Serebrier is not only one of those prominent conductors who takes the opportunity to launch his own music, however tempting that must be. His studies in his native Uruguay included composition and after he moved to the US in 1956 these intensified at the Curtis Institute and under Copland at Tanglewood. As a composer Serebrier was something of a prodigy. The Elegy for Strings, written at just 14, was the composer’s first work to be published and played abroad and is recorded here for the first time. It is an astonishingly mature piece which shows an instinctive craftsmanship, but above all it sets the elegiac tone for most of the works on this recording.

Momento psicológico, equally impressive, is intensely dramatic and so is Fantasia, which started life as a string quartet. The Passacaglia and Perpetuum Mobile for accordion and chamber orchestra is a curiosity – and another first recording – and is admirably played by the Chinese soloist Yi Yao, standing in at short notice.

It was this recording session earlier this year which gave Serebrier the opportunity to write what became his Third Symphony. The challenge was that he had only a week in which to complete it. Perhaps this is why the 25-minute, four-movement work consists mostly of slow music which is always less labour-intensive. An energetic fast movement comes first; then there are three slow movements. The last of these brings in voices briefly, like a Uruguayan Bachianas. Serebrier says the music ‘came out of my pen as if I was just transcribing something that had always been in my memory’. One may question the wisdom of working under such constraints but it is amazing to have done it at all. As a composer Serebrier is of limited range but there are curiosities worth exploring here.