Sad to say but I'm not enjoying the second season of Sound Euphonium anywhere near as much as I did the first. There's so much forced melodrama and the two new main characters haven't grown on me at all.
I don't know how it's forced when it was alluded to back in the first season. That being said, assuming you're talking about the first arc, it is definitely still the weakest part of the two seasons, and the rest of season 2 easily eclipses season 1
Sound Euphonium S2 spoilers it just felt contrived that Kumiko was in the middle of something that by rights had nothing to do with her. She ran into people randomly or was in the perfect position to eavesdrop and then they'd entrust this random first-year with the full story and rely on her to fix it. Nothing from S1 gave me such an overt feeling of 'this is only happening because Kumiko is the protagonist'. It didn't help that I felt the whole prior year situation was expanded on well enough in S1, it didn't need six more episodes of drama here.
That said, I just started the second arc so hopefully it is indeed better! ---