The CD, unreleased as always, is dedicated to three rare masterpieces by the Taranto composer, of the "Neapolitan school", Giovanni Paisiello and his Concerti n. 6, 7 and 8 for piano and orchestra. They are interpreted by the great Catania pianist Francesco Nicolosi (2nd prize in Geneva, 1980, first not awarded) and the refined Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Sofia.

Giovanni Paisiello stands head and shoulders above the other Italian composers of his generation. A pupil of the Neapolitan School, he had a supreme gift for melody, allied with a highly individual style and idiom that foreshadow Haydn and Beethoven. Paisiello’s eight keyboard concertos, written to commission for the nobility, clearly show that he must have been an excellent pianist and harpsichordist. In contrast with the classical poise and restraint of the Second Concerto, the Fourth Concerto is an extraordinary piece, with an opening Allegro comparable to Haydn’s Sturm und Drang works, and a solemn slow movement that can only be likened to the young Beethoven.

Kudos to Naxos for the way it has handled its ongoing series covering Domenico's enormous body of keyboard sonatas: in a repertory only (at best) loosely divisible into chronological or stylistic groupings, they have opted instead to divide the sonatas up among different performers. The buyer gets to look at these miniature masterworks, which can be performed in so many different ways, through different lenses.

Mozart’s sonatas for the fortepiano cover a period from 1766 to 1791, with a significant number of mature sonatas written during the years in Vienna. The sonatas include much fine music, ranging from the slighter C major Sonata for beginners, K. 545, to the superb and more technically challenging B flat Sonata, K. 570. In addition to his sonatas he wrote a number of sets of variations, while his ephemeral improvisations in similar form are inevitably lost to us. The published works include operatic variations as well as a set of variations on the theme Ah, vous dirai-je, maman, known in English as ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.

Sigismond Thalberg was a Wunderkind and one of the most accomplished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century, who impressed many including Mendelssohn, Chopin and Clara Schumann. He was also a composer focused on fantasies on operatic themes which was a genre in its own right, aiming to delight audiences with the familiarity of known melodies, the ingenuity of the transcriptions and their spectacular virtuosity. The collection also features the early Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 5 that similarly uses embellished operatic melodies.