The catastrophic failure of the St. Petersburg world premiere of his First Symphony on 15 March 1897 plunged Sergei Rachmaninoff into a profound depression. It...

The catastrophic failure of the St. Petersburg world premiere of his First Symphony on 15 March 1897 plunged Sergei Rachmaninoff into a profound depression. It was only the intervention of renowned psychiatrist Nikolai Dahl that liberated the composer from his creative crisis. In 1906 Rachmaninoff began work on his Second Symphony. As part of its ongoing Rachmaninoff cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne and Dmitrij Kitajenko, OehmsClassics presents the Symphony No. 2 and the ever-popular Vocalise, sung by countertenor Valer Sabadus.