This piece has been revisited, and an updated article has been written. Please read it here.  I’ll keep the original article (below) for posterity, but I would suggest reading the new article instead.

USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (from a live performance) I love Rachmaninoff, or what I have heard of his. His two piano sonatas and the four concertos (far more familiar with 2 and 3), Paganini variations, and his second symphony. I’m not hugely familiar with a lot of his other works, but all of what I’ve heard sounds nice. I think even if I didn’t know this was a Rach piece, I may have been able to guess, even though it doesn’t feel as familiar as his other works. It’s clearly more ‘modern’ or maybe just different from his other works, and it was described by a reviewer at the time of premiere as “sterile.” I do need to listen to this again; I didn’t pick out any dies irae theme, which apparently is in there. At this listening… Nothing super memorable to me, except that I want to listen to it and like it. That’s it for now.