Recently a composer was told by a knowledgeable critic that no one writes symphonies any more, to which he replied: ‘Yes, I know; so I call mine something else.’ Roger Sessions has not done this. His eight symphonies, which span the years from 1927 to the present, are worthy of the name, and give undeniable evidence that reports of the genre's demise have been premature. In originality and scope of expression, and in the mastery with which large-scale symphonic thinking is reconciled with a post-tonal idiom, the cycle that begins with the Second Symphony (1946) deserves to be counted among the outstanding musical achievements of the past 25 years.