An intriguing release of works by the Italian-born composer Michele Esposito (1855-1929...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Esposito (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Esposito)
...who spent more than forty years as professor at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin:
http://www.mdt.co.uk/esposito-michele-sonatas-for-violin-lance-coburn-champs-hill-records.html (http://www.mdt.co.uk/esposito-michele-sonatas-for-violin-lance-coburn-champs-hill-records.html)
Would appear to me to be rather more digestible than Zandonai!
there's a string quartet of his (and his cello sonata) at IMSLP that intrigue me- good to have a chance to give them a listen.
btw also a conductor, as one sees from this summary (http://www.concertprogrammes.org.uk/html/search/verb/GetRecord/3443) of programs.
I think Esposito's 2nd quartet won the competition to which Frank Bridge's 1st string quartet was submitted (and to which it owes its "Bologna Quartet" nickname. Same year, same place...) Just a factlet. (Jeremy Dibble the omnibiographer/musicographer wrote a bio/worklist of Esposito in 2010, it also seems.)
Hrm. :)
BTW don't go for the just-released Brilliant Classics 2-CD set with the Violin Sonatas and sundry other violin and piano pieces. The playing is distinctly inferior to that on the Champs Hill CD - the violinist has a rather uningratiating tone and the piano sound has little depth of tone either.
A quick look in the wiki links shows a number of tantalizing orchestral works. Irish Symphony & Suite!!!! There seems to be 2 piano concertos and a Fantasia for two pianos and orchestra, alas all unpublished. Have the survived? Can the concertos be considered for Hyperion RPC :D ?
Autograph material for a symphony in F minor (1873) survives at least in part at Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica S. Pietro a Majella, Naples, according to www.sbn.it (which one may think of, if one wishes, as ... erm... ItalyCat? :D ) Maybe Dibble's book on Esposito has some information on the whereabouts of the others and the rest? One could hope? (A Google preview check of the book shows part of his worklist, where he gives only one movement surviving of the F minor symphony, and several other orchestral works, some of which I also noticed in sbn- fantasias on operas, for instance. Also he mentions an Op.24 symphony, unpublished and perhaps unperformed; a piano concerto no.1 about which he sees reports of a performance by Cesi in 1878 but no known surviving materials; a poem for harp and orchestra, unpublished, among other works. The Irish Symphony is Op.50, 1922, also unpublished. For these last works no libraries seem to be mentioned either, unfortunately. (See Google Reference as applicable to Dibble's book. (https://books.google.com/books?id=IpdgmQVnOtsC&pg=PA187))