Long after the fact, Rachmaninoff told his biographer Oskar von Riesemann, "I returned to Moscow a changed man. My confidence in myself had received a sudden blow. Agonizing hours spent in doubt and hard thinking had brought me to the conclusion that I ought to give up composing." However, the composer's comments to Zatayevich seem considerably more rational, even logical. Nor had the press been entirely unfavorable toward the symphony (see above). It may have been on subsequent reflection that Rachmaninoff suffered his psychological collapse.