Gianandrea Noseda’s latest expedition down lesser-trodden musical byways of his native country presents us with a chronologically wide-ranging orchestral programme from the pen of that master of operatic verismo, Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945). It’s a rather bitty bill of fare, decidedly uneven in quality, juxtaposing such trifles as the 1887 dance sequence Mein erster Walzer and fluffy Danza esotica of 1891 (anything but ‘exotic’ to my ears) alongside the gorgeous Visione lirica (a miniature tone-poem from 1922 inspired by Bernini’s famous carved statue of St Teresa in Rome’s Santa Maria della Vittoria) and the stirring L’apoteosi della cicogna (‘The Apotheosis of the Stork’), one of two numbers Mascagni contributed – along with at least five other Italian figures – to Fiori del Brabante, a 1930 Turin ballet celebrating the marriage of Marie José of Belgium to Prince Umberto di Savoia. The most substantial item comprises a Serenade (ardently delivered by tenor Luciano Ganci) and five-movement suite from the 1902 incidental music for a successful London production of The Eternal City by Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine (1853-1931); composed in the wake of the dismal failure of the opera Le maschere (premiered in no fewer than six simultaneous productions around Italy on January 17, 1901), it serves up an agreeably toothsome, colourful confection. I should add that the 1894 setting for voice and orchestra of Ave Maria is none other than our trusty friend, the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana (which had proved such an astounding hit four years previously). Some agreeably spick-and-span playing from the Turin orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda’s sympathetic baton and Chandos’s unobtrusively natural sound grace an anthology that Mascagni diehards will want to hear.