The article in the booklet, headed “The Berliners and the Neapolitan”, is mainly about Riccardo Muti. A different article could have been called “The Neapolitan Connection”: the concert comes from the San Carlo opera house, Muti was born in Naples, and Giuseppe Martucci, born in nearby Capua in 1856, died in Naples in 1909.

Martucci was that rare bird, a 19th-century Italian composer who eschewed the composition of opera. But he certainly knew his Wagner: indeed, he conducted the Italian premiere of Tristan und Isolde at Bologna in 1888. La canzone dei ricordi – “The song of memories” – was composed for voice and piano around 1887 and orchestrated some 11 years later. A seven-movement setting of a poem by Rocco Emanuele Pagliara, it has its moments of Tristan-esque yearning; there’s also a touch of the drawing room about it, like Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Must have been a fin de siècle thing.

The music is attractive, without being terribly gripping. It’s beautifully constructed, the short last movement consisting of fragments of the text recalled from the beginning. Equally fine is the orchestration: richly scored strings for the first movement, grateful solos for the oboe and cor anglais later on. Violeta Urmana sings passionately about love and loss; in the royal box, President Berlusconi looks impassive.

The concert begins with a stirring account of the Overture to La forza del destino. The performance of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony is as smooth and well upholstered as a ride in a Rolls-Royce. If the journey is comfortable, there are still plenty of features to admire in the driving. The symphony begins in stately fashion, the inner parts in the violas and cellos lovingly brought out. When, in the Allegro, Muti stops conducting, the players continue with impressive precision. But, just before the end, the woodwind statement of the theme from the introduction is hard to hear: Schubert’s fault, but Muti’s responsibility.

The exposition repeats in the outer movements are not made; neither are the second repeats in the Scherzo and Trio. Muti is at his most sensitive in the latter’s heart-stopping modulation into B flat. With unobtrusive camera-work, this is a solid achievement. .