Undoubtedly one of America’s greatest symphonists between the Civil War and the 1920s, George Chadwick had an inestimable impact on American music and on many of the composers of the following generation, demonstrating that there could be a distinctively American style of classical music comparable in quality to Europe. With its many echoes of European romanticism, Symphony No. 2 confirmed Chadwick’s stature as a major American composer. Symphonic Sketches is his greatest achievement. A symphony in all but name, it is also Chadwick’s most American work in its portrayal of scenes of contemporary life, and in its stylistic fusion of neo-romanticism and sprinklings of contemporary modernism.