Octo_Russ

Saint-Saens - Symphony 3 'Organ' [Levine-Berliner Philharmoniker] 

This is the first time that Saint-Saens most famous work has appeared in my Blog, this is so surprising to me, it's one of my favourites, and this is my favourite recording of it, the first ever live concert i went to had this as their main piece, it's somewhat of a shame that his other Symphonies just aren't of the same calibre.

James Levine was born in America in 1943, now 67 years old, and suffering a number of health issues which is curtailing his conducting, he recorded this work in 1986, i'm not all that endeared with the booklet cover, DG have some fairly crazy visuals on their front covers, the back inlay is more interesting, white lettering on a black background works well for me.

The whole of this Symphony is a delight, each of the four movements play their part perfectly, Saint-Saens certainly knows how to put a Symphony together, i especially liked the second and fourth movements, there's some tremendous things going on at the start of the last movement, and yet my own personal favourite is the sublime slow movement Poco Adagio, it is so soothing, a beautiful and sweet delicacy, right after the initial gentle notes by the Organ, the strings come in with the most ravishing tone [0:10+], no woodwind, brass, or timpani, just strings, and they play at viola level [0:10-1:24], and then the strings play up a notch to more violin level [1:22-2:31] with woodwinds in the background, and the lower strings have that deeper and sultry creamy tone afterwards [2:31-3:15] with organ as a backdrop, and so it goes, Saint-Saens uses the different levels of the strings as a sort of dialogue, the whole movement is very sparse, the tune is the star of the show rather than complex instrumentation, after a string pizzicato section [5:50-6:56] for me the highlight appears, the violins play sweet and high [6:57-8:19], restrained at first, but getting higher and sweeter, they really hit the mark at [7:42+], with quiet pizzicato strings as a backdrop, like gently falling rain, it's just exquisite, and afterward the woodwind and strings have a nice little autumnal dialogue, the whole movement shows an excellent use of the different string textures.

Here's the second movement Poco Adagio conducted by Myung-Whun Chung on YouTube.