Few composers concentrated so completely on writing operas as Puccini did, and all but one of the items on this disc are incidental to his career, whether from his early years, both at school in Lucca and as a music student in Milan, or occasional pieces from later in his career. None of them matches the mastery of his operas, though they all reflect the Puccini we know, and give us fresh insights into him and his career.

The exception is the final item, Luciano Berio’s completion of Turandot. Like Franco Alfano, who made the regular completion first heard in 1926, Berio used Puccini’s sketches for his unfinished ending, but the result is very different. It has left me disappointed in the theatre: Berio’s hushed, downbeat ending may be justified dramatically but it is unsatisfying compared with Alfano’s fortissimo choral reprise of ‘Nessun dorma’.

What Riccardo Chailly lets us appreciate, however, is the thoughtfulness of Berio’s treatment. The recording begins with Liù’s aria, her suicide and Timur’s grief, all completed by Puccini; Berio’s completion (starting at track 14, 7'27") follows without a break to an orchestral crescendo to ‘Principessa di morte’, quite different from Alfano’s blasting fortissimi. The orchestral accompaniment differs substantially, but the vocal lines of Turandot and Calaf in their duet are largely similar to those in Alfano’s completion, following Puccini’s sketches. There is no big chorus after Calaf’s and Turandot’s final brief exchange, only a gentle easing into silence.

Otherwise, Berio’s principal innovation is a substantial orchestral interlude (track 14, 10'50"–13'58"), which makes Turandot’s transformation from icy princess to responsive lovermore credible, even if dramatically it holds things up. Whether or not Berio’s completion is used in any future complete recording, the opportunity to hear it is welcome, just as it was good to hear Alfano’s uncut completion (as originally conceived) on Josephine Barstow’s disc of operatic final scenes, now deleted (Decca, 9/90).

Seven of the other items are also first recordings. They include his first two surviving works, both written during his schooldays, the Preludio a Orchestra, which charmingly becomes a Viennese-style waltz, and the Motet for San Paolino, bold and brassy in the outer sections, with a long baritone solo in the middle (rather roughly sung by Alberto Mastromarino). At the other end of Puccini’s career comes the Inno a Roma of 1919, his last completed work, surprisingly untypical, and later notoriously adopted by Mussolini’s fascists using different words. The Scherzo of 1882-83 and the Salve regina, from his student years in Milan, both provided material for his first opera, Le villi, and the tender Adagetto for small orchestra from the same period was used for Fidelia’s aria in Act 3 of his second opera, Edgar.

Other gems include two pieces for wind band: Corazzata Sicilia, a development of the march at the end of Act 2 of Bohème using material from earlier in the act (the work of a bandmaster) and Scossa elettrica (‘electric shock’) a lively fragment of 1899 with jaunty syncopations, written to celebrate the centenary of Volta’s invention of the electric battery. By far the weakest piece, the cantata of 1877, Cessato il suon, discovered only a year ago, is one for which the vocal line had to be invented, and one can assume that even the teenage Puccini would have done better.

Chailly inspires excellent performances, with generally fresh, alert singing from soloists and chorus. The booklet-note by Dieter Schickling, author of the comprehensive Puccini catalogue, is very informative, but my one complaint concerns the lack of texts for the vocal items: a serious omission.