Born in Campinas, Brazil, Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836 96) studied at the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro before a scholarship sent him to Milan. He would go on to be the most successful non-European opera composer in 19th-century Italy; four of his operas were performed at La Scala.

Not surprisingly, Gomes’s debt to Donizetti and Verdi is readily apparent in this collection of overtures and preludes, yet one can also discern elements of his own unique voice. What stands out most starkly to me is his ability to create dramatic frisson in quiet passages, of which there are many. Take, for example, the Prelude to Act 1 of A noite do castelo (1861), the earliest work in this collection: for all its rumbling timpani and glowering brass, it’s in the whisper-soft closing passage with its plaintive oboe solo that Gomes’s music is most arresting.

The Minas Gerais Philharmonic play with precision and flair for their founding director and conductor Fabio Mechetti – and, crucially, they make magic in the many hushed moments. Listen starting at 1'30" in the Overture to Fosca (1873), where the strings play with marvellous delicacy, or to an analogous passage in the Overture to Salvator Rosa (1874) at 0'58" where the violins croon a slow, sighing, Traviata-like tune, and then note the delicate use of the harp at 3'28". There are a few dull bits here and there – say, the hackneyed storm sequence in the Prelude to Joana de Flandres (1862), another early work – but only a few.

The highlights here, for me, are the Prelude to Condor (1890), with its unusual harmonies and angular phrasing that at times seems to anticipate Janáček, and the lightly perfumed Nocturne from that opera’s Act 3; and from Lo schiavo (1889), the Act 1 Prelude with its gorgeous scoring and proto-Puccinian harmonies, and the Prelude to the fourth scene of Act 4 (subtitled ‘Alvorada’), an exquisite morning song that builds to a radiant if slightly grandiloquent apotheosis that’s thrillingly captured on this vivid recording. This is yet another edifying entry in Naxos’s Music of Brazil series.