take into account that the first two-thirds took seventy days of intense work, for the last third – thirty-five days – there is not enough time. Travels begin and I must get down to playing the piano. So it looks as though my work will be put aside until next year." Near the end of the 1935–36 concert season, recitals in Switzerland enabled Rachmaninoff to pay a brief visit to Senar. He evidently took the score of the symphony with him when he left, since he had it with him in Paris in February 1936 for Julius Conus to mark bowings in the string parts. Work on the last movement had to wait until the composer arrived at Senar on April 16 for the summer holiday. On June 30, the composer reported to Satina, "Yesterday morning I finished my work, of which you are the first to be informed. It is a symphony. Its first performance is promised to Stokowski—probably in November. With all my thoughts I thank God that I was able to do it!" Rachmaninoff arrived in America just in time for final rehearsals of the work's premiere. Instrumentation The symphony is scored for full orchestra with 3 flutes (the 3rd doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (the 3rd doubling cor anglais), 2 clarinets in A and B, bass clarinet in A and B, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets in A and B, 1 contralto trumpet in F, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, tam-tam, xylophone, 2 harps (or harp and small upright piano), celesta, and strings. Reactions Critical The day after the Third Symphony premiered, Edwin Schloss wrote for The Philadelphia Record that he found the work "a disappointment," with "echoes ... of the composer's lyric spaciousness of style" but largely sterile. Even Olin Downes, normally a champion of the composer's works, was not so sure about this piece: The outward characteristics of Rachmaninoff's style are evident in the work heard on this occasion. It cannot be said, however, that in these pages Mr. Rachmaninoff says things which are new, even though his idiom is more his own than ever before, and free of the indebtedness it once had to Tchaikovsky. Nor is it easy to avoid the impression, at a first hearing of the work, of a certain diffuseness. There is a tendency to over-elaboration of detail, and to unnecessary extensions,