Symphony no. 1 in E major, op. 17

The First Symphony, finished in 1894, opens the cycle of six that Glass wrote between then and 1926 — the largest symphonic output of any Danish composer of his generation apart from Nielsen, with whom he shared a birth decade and almost nothing else. Four movements follow the inherited plan, from a forceful Allegro through a lyrical Adagio and a driving Scherzo to a spacious finale. Behind the writing stand Franck and Bruckner, whose music Glass had come to know as a student in Brussels rather than through the Copenhagen tradition of Gade.