Sergei Rachmaninoff was 19 years old when he wrote Aleko, his graduation work, which earned him an embrace from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky after the premiere. The
following year he composed The Rock, a symphonic poem based on a short story by Anton Chekhov: a solitary rock watches a Passing cloud for an entire night and, by
morning, is lonelier than before. Tchaikovsky, meanwhile, wrote his Fourth Symphony during the worst year of his life—where the brass fanfare returns in every movement like an inescapable fate. Three works, one question: Can we escape what we are?