Weber was rather sheepish about his two youthful symphonies, and indeed their weaknesses can seem easier to identify than their strengths. However, he gave the best clue to their performance when he referred to the opening Allegro con fuoco of No. 1 as being ''a wild fantasy movement''. Wolf Konold's note repeatedly invokes the name of Haydn; but there is nothing of Haydn's dazzling wit here, and only superficially is any of it Haydnesque. The performers understand better. By playing up the wild, demonic elements in the music, Hartmut Haenchen gives it a compelling originality that might have made the embarrassed composer think again. It emerges as a striking piece, raw but with a freshness and verve that need no apology. I have never been so impressed by it.
Haenchen also stresses the romanticism in Mendelssohn's early symphony, which the players tackle with similar exuberance. They are a splendid ensemble, with the unanimity that springs not merely from technical exactness but from a shared perception of the music. The Italian Serenade is more lightly played, and suitably recorded with a slightly different acoustic; and the Siegfried Idyll is played less as an orchestral showpiece than as chamber music, as if on that first morning on the wide stairs of Wagner's house at Tribschen. Incidentally, Konold's note speaks of that being on Christmas Day 1870, ''the first birthday which Cosima celebrated as Wagner's wife''. In his translation Stewart Spencer, as a good Wagnerian, tactfully corrects this to ''official'' birthday, as Cosima was really born on the 24th. However, it is putting too much of a gloss on the word Wilhelminismus to translate it as ''self-aggrandisement''.'