The Mendelssohn siblings have suffered from their twin auras of worthiness: Felix’s as the oratorio composer whose works are murdered by a hundred well-meaning choral societies; Fanny’s as the token woman on dozens of concert programmes. Now, though, there is a growing discography helping to shake us into realising how vital and original these composers were. The chamber music, especially Felix’s, has done well recently – and the latest addition is this disc from cellist Johannes Moser and pianist Alasdair Beatson.

Felix’s two cello sonatas are here, the fiercer No 1 and the ebullient No 2, which bursts out of the speakers, the piano getting ever more animated as Beatson sends joyous little flourishes up the keyboard. The muted second movement sounds fun, like some tiptoeing game of hide-and-seek. The earliest of Felix’s works on the disc, the Variations Concertantes, sounds innocent by comparison; this, like several of the other pieces, was written for the amateur-cellist brother Paul, who would have tried it out during Fanny’s renowned Sunday salons. Everything is beautifully played, and in truly conversational style – for this is definitely duet music, rather than cello solos accompanied by piano, with the possible exception of Felix’s Op 109 Lied Ohne Wörte, which Moser shapes as lyrically as any singer. Beatson is playing on an 1837 Érard piano, the kind of instrument the Mendelssohns had at home. Slightly woodier and lighter-sounding than a modern grand, it is ideally balanced with Moser’s cello. As for Fanny’s music, the only problem, as ever, is that there’s so little of it. Her A flat major Capriccio and G minor Fantasia are each only a few minutes long, but the latter offers the most soulful music on the disc; at least, it does until a huge and incongruous mood-swing into cheeriness in the middle. Moser and Beatson just about bring it off, on a disc that might change your mind about the Mendelssohns.

Also out this week

… is more cello music: Daniel Müller-Schott’s disc of works by Richard Strauss. This is less of a conversation, more of an oration. Strauss’s early F major Sonata, for which he is joined by the pianist Herbert Schuch, has a distinctly heroic cast to which Müller-Schott rises persuasively; then, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis, he draws a vivid portrait of the self-styled knight errant in the concerto-like tone poem Don Quixote.