imagination. In summary, his is a good enough (and well-recorded) version for completists but no competition for select ists.