This new Naxos recording offers Goldmark's endearing Rustic Wedding Symphony in a lively, bright-eyed performance, with two sprightly overtures (hitherto unknown to me) to add to the attractions of a well-recorded CD with a convincing concert-hall ambience. The Irish orchestra are stronger in the woodwind and brass sections than in the violins, which do not command a very rich timbre above the stave. One notices this immediately at the beginning of the CD in the introductory bars of Im Fruhling (''In the spring''), which the high violins share with the flute: the sound here could ideally be sweeter and fuller. But those same violins play the fourth movement Andante (''Im Garten'') of the Symphony with nostalgic grace and considerable feeling, even if (on an earlier ASV record) the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Yondani Butt brought a rhapsodic breadth and an ardently swelling beauty of line to this movement that puts their performance in a class of its own. Butt's timing is 11'33'' against Gunzenhauser's 9'06'', and the music gains much from his more relaxed style and feeling of spaciousness, for the concentration of the very responsive RPO never falters. Gunzenhauser's tempo for the opening movement is brisker, too, but this gives an attractive freshness that is appealing in a different way, and when the Dublin trombones appear they are less raucous than the RPO brass. Yet I think Butt gets the tempo of this famous theme and variations just right, especially when the horns take up the tune: they sound delectably poised and velvet-toned. The other two central movements, the ''Intermezzo'' and the ''Serenade'', which rely a great deal on the woodwind, are very successful in both performances, and so is the finale, although here the greater weight and body of tone of the RPO's playing tells in Butt's favour.
Butt's encore is a substantial overture, Sakuntala, more like a symphonic poem, a bit melodramatic at times, but presented with much conviction. Yet I also enjoyed the two shorter overtures on Naxos, especially the exuberant Italian piece, which sparkles more readily here than in Butt's recent Philharmonia version. In short, the Naxos record offers spontaneous, lively music-making well recorded; the ASV disc, however, brings an added dimension to the symphony and in the first movement Butt's choice pacing reminds us that this was one of Beecham's favourites.
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