Alexander Scriabin was born into an aristocratic Moscow family, but he had the misfortune of his mother dying when he was just one year old, and his father deciding to leave for Turkey, depositing the young man on his grandmother and great aunt who pampered the boy so endlessly that he grew up with an egocentricity that knew no bounds.

When one reads of all the diversions that came into his life, it is surprising that he had time to do anything at all, but his symphonic output does remain as a landmark in the Romantic era of Russian music, his Second Symphony which took him well over a year to complete being one of his great masterpieces in an infinitely small output of orchestral music.

Naxos are making these works available for the first time at budget price, in technically outstanding recordings by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra recorded in the Mosfilm Studio in Moscow during October 1995. They are conducted by one of Russia's most celebrated musicians, Igor Golo