Leader, Philip Whiteway
Conductor. Walton O'Donnell
Balakirev completed his brilliant but almost unknown Second Symphony in 1908, at the age of seventy-one. Yet the emotional key-note of the work suggests the exuberant vitality of youth. Russian folk tunes are introduced in both scherzo and finale, but Balakirev treats them in a manner peculiar to himself, using them as mere central cores for his own glowing imagination.