Symphonie Nr.3

Rachmaninov's Third and Second Symphonies are separated not only by thirty years, but also by the turning point in history that halved the fate of Russian intelligentsia. When Rachmaninov wrote the Second Symphony in 1906-1907, he was full of creative energy and longing, even though he sought solitude in Dresden to feel the breath of his homeland from afar and to connect his own fate with it. By the mid-1930s, he was a different man, struggling with the aftermath of his exile and summing up his life. At Villa Senar in Switzerland, he wrote this new work about Russia and himself, which would become the Third Symphony. The geographical distance was magnified by the temporal distance: an attraction to the beloved past to which no return was possible. The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Dmitry Liss, has repeatedly performed the Third Symphony in Russia and beyond; it also performed it at the La Folle Journee festival in Nantes in 2018. Equally iconic is the orchestra's interpretation of Ravel's La Valse, which was particularly praised by European critics and opened the doors to the world's great concert halls.