Don’t be put off by the bizarre title and the unfamiliar composers’ names: this is an unexpectedly attractive collection, and the musical presentation is expert, idiomatic and alive. The mid-19th-century Ottoman zeal for European music, led by the ruling dynasty (part of wider Westernisation policies), attracted many Italian musicians to Sultan Abdümecid’s palace, and it meant that when Callisto Guatelli arrived in Istanbul in 1846, he was appointed “Director of the Music Impériale Ottomane”. His piquant triptych of Arie nazionali uses Turkish melodies with a Western harmonic overlay, clothed in exotic orchestral colours. A decade later, his compariot, Luigi Arditi, was enticed from his post at Covent Garden (where he had premiered many new operas) to work in Istanbul. His ambitious hymn Inno turca, extolling the Sultan’s virtues, is spectacularly scored for solo soprano, chorus and orchestra, and with its dotted rhythm sounds jauntily like early Verdi. However, the most ambitious work here is from August Ritter von Adelburg, of Hungarian descent, but who was born in Istanbul. Aux bords du Bosphore is both a tone-poem and a set of scènes de ballet in five movements, opening with “Méditations et Réveries”, a richly scored evocation in waltz rhythm, and including a piquant Turkish march, a graceful intermezzo featuring solo horn, strings and harp, a second, grandiose Marche du Médjidié (almost worthy of Saint-Saëns in its gusto), and an extended nocturnal finale with a romantic main theme in the best ballet pas de deux tradition.

Bartolomeo Pisani, who succeeded Guatelli, composed Une larme… as a public lament on the death of Abdülmecid, a rather telling funeral march, and Angelo Mariani’s ode to the Sultan’s reign, the Hymne national, closes the concert with impressive spectacle, using soloists and divided double chorus to overwhelming effect when sung as well as it is here. All the music is presented with considerable panache. The recording too is excellent: well worth exploring at super-budget price.