Kabalevsky is best-known in the West for such sprightly, witty pieces as The Comedians and the Colas Breugnon Overture, and perhaps for the lyrical "Youth" Concerto for piano. His symphonies are surprisingly dour by comparison, but the Second nevertheless comes across as fairly positive and certainly extroverted, despite its C minor key. It was written and premiered in 1934. As befits a Soviet work, its subject, stated by the composer, is mankind achieving his salvation by taking an active part in the reconstruction of his society.

The first movement, Allegro quasi presto, is in sonata form, taking off from nattering, ultimately beefy scherzando material full of busy passagework and a more tender but still quick theme winding through the winds and strings over a palpitating, unsettled accompaniment. The development section varies the main ideas concisely, giving way to a long crescendo building from a quiet bassoon solo and culminating in an impassioned statement of the movement's first theme. The recapitulation revisits the opening section in an entirely straightforward way, then leads into a virtuosic coda.

The Andante non troppo is an elegy that first offers an artless flute solo over a restless, mildly dissonant string accompaniment. Once the strings have expanded this material to a climax with brass reinforcement, the oboe enters with a melancholy melody, the string accompaniment now simpler and more elegiac. A chromatic, processional section for pizzicato strings ushers in a gradual crescendo and after the inevitable climax, the opening flute material leads the way to the end of the movement, with the clarinet recalling the second theme just before the close. The concluding Prestissimo scherzando is a rondo that applies a quiet, perpetual-motion treatment to an essentially pastoral tune; jubilant, militaristic outbursts constitute the intervening episodes. Toward the end, these two elements contend for supremacy; the happy moto perpetuo theme barely gets in the last word, accommodating the optimistic finale expected of Soviet symphonies of this period.

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