Arnold Schoenberg claimed his musical style was the offspring of an unlikely marriage between the complex and challenging harmonies of Richard Wagner and the formal and technical developments of Johannes Brahms. In tracing these connections, however, one finds that Schoenberg's relationship to this great late Romantic rivalry is mediated through his teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky, an often overlooked composer whose slim compositional output nonetheless reflects a mixture of formal rigor and lyrical gift that would both predate and heavily influence the future leader of the Second Viennese School. Even in the D minor symphony, which Zemlinsky composed at the tender age of 21, the listener senses a compositional style that resists the dichotomizing tendencies of the late nineteenth-century musico-political scene. Though Zemlinsky's inexperience does occasionally cause minor snags in the musical surface, his first completed symphonic undertaking nonetheless demonstrates a skill and insight that foreshadows the high praise with which Schoenberg would eulogize his former mentor in 1942: "I have always firmly believed that he was a great composer, and I remain steadfast in this belief. It is possible that his day will come earlier than we think."

Despite Schoenberg's prophecy, however, Zemlinsky's works went rather neglected by scholars until near the end of the twentieth century. In fact, by the time an effort was made to record his early symphonic works (an effort realized in 1996 by the Cologne Orchestra under the baton of James Conlon), there was no complete score of the D minor symphony from which to work. Two fragments were located: one, a photocopy, left off at measure 39 of the finale; the other began at measure 40 of the same movement, leaving a one-measure gap to be filled in before the work was performable. There is also some confusion as to the numbering of Zemlinsky's symphonies. Conlon's recording refers to the D minor Symphony as Zemlinsky's Symphony No. 1, while Zemlinsky's biographer, Anthony Beaumont, refers to it as Number 2, in deference to an incomplete student work in E flat from 1891.

The four-movement structure of the D minor Symphony falls into the traditional mold, suggesting the influence of Brahms' self-consciously classical style. This comes as no surprise: we know that Zemlinsky knew Brahms, since he apparently attended the 1892 premiere of the first movement of this work; likewise, one of the elder composer's closest friends and most outspoken proponents, Anton Door, had been Zemlinsky's piano teacher. (In fact, Door had founded the Vienna Composers Society as a countermeasure to the establishment of the Viennese Academic Wagner Society.) Still, Zemlinsky (like Brahms himself) was rather unenthusiastic about following such divisive cultural camps: one can hear in the first movement of the D minor Symphony passages certain exaggerated dynamic effects that recall the "Wagnerian Symphonist" Anton Bruckner, as well as some isolated moments where Wagner's visceral chromaticism threatens the sense of neoclassical logic.

The Symphony opens with a nine-minute Allegro ma non troppo that haltingly evokes the spirit of Bruckner. It is configured as a series of sweeping passages marked by somewhat exaggerated dynamics and textural variations. The second movement (Allegro scherzando) is bright in character and features the various choirs of the orchestra in effective dialogue with one another; the evocative middle section unfolds in a hymn-like chord progression. The third movement (Sehr innig und breit) may be the most effective in the entire Symphony. Contemplative but not mournful, it builds to a dramatic, sweeping central passage before returning to a pensive mood. The Brucknerian finale (Moderato) opens with a stuttering oboe passage; the movement seems to lurch along until coming to a grand finish.

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