Stokowski - Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 (entire)

Recorded in 1946, Leo Stokowski/Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
1. Largo — Allegro moderato (E minor)
17:08 2. Allegro molto (A minor)
26:17 3. Adagio (A major)
39:52 4. Allegro vivace (E major)
Not the best sound but IMHO the best interpretation.

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was born at Semyonovo, district of Starorusky, Russia, on April 1, 1873, and died in Beverly Hills, California on March 28, 1943. He composed the Symphony No. 2 between October 1906 and April 1907 and conducted the first performance in Saint Petersburg on January 26, 1908. He also conducted the first North American performance, which was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, on November 26, 1909. The symphony uses three flutes and piccolo, three oboes, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, bass drum, cymbals, and strings. The dedication is to Rachmaninoff's teacher, Sergei Taneyev.

After finishing this symphony, Rachmaninoff swore he would never write another. It was almost thirty years before he changed his mind and began work on his third and last essay in the form. Meanwhile, the wonder was that he had written No. 2. The premiere of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897, horribly conducted by Alexander Glazunov, was such a disaster that it took three years of psychotherapy and hypnosis before Rachmaninoff could again face writing a large-scale composition. It was the instantly popular Piano Concerto No. 2 that freed him then, but even so, it was a long time before the notion of "symphony" ceased to make him shudder.

When he wrote the Symphony No. 2 he was living in Dresden, where he had gone to escape the constant clamor for his services as a conductor. There he also composed his Piano Sonata No. 1, the tone poem The Isle of the Dead, and for his first American tour in 1909, the Piano Concerto No. 3. Thirty-three years old, he was in his fifth year of contented marriage, a father (his second daughter, Tatiana, was born about the time the symphony was completed), an experienced composer in many genres, an unsurpassed and scarcely equaled pianist, and a highly esteemed conductor. As a composer he was original as well as experienced, with a tone of voice and melodic style all his own and, as many attempts have proved, particularly in film studios, inimitable. In his Preludes and Études-Tableaux for piano he developed an impressive skill at composing a highly economical sort of music, but in his symphonies and concertos he preferred, at least at this point in his development, a more expansive manner.

Excerpted from Michael Steinberg's notes for the San Francisco Symphony.
Michael Steinberg, the San Francisco Symphony's program annotator from 1979 to 1999 and a contributing writer to it's program book until his death in 2009, was one of the nation's pre-eminent writers on music.

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