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 the renowned psychiatrist Nikolai Dahl that could liberate the composer from his creative crisis. In 1906 Rachmaninoff began work on his Second Symphony. As part of the Rachmaninoff cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne and Dmitrij Kitajenko, OehmsClassics proudly presents the Symphony No. 2 and the Vocalise on the present recording, stunningly interpreted by Valer Sabadus.