Here on a three-CD album Lya de Barberiis gives us the complete piano music of Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), a substantial opus in quantity rather than quality and a reaction to the domination of Italy’s musical life by opera and the German symphonic tradition. Casella was anxious, in particular, that Italy should acknowledge composers other than Puccini.

Important for library collections, this offering is at the same time a dispiriting example of a magpie talent that could range from a fluent imitation of other people’s styles to a dry and unappealing academic severity. His Op 17 A la manière de... are less affectionate tributes than facetious reductions. Even at the level of pastiche, they are rarely more than clever, and in Casella’s more abstract works, once you have spotted the influence you are left without a truly personal voice to relish. Not so for Fedele d’Amico, whose long hyperbolic accompanying essay speaks of Casella with veneration (‘prodigious assimilator’, ‘shrewd humourist’, ‘gelid succession of enigmatic chords’, and, on the Sonatina, ‘a whimsical and elusive melange of irony and cold raptures’). Such qualities are hard to detect and only the early Toccata (1904) and the dauntingly long Sinfonia, Arioso and Toccata (1936) are more than promising. Still, if looking for high quality becomes like a hunt for a needle in a haystack, there is much to be learnt from this useful set of discs.

Lya de Barberiis, whom I recall from a long-deleted Rachmaninov album for DG, is a proficient, hard-working but uninspired guide, and the 1979 Rome recording is hard and cramped. Perhaps another pianist (Marc-André Hamelin, who has already recorded the Deux Contrastes, springs to mind) would be more persuasive, particularly when heard in more flattering sound.