The USO performs Rachmaninoff Symphony No 2

Wrapping up the last note of Feburary. The U of Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Rachmaninoff Symphony No 2 today,The bundled piece is Too See the Sky, a contemporary violin concerto.

Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2 touches on deep struggles of the composer’s inner thinking. I hear passages where the music suddenly swirls into dark passages, as if we enters through the composer’s unvisited despair.

And, can modern composers stop bullying the piccolo? Giving piccolo exposed sixteenth scales in the lower register paired with impossible fingering — making the piccolo play everything that it’s not good at is not cool.