so that the last movement, in particular, appears too long. Would not a pair of shears benefit the proportions of this work? Samuel L. Laciar, reviewing the work for the Public Ledger, gave a more positive assessment. He called the symphony "a most excellent work in musical conception, composition and orchestration," adding that Rachmaninoff "has given us another example in this work that it is not necessary to write dissonant music in order to get the originality which is the greatest—and usually the single—demand of the ultra-moderns." W. J. Henderson of the Sun was perhaps most accurate in summing up both the work and the situation the critics faced in assessing it: It is the creation of a genial mind laboring in a field well known and loved by it, but not seeking now to raise the fruit of heroic proportions.... The first movement is orthodox in its initial statement of two contrasting chief subjects. They are contrasted in the customary way, in temper and tonality. But the working out section pays only polite respect to tradition. The development of themes immediately follows their statement and this is Rachmaninoff's method. The cantabile theme of the first movement is especially attractive in its lyric and plaintive character and the leading subject has virility and possibilities which are not neglected later. In fact, we suspect, after this insufficient first hearing, that there is more organic unity in this symphony through consanguinity of themes than is instantly discernable. Public The public was as confused as the critics. Listeners who enjoyed the Second and Third Concertos, the Second Symphony, Isle of the Dead and, more recently, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, came expecting a quite different work than the one they heard. As Barrie Martyn phrases it, "The public had doubtless been misled by the old-style romanticism of the eighteenth Paganini variation and were perplexed to find that Rachmaninoff had after all advanced beyond the 1900s; the critics, on the other hand, condemned him just because they felt that he had not." Composer Rachmaninoff believed the Third Symphony was one of his best works, and its lukewarm reception disappointed and puzzled him. He summed up the situation in a 1937 letter to Vladimir Wilshaw: "It was played in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc. At the first two performances I was present. It was played wonderfully. Its reception by both the public and