The inaugural releases of American-Jewish classics from Naxos and the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music embrace both the sacred and the profane, with this recording falling solidly into the first category. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), best known as a composer for the classical guitar, steps well outside that genre in this collection of choral and organ works. From the non-liturgical setting of Naomi and Ruth to his Sacred Service for the Sabbath Eve, a piece clearly intended for use in a synagogue, Castelnuovo-Tedesco drew great inspiration from the history of Italian Jewry.

Those resources are reflected even in his hyphenated name, which reconciled respectively his own Sephardic and Ashkenazi family roots. Besides the Iberian emotionalism of the former and the Germanic structuralism of the latter, there was also a constant contact with Catholicism (hence the prominence of organ not only in the Sacred Service, but in the excerpts from Prayers My Grandfather Wrote and the Memorial Service for the Departed).

Balanced with those religious and cultural traditions, however, are both the modernist strains of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s European education and the commercial leanings of his years in Hollywood in the 1940s, where he toiled faithfully with a number of other European immigrant composers. Neither the tone rows nor the lush lyricism ever truly dominates the music, which makes it both difficult to pigeonhole and continually rewarding to listen to.

As with the other inaugural releases in the Naxos/Milken series, this collection arranges rarely performed repertory in a coherent programme, packaged with complete texts and knowledgeable annotation. At the price, the series sets a high standard for the recording industry at large.