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I recently completed listening to the Saint Saens Symphony No. 3 (Organ) performed by the Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montreal with Nezet-Seguin conducting and Philippe Belanger on the organ. I usually don’t bother posting comments about music I don’t recommend. It takes far more effort than writing about something that moves me. But the Saint Saens is a favorite of mine and I also believe that it is an important draw for classical music repertoire generally and for the SACD format, so I decided to say something. The many virtues of this recording and performance notwithstanding that I found this disc to be a huge disappointment. The disc does include a coupling of surprise nuggets for organ devotees.
Actually, I found the performance, per se, to be pretty good. I found the interpretation to be more to my liking, overall, than Eschenbach’s with the Philadelphia Orchestra (see link below) that I enjoy very much albeit with some heedful caveats. I listened to both discs consecutively.
From an interpretive standpoint I didn’t find that much to chose between the two in Sections 1 and 4 that I will mention here. But in Sections 2 (Poco adagio) and 3 (Allegro moderato-Presto) the interpretations are worlds apart with Nezet-Seguin really nailing it, at least compared to Eschenbach in both. For example, in the 2nd Section Nezet-Seguin draws out the inner beauty of the music in a French Impressionistic way. It seems penetratingly insightful and nurturing in a way that Eschenbach accomplished, but to a lesser degree. With Nezet-Seguin you go away thinking, “I didn’t realize Saint Saens had so much to say”. And all along the organ is muscular but restrained as if to be signaling “just wait until 4th Section when I bust through these shackles”. In recent weeks I have come to realize that Eschenbach really drags out this Section, almost a full minute longer than practically any other performance I own and loses a bit in the translation, (but not fatally so).
But I found the Achilles hill of Eschenbach to be the 3rd Section and I have never really gotten past that, try as I might. Eschenbach takes a “Casey Jones at the throttle” approach and scurries through the section. While Nezet-Seguin doesn’t make any new discoveries (oh listen to me, what do I know), he does the 3rd Section “correctly” and satisfyingly, in my book.
So far it looks like Nezet-Seguin is ahead on points, far ahead. It’s his game to lose. All he has to do is hit the “gimme” shot. Well, he threw up (no pun intended) a soft brick. The “king of instruments” fell completely flat.
With every version of the Saint Saens that I own and especially since I heard it live I have always had this undefined but always heightened anticipation of the 4th Section where I literally brace myself for one of the truly great finale’s in all of orchestral music. But this time the anticipation was completely unfulfilled; the 4th Section fizzled from the first chord of the organ and never recovered. The power was short-circuited; there was no sense of room barometric change, real or imagined. Nothin’. This is a real double bogey because if you don’t get the organ right in the Organ Symphony you take a double hit for both performance and sound.
Plain and simple the organ wimped out. It is extremely weak; not just a “little weak”, it is pitiably weak. This is unpardonable. It really doesn’t matter to me why it wimped out because for me the performance failed the litmus test that calls for the “king of instruments”, in this Section, in this symphony, to assert itself in a most dominant and triumphant way; almost unfettered but still a team player within the context of the symphony.
But I will take a couple of guesses. Perhaps Nezet-Seguin directed the organist, Philippe Bélanger, to “pipe down” and erred on the conservative side in an attempt to achieve the optimum balance with the orchestra. This, of course, is a legitimate concern that must be addressed anytime the organ is performed in concert, especially at speed, with any other instruments or voices. Or this was an unfortunate engineering misjudgment brought about for the same concerns of balance. Or the results achieved were exactly what the conductor and engineers hoped for. Notice, I am not laying blame with the organist, even though this is, too, possible, but unlikely, in my opinion, for several key reasons, one of these being how Philippe Belanger acquits himself with the filler compositions on this disc. See below.
One can argue that this is a “symphony” and not a “concerto” and that in the confines of a symphony the organ is just another instrument to be given equal treatment. Well, I doubt if anyone familiar with the symphony would make that argument and if they did, I would point out that that is what the 2nd section accomplishes. But in this recording, in the 4th section the organist is “just one of the boys”. There is no excuse that where you least expect it the cellos are actually more audible.
Then, what was, initially, out of a fleeting curiosity, I decided to pull out my Telarc Ormandy/Philly LP from 1980. While my, new turntable/phono stage/cartridge set up is not quite ready for prime time, it has been coming along quite nicely so I said what the heck. (And this is why my comments continue on and don’t stop here). I initially planned to play excerpts, but that is even tougher to do with LP than with my SACD player (and fraught with danger). Besides I began to get intrigued the more I listened. Don’t get overly excited vinyl lovers; my intrigue was more for the performance than for the sound, although there is no denying that the sound was quite nice indeed.
I’ll just say that the Ormandy interpretation/performance is my favorite among the three versions. Ormandy, while not at all conservative or super careful, in my opinion, doesn’t make any of the blunders or near blunders anywhere along the line that pull down Eschenbach and Nezet-Seguin and all the while with great sound and musicianship. Eschenbach and Nezet-Seguin also have great and very good musicianship respectively, although the Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montreal seemed to be a wee bit stilted in places.
I found the recording engineering of the Eshenbach/Philadephia to be near top tier in many aspects, especially considering the organ/orchestra balance issues. The depth of the front to rear depth orchestra is especially noteworthy with Eshenbach/Philadephia, superior to the 1980 Telarc, but not superior to Telarc’s modern efforts. The Nezet-Seguin/Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montreal recording is good, but not great. It clearly does not compare to the other two in front to back depth and layering of orchestral groupings.
With regard to recording accuracy, I found the 4th Section of the Telarc to be a double-edged sword. The organ is more like what I remember a powerful organ to sound like, but the orchestral slam, especially the percussion and trombones, have a garish intrusion, that is far more pronounced that I am used to live. The low end of the Telarc is downright wicked. And even though it comes across as undefined and even if the dynamics may be closer to “real” it is still a poor facsimile because it is out of proportion. (I have expressed on several occasions, and it is widely known, that Telarc’s bass was often far out of proportion to the rest of the orchestra on many of its recordings during this era). And while my current system is far better equipped to deal with these resounding blows than my systems of yesteryears, the low end, particularly in the last minute/seconds of the finale, still tends to disfigure the music Hip Hop style on mine and every other system on which I have heard it. (The LP or the CD has been test disc staples of mine when auditioning systems over the years). But truth be told, I’m no purist and sometimes you throw accuracy out of the window in favor of frantic excitement. That’s what the Telarc LP (and CD) offers in spades.
On the Nezet-Seguin/Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montreal disc there are three superbly performed organ solos that are not even listed on the front cover show Belanger is not the wimp that one might otherwise conclude based on how the organ is portrayed in the Saint Saens. The three compositions, that include Louis Vierne, Charles-Marie Widor, and one other composer show without question, that if his wings are not clipped Belanger is quite capable of pulling all the stops while artistically keeping the instrument under securely firm reign. Unfortunately, his virtuosity with these compositions that are also wonderfully is not nearly enough to salvage this disc, whoese fortunes were firmly hitched to the Saint Saens Organ Symphony.
Robert C. Lang
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