Symphony #2 in A (Etude)
The 2nd Symphony, like the first, was envisioned back in the early 1980's. The ideas for the first movement were borrowed from a "Tone Portrait" I had started working on, then abandoned. It owes its character to that original concept.
The rest of the symphony was inspired by works of Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. A Scherzo is substituted for the minuet in the third movement, and a short transitional section connects the third and fourth movements.
There are quite a few ideas in this symphony that are thinly disguised rip-offs of other composers. (The main theme of the second movement, for instance, bears more than a passing resemblance to the second movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata.) For this reason, I had considered this an unusable concept for some time. However, I decided to finish it because, like the first symphony, there were some ideas worth keeping. Also, I felt it would be a good exercise in orchestration -- hence the subtitle, "Etude".