The inlay of this latest instalment in Naxos’s American Classics series proclaims it as the first in a projected Harris cycle. This is good if puzzling news: the company has already issued a pairing of the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies under Theodore Kuchar (10/02). If you haven’t heard the Fourth – there was a Vladimir Golschmann recording on Vanguard – the reasons are not hard to find. The work, essentially five jolly folksong arrangements for chorus and orchestra with two subsequently interpolated, purely orchestral interludes, doesn’t aspire to the rhetorical significance of its predecessor. Marin Alsop directs a confident, unsensational performance, its main drawback being the need to access the Naxos website to locate the old-time Americana of the texts.

Surprisingly for one who was close to Leonard Bernstein in his last years, Alsop adopts much the same kind of low-key approach to the more familiar Third. The relaxed, rural feel brings subtlety to subdued passages but the opening lacks tension and, in the end, the restraint seems self-defeating. Connoisseurs will note that the conductor conducts all the notes, unlike Koussevitzky and Bernstein himself. Perhaps, though, they knew what they were doing when they inflicted cuts on the shimmering Pastoral section at its core.

Alsop has done some fantastic things in Colorado and her classic disc of Christopher Rouse (RCA, 8/97 – nla) needs reissuing. Alas the music-making here will probably disappoint in what seems to be a deliberate avoidance of gravitas. The recorded sound is pleasant and clear, a little small-scale in keeping with the readings.