The most complete set ever issued of the non-operatic music by the composer best known for verismo masterpieces such as L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.

Born in Palmi (in the Calabrian province of Italy) in 1866, at the tender age of seven Francesco Cilea was sent to Naples to study law. He found the idea of becoming a musician far more attractive, however, having been entranced by a performance of Bellini’s Norma at the age of four. Against his parents’ wishes he enrolled at the city’s conservatoire in Naples to study piano, harmony and counterpoint. There he proceeded to excel, and he soon came to the notice of the influential publishers Sonzogno.

The scores by which we know Cilea were written within a relatively short period of 15 years either side of the turn of the last century. The failure of his last opera Gloria in 1907 (despite the presence of Toscanini on the podium) hit Cilea’s confidence badly. He effectively retired from writing for the stage, but he continued to compose in other genres, resulting in most of the music featured here.

The orchestral suites, chamber music and songs share with his better-known operas a cultivated gift for melody, but the Suite for Violin and the Piccola Suite for Orchestra (CD 1) reveal Cilea’s careful attention to counterpoint and scoring as well as an approach to tonal harmony that reflects his awareness of innovation, especially among French composers of the period.

The Cello Sonata and Piano Trio on CD 2 predate his operatic career, being written in the late 1880s in a more Brahmsian vein. He composed the piano works on CDs 3-4 through the course of his career, but around 1900 he began to alternate more conventional pieces (aimed at middle-class Italian audiences steeped in opera) with more novel experiments in timbre, such as Au village, op.34, which features a witty interplay of echoes and interwoven voices.

Many of the piano pieces are also essentially neoclassical in spirit, like the concertante suites on CD 1, whereas the songs on CD 5 belong to the salon, while embodying Cilea’s lifelong love of the human voice: ‘The true instrument of expression of the passions is the divine human voice, with which no instrument can ever rival’. All the recordings in this set were made in Italy by native musicians, steeped in Cilea’s idiom, within the last 10 years, and received critical praise when first issued.