Considering his formidable keyboard facility, it’s surprising that Nino Rota composed relatively few original piano works, although his celebrated film scores have often turned up as piano arrangements. For the most part his piano writing represents a tuneful, imaginative, intelligently wrought, intimately idiomatic and unpretentious fusion of mind and heart.

In the Variations and Fugue on Bach’s Name, sample the unpredictable harmonic twists and turns as both hands dance a tarantella in double notes, or Var 5’s wistful quasi-choral prelude, or Var 11’s cascading runs which sound like what might have happened if Respighi and Poulenc merged their DNA. The fugue begins with the B A C H theme in foreboding octaves, followed by Busoni ish gothic doodling that leads into Crisco-thick chordal climaxes making Reger sound like Satie. But Rota’s wry wit and subversive charm prevail, and you’re forever hooked.

Naturally you need a pianist with a flexible technique and a large portfolio of nuance to bring all of this off. Such is Christian Seibert, and his performance offers more tonal variety and sparkle than Danielle Laval’s out-of-print 1993 Rota piano music cycle (Auvidis, 1/94). Seibert characterfully pinpoints the 15 Preludes’ contrasts between petulant, motoric and terse movements and those that are lyrically bittersweet. A little Waltz from 1945 might aspire to be nothing more than 19th-century salon fluff but it also foreshadows the composer of Amarcord. A 15 minute Fantasia in G, written for but never performed by Rota’s friend Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, is rather massive, heavy-going and less inspired than the aforementioned large-scale compositions. Still, you won’t hear it played better than by Seibert. CPO’s superb sound and annotations fuel my recommendation.