It’s not often that a symphony written by a 16-year-old comes out on CD. José Serebrier was born in Montevideo but through a series of coincidences, including getting some scores seen by Virgil Thomson when he was on a lecture tour, Serebrier’s talent was recognised and thanks to a US State Department fellowship he soon found himself attending Tanglewood, attending Copland’s classes, and working at the Curtis Institute with Vittorio Giannini. Then – another coincidence – when Stokowski in 1957 found Ives’s Fourth Symphony impossible to perform he gave Serebrier’s symphony instead. By 1965 Stokowski did premiere the Ives complete and recorded it with Serebrier as one of the two assistant conductors.

The Double Bass Concerto (1971) was written for the admirable Gary Karr. It lasts only 13 minutes but makes lavish demands. There are spoken quotes from Shelley, intended for the soloist but here delivered by Simon Callow; two clarinets placed incognito in the audience but later contributing to a kind of jazz combo; and finally an offstage choir. The Violin Concerto (1991) is on the subject of winter so it quotes similarly seasonal music from Haydn, Glazunov and – more dangerously – Tchaikovsky, because he tends to take over. The most recent piece is They Rode Into the Sunset, a score for a film that was never made. Like the Double Bass Concerto it contains a lengthy orchestral crescendo on a single note B – why? Does it come from Wozzeck? Serebrier gets back to his roots in a couple of agreeable tangos but the First Symphony is a fascinating document from a teenage composer.