Symphony No. 2

‘The symphony is not a form; it is a way of thinking', was once Kokkonen's oracular statement. The second symphony, completed in 1961 only one year after his first symphony, belongs to his dodecaphonic period and is one of his most tragic and introspective works: bare, but charged with intensity. It is one of Kokkonen’s most thorough-going work in terms of serial technique.