The Organ Symphony

Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam’s ongoing 17 CD Beethoven project for the BIS label has confirmed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and refreshing interpreters of the classical repertoire. “One feels almost as if one were a contemporary of Beethoven’s, one of the first, immensely astonished – not to say agitated – individuals to hear this music,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto foreshadowed Beethoven’s concerto in the same key with its brooding intensity and drama. Although the addition of an organ to Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony was a brilliant innovation, the sheer beauty of this symphony’s themes and its uplifting journey from C minor to C major has made it one of the best loved symphonies ever written.