A world premiere recording of three works by the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Of particular note is the composer’s Ballade, which was written for and premiered by Tossy Spivakovsky in 1940. It was left to gather dust until February 2018, when Francesca Dego recovered it with the assistance of the composer’s granddaughter, Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Diana contacted Francesca after hearing her on the radio, performing Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s tongue-in- cheek “Figaro” from Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Together, the pair accessed some of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s unpublished and unperformed works from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, including the Ballade. The work is now published by Edizioni Curci, and this is its world premiere recording.

Also included on the album are Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s violin paraphrases of operas by Rossini and Verdi, Stravinsky’s Suite italienne and Respighi’s Violin Sonata in B minor.