You hear the name “Mendelssohn” and your first thought might be the Midsummer Night’s Dream Music, the Italian symphony or the two piano trios; all of which are among his most enduring works. His piano music, on the other hand (and there is a lot of it), is remembered selectively at best, despite the advocacy, in recent decades, of Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboim and Bertrand Chamayou. Is it because his many Songs Without Words (48 in total) often evoke the spirit of domestic music-making rather than the concert hall?

There are certainly many quiet pleasures to be had on this album, largely because of Shelley’s sympathetic advocacy. Perahia (Sony) gives you a more epic view of the Variations Sérieuses and Banenboim’s enduring set of the complete Songs Without Words (DGG) is warmly symphonic, but the opportunity Shelley provides in his survey is to hear a curated collection of Mendelssohn’s keyboard works – in this case, from his final years – adding up, in sum, to a complete picture of his solo piano work.

It’s true that, in writing for piano, Mendelssohn excelled at “miniature lyrical inspirations” (to quote the album’s annotator R. Larry...