This generously filled album brings together a selection of concert works and film music by Nino Rota. Such is the quality of invention and finish of the soundtrack pieces that they rarely seem inferior to their ostensibly more serious companions, themselves distinguished by the composer’s talent for lyricism and communicative immediacy.

Completed in 1947, the Harp Concerto features an effective combination of rhythmic ingenuity and orchestral colour. Especially memorable are the fanfares for solo trumpet and horn in the slow movement. The warmth and luminosity of the writing here contrast strongly with the darker tone of the Concerto for Strings, commissioned by the chamber orchestra I Musici and completed in 1965. Here, a greater seriousness of purpose and an element of sardonic humour make themselves felt in a four-movement work with a duration of slightly over 15 minutes. The third concert work, Castel del Monte, dates from 1974 and is a mysterious and atmospheric evocation for horn and orchestra of the castle in Andria in south-eastern Italy from which it takes its name.

Rota’s score for King Vidor’s 1956 Italian-American film epic War and Peace is represented here by a suite of 11 numbers amounting to about 30 minutes of music. The theme for Andrei and Natasha is one of Rota’s finest inspirations, and while some of the pieces do little more than evoke a mood, both the Polonaise and Natasha’s Waltz are musical conceptions of the highest quality. Only three items from Fellini’s 1978 satirical film Orchestral Rehearsal are included but all are strikingly vivid, none more so than the Galop, a riotous dance that sounds as if might have wandered in from a Khachaturian ballet.

The quality of all the performances is first-rate and the recording is clear and well balanced, albeit slightly lacking in warmth. Strongly recommended to anyone not yet familiar with Rota’s output, and to those who already are.