Guido Alberto Fano (1875-1961): Andante e Allegro con fuoco (1900)
Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975): Piccolo Concerto per Muriel Couvreux (1939-41)
Silvio Omizzolo (1905-1991): Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra (1960) *
Cristian Carrara (b. 1977): War Silence (2015) *

* Premiere Recordings

Quick ... off the top of your head, name a well-known Piano Concerto by an Italian composer in ten seconds or less! Stuck for an answer? Forget about it, it seems most people can't come up with an answer either. Busoni's large scale, five-movement Piano Concerto comes to mind as its been recorded a few times, but even it never achieved household-name status.

This new Hyperion release should more than make up for this void. Laid out here in chronological order, spanning more than a hundred years from 1900 to 2015, these rarely performed works by somewhat obscure composers, uphold the fact that 20th century Italian composers were distancing themselves from opera, the mainstay of Italian musical culture.

Guido Alberto Fano (1875-1961), composer, piano teacher and conservatoire director, wrote music strongly influenced by late 19th century romanticism. When listening to his two-movement Andante e Allegro con fuoco (a piano concerto if not by name), you would be justified in thinking that it was a work by Johannes Brahms. Broad strokes and romantic gusto, especially within the opening Andante may very well fool you in believing it to be a German composition.

The Piccolo Concerto per Muriel Couvreux (Piccolo meaning little) by Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975), was written to honor the young daughter of a Parisian friend. As such, it echoes the style of Ravel and Debussy, forging ahead through new harmonic paths and innovative rhythmic patterns.

Composed twenty years later, the Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra by Silvio Omizzolo (1905-1991), is another leap forward in modernity. It won third prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1969. Despite employing a rather jarring harmonic language, its exuberant outbursts and lyrically romantic gestures in the piano part more than qualify it as a grand concerto in the traditional sense.

The most recent work on the program, War Silence by Cristian Carrara (b. 1977), is described in the booklet notes by the composer as such: "It is an attempt to trace and describe silence, which exists even in war, be it in death or in life. The first movement, 'Trenches', is the most descriptive depiction of war as we know it, and it is the movement whose meaning has changed the most since 2015; the second, 'Solitudes', is more slender, referring to the fact that war often means loneliness, the breaking of ties. The third is entitled 'Fruts' ('children' in Friulian): the children who represent life in spite of war. There is no description of bombing; rather, an emotional journey is reconstructed - the breaking of human relationships, loneliness, the possibility of hope. Underneath all the bombs and destruction, despite everything, there is life." It's a very engaging work which sounds more like a creation from the 1950s rather than as recent as 2015. Its second movement Solitudes is highly evocative in its dreamscape textures and lyrical phrasing. On the other hand, the minimalist techniques used in the final Fruts brings to mind composers like Reich or Adams.

Pianist Roberto Prosseda, along with conductor Nir Kabaretti, deliver these refreshing new works with the same care and diligence granted any of the traditional warhorses (no pun intended) of the piano concerto repertoire.

So now, should anyone ask you to name but one Italian Piano Concerto, you will have four at your referral.