Rachmaninoff and the Symphony

The music of Rachmaninoff is, to this day, both praised and disdained: while its enormous popular appeal insures box-office sales, some have yet to reckon the oeuvre within the Western musical canon, and fewer still can understand why the Soviet authorities thought it subversive enough to ban. In Rachmaninoff and the Symphony, David Butler Cannata surveys Rachmaninoff as composer, and, using the symphonic music as his base of discussion, traces the genesis of several of the large symphonic structures, placing them in the continuing context of the Russian post-Wagnerian tradition.