ALEXANDER MARIA WAGNER (b.1995): Symphony No. 2, PETER TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893): Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 23.

Description: Composer-pianist Wagner's Second Symphony is a young man's work, full of existential angst and a degree of Romantic grandiosity (movement titles evoke dreams, star-filled lakes and galactic rites). Mind you, so was his First, written when he was 14 (11O091). The first movement is dark and brooding, expressionistic and only somewhat tonal; the 'Drunken' scherzo sounds as though it is intended to be heard as a distorted, even demented, modernist retelling of a Mahler scherzo, notably from the 7th or 9th symphonies. The 'dreaming' of the slow movement is less obviously 'joyous' than the title suggests, but the wandering through a landscape dotted with relics of Romantic gestures is clear enough. The finale is a whirling galactic carousel, depicted in noticeably more expressly tonal terms than the earlier sections of the work. Alexander Maria Wagner (piano), RTV Symphony Orchestra Moscow; Alexei Kornienko.