I. Allegro vivo
II. Andante. Adagio
III. Allegro vivace
IV. Finale. Allegro vivace

Georges Bizet (1838–1875) was 17 years old and still a student when he composed and, with an assured hand, scored his surprisingly mature and imaginative Symphony in C major, which is often compared to the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream written by the 18-year-old Mendelssohn. Heard in the secondary theme of the first movement and in the broad cantilenas of the second is the voice of Bizet the opera composer. With its own measured angularity, the strictly structured and Baroque-influenced middle section of the second movement forms such an enormous contrast with the full-blooded Romantic sound of the rest of the movement that it almost seems like a caricature. The third movement, despite being termed a minuet by the composer, is really more of a lively scherzo, with a folkish middle section that sounds like pipes playing. Vying with the first movement in terms of both scope and development, the finale is an enchanting fairy dance in the style of Mendelssohn. Bizet never published his Symphony in C major or mentioned it in his correspondence, and his early biographers did not know about its existence, either. It was only rediscovered in 1933, whereupon it received its modern world première two years later, in 1935.