Alexander Zemlinsky was just 21 when his first symphony was performed at the Vienna Conservatory, where he was still a student. The work reflects the considerable influence of Johannes Brahms, who himself had laboured for 21 years on his own First Symphony. Brahms showed no obvious signs of chagrin: indeed, it was his approval of the first movement of Zemlinsky's work that encouraged its full completion and subsequent performance.

While Zemlinsky's later association with Schoenberg and Berg is more often explored, it was this early immersion in the Romantic style of Brahms that conductor Martyn Brabbins chose to bring into focus in his concert with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. His approach to Zemlinsky's First Symphony was insightful, pointing up its symphonic workings, as well as underlining both the technical facility and the fertile imagination that would emerge so powerfully in the Lyric Symphony and Die Seejungfrau. Yet it was a sense of great emotional undercurrent that Brabbins brought out most vividly, especially in the slow movement, all the more poignant for the knowledge that – over time – Zemlinsky's fame would be all but eclipsed.

Brahms's Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Op 56a, is a masterly display of how to use orchestral forces: Brabbins teased out the melodies and the elaborate contrapuntal lines, with its finale – and its passacaglia – marking the glowing culmination of the whole. Mozart's Violin Concerto No 3 in G major, K216, offered a calm buffer zone between the two main works of the evening. Alexandra Soumm, a BBC Radio 3 New Generation artist, was the very poised soloist, her tone bright but articulating the phrasing with sensitivity and charm.