The La Strada Ballet Suite (1966) is linked very closely with the score Rota produced in 1954 for Fellini’s film of the same name, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film in 1956. One might even say, to quote Francesco Lombardi, one of the most refined commentators on Rota’s work, that 'it is a summation of the musical collaboration between Fellini and Rota, and in a more general sense of the golden period enjoyed by Italian cinema in the nineteen-fifties and early sixties, in which Rota’s music played a predominant role'. The Suite consists of seven short movements inspired by specific moments in the film, the music a continual succession and mélange of styles and genres. From the complete ballet Rota compiled the orchestral suite recorded here.

The Sinfonia sopra una canzone d’amore (Symphony on a Love Song) was written in 1947 but not given its definitive form until 1972. In fact Rota had got no further than a piano score in 1947 and had stopped short of orchestrating it. In 1962, while working on the music for the film Il Gattorpardo (The Leopard) he played some of the Sinfonia themes to Visconti, the director, who was so taken with them that he asked the composer to use them in the soundtrack to the film. Nine years after the release of Il Gattorpardo, Rota finalised the orchestration on this disc. The two waltzes are taken from the soundtrack of Il Gattorpardo. One is a waltz by Verdi that existed only in piano score and which Rota orchestrated for the film, the other the magnificent Valzer del commiato (The Last Waltz) with which the film’s great ballroom scene comes to an end.