For a work that will never be exactly easy to capture on record (and it may be significant that none of the versions listed above was made in a recording studio, not even those—the majority—in which the organ part was over-dubbed) the Saint-Saens Third Symphony has been remarkably fortunate. All the rivals of Ozawa's new recording are very successful as performances, all have satisfying and convincing sound and each has individual characteristics that one could get very fond of on repeated hearing and would miss in other interpretations. I am thinking, for example, of the finally transformed motto theme (quiet strings and rippling piano duet, immediately after the crashing entrance of the organ) as Batiz on ASH handles it: hushed and ethereal, just that much more magical than even the best of the others (the organ in Batiz's recording is marginally the most natural, too). Then there is the way Dutoit on Decca sees the arrival of the organ as the true destination of the interrupted scherzo that precedes it; again, the excitement with which the music hurtles towards that encounter is not quite matched by any of his colleagues (though Ozawa comes very close). And Barenboim (on mid-price DG) reminds us of the scale of Saint-Saens's ambition ('Beethovenian', it was thought at the time) by pointing up the gravity of many pages of the symphony and the sheer bigness of its sound. I would, in short, be happy with any of these performances (and it is not, I suppose, a work of which many people would want four or five recordings on their shelves) but Ozawa's rises effortlessly to the top of the list as the most desirable.
He offers 16 minutes more music than his two full-price rivals, for a start: Saint-Saens's Third Symphony is a great deal broader than it is long, and the custom of spreading a 35-minute work over two sides is a habit that I am glad to see broken. And in the two tone-poems (placed as prelude and postlude to the symphony) Ozawa gives an immediate flavour of his way with this composer: it is affectionate, with a nice lightness of touch and a marvellously clear transparency of orchestral texture. The symphony is distinguished by quite superbly rich string playing (the pious poco adagio theme in the first movement has, in the very best sense of the word, a really unctuous solemnity to it), by vivid clarity of detail (it has not often seemed so probable that Sibelius knew the opening of the second movement, nor so obvious how close a student of Beethoven and Berlioz Saint-Saens was) and by a great sense of enjoyment throughout: Ozawa takes the work only 99 per cent seriously, perhaps, but he knows how to relish its proudly swinging tunes and the jubilant tumult of its conclusion without pretending that Saint-Saens really was 'le Beethoven francais'. It makes for a performance of great exhilaration but without a trace of heaviness or pomposity. It is also excellently recorded, in a good open acoustic. One tiny bonus: the organ (that of Chartres Cathedral, also used by Barenboim) is allowed to reverberate into silence at the end; it is a phony effect, no doubt (in a live performance the organist would take care to avoid this, and in any case applause would cover it) but a most enjoyable one.'