Born in 1881, Karl Weigl received lessons from Zemlinsky as a teenager, studied alongside Webern at the University of Vienna, was repetiteur and assistant to Mahler at the Vienna Court Opera and taught composition to pupils including Korngold, Eisler and Zeischl. Following the Anschluss of Austria with Germany in 1938, he fled with his family to the United States, where he continued to compose and held a number of teaching positions until his death in 1949.

Considering Weigl’s personal associations, including a close friendship with Schoenberg, not to mention the remarkable developments taking place in the Viennese musical scene of the time, the First Symphony is a surprisingly conservative affair for a work composed in 1908. Indeed, the music’s almost total avoidance of chromaticism and general lack of harmonic sophistication is more suggestive of a piece written several decades earlier. The writing is for the most part tuneful and well constructed rather than distinctive or inspiring, although a degree of Dvořákian radiance and charm makes for a pleasant listen in the third-placed slow movement.

Composed for piano in 1909 and orchestrated in 1922, Pictures and Tales is a six-part suite of miniatures depicting scenes from fairy tales. As in the symphony, the work’s musical idiom harks back to earlier times, the second and sixth pieces especially suggestive of the influence of Mendelssohn. The fourth movement, an easeful lullaby, is particularly charming. Taken as a whole, however, this is not music that I found particularly memorable, despite the lively and engaging performances from conductor Jürgen Bruns.