Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1, 'Isle of the Dead'

After the disastrous failure of its première in 1897, Rachmaninov's youthfully exuberant Symphony No. 1 had to wait until after his death before it was reconstructed from the surviving orchestral parts and performed again, in Moscow in 1945. Since then it has taken its rightful place as one of the great Russian symphonic works of the late nineteenth century. The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29 is a vivid and powerful symphonic poem based on a well-known nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Bocklin.