The slow movement of Nino Rota's Piano Concerto in C is quite enchanting: a memorably suave melody, like Prokofiev at his most ingratiating, is announced by woodwind solos, then subjected to variations which never disturb its simplicity. But it is never quite as naive as it sounds: one is aware of a sharp intelligence behind it, and a well-stocked musical mind. The concerto begins disconcertingly - in a brief note Riccardo Muti accurately describes it as 'like an improvisation by the child Mozart', though it is characteristic of the unhelpful documentation accompanying this release that he ascribes this opening to the E major work, which in fact begins like neo-Rachmaninov. This is followed by a much quicker, again Prokofiev-like toccata. But Rota knows what he is about - the bizarrely contrasted ideas he has chosen give him maximum opportunity for ingeniously fertile development, including agreeably showy virtuosity (written in 1960, the concerto was dedicated to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli; I imagine he was delighted with it).
The Concerto in E minor (the booklet never mentions its subtitle or explains in what way the music relates to Antonio Fogazzaro's novel, known variously in English as The Patriot or The Little World of the Past) comes later - 1978, the year before Rota's death - and is much more romantic, indeed rather self-indulgently so in its richly coloured climaxes and rhetorical cadenzas. It is also as tuneful as you would expect from the composer of some of the most memorable film scores of the latter half of the 20th century. Its gestures, if not especially original - one thinks of Richard Addinsell as often as Rachmaninov - will please those feeling nostalgic for piano concertos the way they used to be. The opulence of Muti's direction tends to overstate Rota's moments of over-ripeness, but I have nothing but praise for Giorgia Tomassi's formidable pianism, or for the ample but never oppressive recording.'