This is the first recording in more than 40 years of Ildebrando Pizzetti’s masterpiece, Concerto dell’estate (Summer Concerto), described by the composer as a ‘pastoral symphony’.

One of his most strikingly beautiful early works, the Tre Preludii Sinfonici per L’Edipo Re were written to accompany a production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in Milan in 1904.

Pizzetti’s passion for Greek music and drama can also be heard in his incidental music for La Festa delle Panatenee (The Feast of the Panathenaea).

The Preludio to the opera Clitennestra, based on the ancient Greek myth of Clytemnestra, who murdered her husband, Agamemnon, is a darkly hued work, forewarning of the dire events about to unfold.