Like crumbs of Proust’s madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea, a few notes from Nino Rota’s film scores for the likes of Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Francis Ford Coppola conjure up whole lost worlds. Hard to imagine this genius of evocation as an academic, but that’s what he was, long heading the rigorous conservatory of Bari, in the southern Italian region of Puglia. Riccardo Muti, who was his student there, is better known for his Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky, but no one captures the volatile essence of Rota’s movie music better than he does. Along with the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, a training ensemble founded by Muti himself, the maestro juxtaposes a suite from his late mentor’s soundtrack for The Godfather with his nearly contemporaneous “legit” Cello Concerto No. 2. Tamás Vargas is the soloist. —Matthew Gurewitsch