How to characterise Martucci’s music? On this disc he seems to be two people: the short works, all arranged for orchestra from piano originals, put me in mind of the kind of English light music that Edward German or Arthur Sullivan produced (though Martucci did not have their melodic gifts); the Concerto, on the other hand, is very much in the heavyweight German tradition with glimpses of Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein. The over-written and unwieldy first movement (over 21 minutes here) with its unpredictable twists and turns yields to a more languid Larghetto followed by a rumbustious finale, scherzo-like in spirit.

The concerto needs a firm hand at the tiller and a resourceful pianist to negotiate the cruelly demanding solo part. Sadly it gets only the latter here and, due to the recording balance, the piano so dominates proceedings that orchestral detail goes by the board. Francesco Caramiello with Francesco D’Avalos adopt roughly the same tempi throughout and the Philharmonia Orchestra is in a different league to the adequate Rome orchestra. Neither of these, however, can compare with Toscanini’s live Carnegie Hall performance (1953) with Mieczysðaw Horszowski and the NBC Symphony. The recorded sound is remarkable in the circumstances and the colourful scoring makes the effects for which it was intended. One small symptomatic example is the horn triplets at 2'20" (first movement), inaudible under La Vecchia and D’Avalos, making their presence felt under Toscanini who plays all three movements significantly faster – and, as he conducted the composer in the work in 1899, likely to be authentic.