The Symphony in C (WWV29) from 1832 has some genuine historical interest, although this flexing of the 19-year-old’s musical muscles is closer to the easy-going Weber than to the fiery Beethoven whom Wagner hoped to emulate. Only the second movement, an Andante which is more like a march in triple time than a lyric interlude, offers a few anticipations of the future master of music drama for those with ears to hear. The fragment of a Symphony in E major, unorchestrated and unfinished in 1834, survives in a version made after Wagner’s death by Felix Mottl. This only resurfaced a century later, in the 1980s, and serves to confirm that the young Wagner was better at going through the symphonic motions than breaking the mould in the way he would later do with opera.

Opera is represented here by the Rienzi overture – music rich in character and incident, and well articulated in this performance, even though tempi seem overly deliberate for much of the time. As for the Huldigungsmarsch (1864) and Kaisermarsch (1871), you’d have to go a long way to find worse compositions by a truly great composer than these. But Järvi and the RSNO don’t skimp on the music’s surging bombast and the Chandos sound has abundant character: great depth of perspective and no loss of clarity. <