Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony

Saint-Saëns’s captivating “Organ” Symphony is a forceful statement for the genre itself. Written at a time when opera was perceived as the acme of musical expression, Saint-Saëns summoned the full emotive forces of the symphonic orchestra and organ to achieve the purest form of expression — untethered to text, story line, or characters. Severance’s Norton Memorial Organ shines in this journey from somber contemplation to radiant redemption, which...