Symphony No. 2 , years later, is still a piece that I consider perhaps the most important one I ever completed in terms of what it did for my artistic development. The piece, although clearly immature, was a massive expansion in scope from any project I had previously done. My first symphony, the "Adirondack Symphony," was much simpler and more straightforward in basis.
In contrast, many of the aspects of my "voice" that persist to this day were developed for the first time through Symphony No. 2. I wrote it as the third of a series of 3 "time-capsule" pieces during my senior year of high school, in which I set out to immortalize the sentiments and feelings I had at the time. (The other two such pieces were "Falling," a brief tone poem for solo piano and orchestra, and my Violin Sonata.) I succeeded for the first time on an orchestral scale with Symphony No. 2 in interspersing deeply personal music that greatly moved me with the abstract and ambiguously neotonal methodology that still guides my compositional process.
The climax of Symphony No. 2 is still perhaps the greatest tension I have succeeded in creating. I set out to write the symphony knowing more about how it would end than how it would develop, and building the continuous tension required to achieve the climax at around 23 minutes was a major focus of my compositional effort.
Symphony No. 2 was written at a fast pace in under a month, from mid-October to mid-November of 2021. It was the last piece I completed before I turned 18 years old. The piece is not suitable for performance and requires revision; one day, I greatly wish to produce a "Symphony 2.5," in which I rewrite and rework the score.