This recording with Jean-Jacques Kantorow leading the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège combines the most familiar of Saint-Saëns' symphonies, the Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 ("Organ"), with perhaps his least familiar one, the Symphony in F major ("Urbs Roma"), composed by the 21-year-old Saint-Saëns for a competition in 1856. The latter work was not published until 1974, and it's not often recorded; Saint-Saëns buffs will be pleased to have this recording for that reason alone, even though the work reflects ...
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This recording with Jean-Jacques Kantorow leading the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège combines the most familiar of Saint-Saëns' symphonies, the Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 ("Organ"), with perhaps his least familiar one, the Symphony in F major ("Urbs Roma"), composed by the 21-year-old Saint-Saëns for a competition in 1856. The latter work was not published until 1974, and it's not often recorded; Saint-Saëns buffs will be pleased to have this recording for that reason alone, even though the work reflects little of the composer's mature personality. (Among Kantorow's sparse competition is a recording he made earlier with the Tapiola Sinfonietta.) It's essentially a throwback work that departs more and more from Classical models as it proceeds, and nobody has quite figured out how it was supposed to relate to the titular city of Rome. The work really should float delicately, and here it doesn't quite; one gets the feeling that the Liège orchestra isn't entirely keeping up with Kantorow's...
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