Despite obvious deference to his models in Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, Brahms's personal fingerprints are already becoming apparent in this early work. The first movement, possibly inspired by the finale of Haydn's London Symphony, leads off with Brahms's favourite solo instruments, the natural horn and clarinet, and later drops into the combined rhythms that he was to use so much in later life.

The first scherzo grows out of an idea that was later to be developed more fully in the B flat Piano Concerto, whilst its counterpart in the fifth movement is thoroughly Beethovenish, with reminiscences of the Septet and the scurrying basses of the D major Second Symphony.

Between the two scherzos come two minuets, in which the original chamber music scoring has largely been retained, and an eloquent adagio where woodwind thirds, and later a beautiful horn call and chains of clarinet sixths, wind their way through a background of string tremolandos and arpeggios.

A high-spirited rondo concludes this work which did much to enhance Brahms's growing reputation in North Germany.