Provided that expectations are not pitched too high, there is much to enjoy here. Incorrigibly prolific, Saverio Mercadante bequeathed a legacy of some 60 operas, which history has largely eclipsed in favour of those by his contemporaries Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. But Mercadante was an unusual Italian for his time in that he also composed a sizeable portfolio of instrumental works alongside his theatrical ones. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma has gathered together five of them, including a B flat major Clarinet Concerto, already designated Mercadante’s Op 101 but nevertheless, to judge from its style, probably dating to his very early years. Around 1815-20 would be a plausible guess, with shades of Mozart and Weber coalescing in a Classical-cum-early Romantic idiom. Mercadante knows the clarinet’s lyrical and athletic potential, testing the latter particularly in the spry variations of the second movement, which Giammarco Casani plays here with notable elegance and fluency.

As to the other four works, all of which reveal Mercadante’s operatic panache, there is little – formally speaking – to distinguish a ‘fantasia’ from a ‘gran sinfonia’ or a ‘sinfonia caratteristica’. They are all fantasies of one sort or another, with none of the norms or rigour of symphonic argument, but they colourfully tap popular musical seams of the day, be it Bellini’s Norma, Rossini’s Stabat mater or the Neapolitan tarantella. The playing has the requisite dramatic punch and vitality, with the full-blooded Garibaldi of 1871 providing a finale of invigorating nationalist pomp, passion and gusto.