The sole appearance until now of the Baltimore Symphony in our catalogues has been on half of a poorly-recorded LP in 1975. Their fresh start, giving them the opportunity to prove themselves an orchestral body of quality, is much to be welcomed, especially as they seem to have, in the Joseph Meyerhoff Concert Hall, an admirable recording venue that produces a full, lustrous sonority while yet preserving clarity. The programme selected for their debut on Telarc is curiously entitled ''La Marseillaise And Other Berlioz Favorities'' (sic), but apart from the fact that La Marseillaise was, of course, only a Berlioz arrangement (as, for that matter, was the Rakoczy March in La damnation de Faust), I question its status as a 'favoritie' and doubt its ability to stand up to repeated hearings—however enthusiastically sung, six verses-and-refrains with no material change of treatment until the fifth are, frankly, a bore, and the two soloists needed to be much nearer the microphone for their words to convey any impact. David Zinman, who has been Music Director of the orchestra for the last three years, secures neat and decent playing but rarely attains what is now being called the Tingle Quotient. The orchestra approach it in Benvenuto Cellini (the best performance here), in the skittish final Presto of the ''Menuet des follets'', in the strings' headlong charge in Le corsaire (though the woodwind's rhythmic interjections are not articulated cleanly enough) and that overture's brilliant finish, but the Love Scene from Romeo et Juliette is a low blood-pressure reading, never suggesting the yearning intensity of ardent Italian youth (as, unforgettably, in the performances by Toscanini or Sir Colin Davis) or, giving Zinman the benefit of the doubt, was this languid interpretation intended to portray the lovers lost in wonderment at their new-found emotion? In the Rakoczy March nothing is made of the characteristic crossaccents immediately after the opening fanfare, and, given the requisite tension, it should already be sufficiently exciting without adding a spurious, barnstorming accelerando to this extent: the Trojan March is disappointingly tame, neither menacing nor stirring. O (as I believe someone once cried) for a Muse of fire!'