John Wilson and Sinfonia of London complete their cycle of Rachmaninoff symphonies with this recording of the First Symphony and the Symphonic Dances. The 1897 premiere of the First Symphony in St. Petersburg was a disaster. Rumor had it that the conductor was drunk; in any case he seems to have had little interest in the piece, and the performance was met with scathing reviews. This setback affected Rachmaninoff profoundly, and he left the score in Russia when he fled the revolution in 1917, after which it was lost. Two years after his death, it was reconstructed from a set of orchestral parts in the Leningrad Conservatory, and given its second performance in 1945, going on thereafter to gain its place in the standard orchestral repertoire. Written towards the very end of the composer’s life, the Symphonic Dances reference the theme from the final movement of the First Symphony. In this recording, Sinfonia of London plays from John Wilson’s own performing edition of the work.