Samuel L. Laciar, reviewing the work for the "Public Ledger", gave a more positive assessment. He called the symphony "a most excellent work in musical conception, composition and orchestration," adding that Rachmaninoff "has given us another example in this work that it is not necessary to write dissonant music in order to get the originality which is the greatest—and usually the single—demand of the ultra-moderns." W. J. Henderson of the "Sun" was perhaps most accurate in summing up both the work and the situation the critics faced in assessing it: