Weill's collaboration with Bertold Brecht—and with it his first big hit, "The Three-Penny Opera, " were a few years in the future when the 21-year-old student composed this symphony. It is in one movement and is a unique distillation of the late-Romantic mood and a classical outlook. It has the often very thick counterpoint found, for instance, in the music of Alban Berg, but remains very much a tonal and, ultimately, optimistic work, ending in a jubilant conclusion and a firm closing in the tonality of c minor. It is one of the most promising of First Symphonies, and already shows the Weill was a potent creator of melodies.

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