@Adrian Quince and @Monarcheon : You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for spending your free time to help me out with this; I really do appreciate it. After years of dabbling at computer screens, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I will have a chance to have this piece performed by a respectable orchestra someday. If that were to happen, it'd likely be because you took the time to help me eliminate weak points, strengthen the material, and polish things up. And even if that never happens, your help is still very meaningful to me. Thank you to both of you. I am working on your revisions as I type this out. :)
@KJthesleepdeprived : Thank you! It's nice to get a slap on the back sometimes. I think I know how you feel about length -- I've always been self-conscious about how long my pieces are. It's almost as if there's a voice in the back of my mind saying, 'Why would anyone want to listen to your music for this long?' Full disclosure: I started working on this piece in the fall of 2015, just about a year and a half ago. Granted, only the second movement (of the current piece) survived my endless self-editing, and even that one ended up unrecognizable, but I do feel like I learned a lot just by chipping away at it day after day. And of course, the comments above prove that I have much, much more to learn, lol.