The principal aim of this series is to demonstrate that in the later nineteenth century there were composers of stature intent on breaking away from opera’s dominance in Italian musical life by composing orchestral and chamber works of their own, or programming new or unfamiliar works by other composers. They included Martucci (the foremost Italian composer of the time, whose orchestral works receive their first complete recording in the Naxos Martucci Edition), Sgambati and Mancinelli. During the first half of the 20th-century they were followed by Respighi, Pizzetti, Casella, Malipiero, the so-called “generazione dell’ottanta” (the generation of Italian composers born around 1880), and by Ghedini, Petrassi, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and others, all of whom deserve to be brought back into the mainstream. Ferruccio Busoni, who was born in Tuscany but spent most of his working life in Germany, is also represented with a cycle of his complete piano music as well as important orchestral works.