The Italian piano concerto features key works by Martucci and Sgambati well before Busoni’s seminal opus, this release filling out the picture with pieces written over more than a century.

Guido Alberto Fano’s Andante e Allegro con fuoco (1900) is an appealing recollection of Romanticism from an earlier era. Not so Luigi Dallapiccola’s Piccolo Concerto per Muriel Couvreux (1939 41), inspired by the young daughter of Parisian friends. The six sections fall into two comparably weighted movements, their highlights a plaintive ‘Ripresa’ and a limpid ‘Notturno’ that outline an artless yet searching naivety underlined by an elegance of dialogue or a delicacy of scoring to which Roberto Prosseda and Nir Kabaretti respond with like mind.

Neither of the later works is its equal. Silvio Omizzolo’s Piano Concerto (1960) is a diverting take on the neoclassical model most often associated at this time with American composers such as Barber or Mennin, incisive outer Allegros framing an Andante of no mean rhetorical fervour. Cristian Carrara’s War Silence (2015) unfolds from the ominous ‘Trenches’, via the pathos of ‘Solitudes’, to the verve of ‘Fruts’ (Children), and if the skill with which he realises his ideas is not quite matched by their memorability, this still makes for a pleasurable listen.

Comparisons in the Fano are limited to a sympathetic if no more than adequate account from Roberto Bertuzzi but the Dallapiccola has received notable recordings by Pietro Massa and Aldo Orvieto, while that from Bruno Canino comes as part of an impressive ‘portrait’ that remains a wholly enticing introduction to this composer. Those who acquire this new release will nevertheless find it an absorbing listen, whatever the inconsistent quality of its content.