This collection is entitled ‘Unpublished Verdi’‚ but that begs a question or two. The extracts from Un giorno di regno and Attila are by Verdi‚ of course‚ but these competent and very pretty arrangements for wind band are certainly not his; they are just possibly by his pupil Emmanuele Muzio‚ and since the parts used originated with the Busseto Philharmonic Society‚ for whom Verdi wrote most of his juvenilia‚ one can imagine how proudly they played them. The remaining three pieces come from the same source. The Introduction‚ Andante and Variations (on a theme by Bellini) for oboe and orchestra are identified with a set of variations that Verdi encouraged a certain Giacomo Mori to write‚ implying that he (Verdi) would orchestrate them. He urged Mori‚ however‚ to write no introduction or coda‚ so in addition to the possibility that the scoring (which is careful and quite accomplished) may be by Verdi‚ there is the additional chance that the Introduction is his. It begins stormily‚ then gives way to conventional preludising for the soloist and to a five­minute‚ pleasingly lyrical‚ indeed Bellinian Andante; the Variations themselves are conventionally showy. It is suggested that the Credo is perhaps all that remains of a Mass that 24­year­old Verdi had performed in Fidenza in 1837. It contains little that sounds like mature Verdi‚ but the Rossinian ‘Et incarnatus’ for tenor with flute obbligato is attractive. The main section is a naive march‚ with a square ‘Et resurrexit’‚ a dull little duet and a comic martial trumpet in the coda. Pierluigi Petrobelli‚ of the Institute for Verdi Studies in Parma‚ detects ‘the hand of Verdi’ in the Capriccio. Yes‚ to much the same degree that one can sense it in Mori’s variations‚ though here the theme does have a youthful Verdian cast‚ the minor­key variation still more. Even if every note here were unarguably by the great man (who‚ after all‚ made strenuous efforts to destroy everything that he wrote before Oberto) it would still be very minor Verdi‚ but even the burbling and predictable variations (Mori’s go on for 10 minutes) have a period charm‚ and they are nicely played (the bassoonist in particular is an artist) and cleanly if rather closely recorded.