...and it's a big disappointment. It's a recording of the famous Saint Saens "Symphony #3," or the "Organ Symphony." This piece has been used extensively as a demonstration of many a fine audio system, especiall a good subwoofer, when the organ makes its famous appearance midway through the second movement. Audiophiles have used the Organ Symphony for demonstration for years, and the recording that likely started it was an RCA recording of the Boston Symphony, conducted by Charles Munch.

I owned a mono LP of that recording many years ago, and have since purchased a Phillips LP with Eduard DuArt conducting, as well as two Telarc CD's - one with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the other with Christian Bedea and the Royal Philharmonic. The Ormandy recording is one of Telarc's early "SoundStream" recordings, which fairly recently was updated into an SACD (which I don't own. The Munch recording has also been remastered into an SACD, and I don't own that either - perhaps I should!). The Bedea recording is a Stereophile favorite, and my own personal favorite as well.

So what's wrong with the new SACD? Well, there's certainly nothing wrong with the Metropolitan Orchestra of Montreal, nor Yannic Nezet-Seguin's conducting. The orchestra sounds nothing less than wonderful, with velvety smooth strings and powerful brass and bass percussion. This recording, on the ATMA label, is also the first I've heard in which the piano is very clearly heard.

But there's something really wrong.

This is the "organ" symphony, in which the organ is the star of the show, and not just an instrument in the background, which is the manner in which it's recorded on this SACD. I was looking forward to some truly earlh-shaking low bass (something for which SACD's are justifiably famous), but it's just not there. the organ's entrance midway through the second (and last) movement sounds nice, but too polite, restrained, and distant - all of which are completely the wrong adjectives to be usiing to describe this wonderful work.

So, the first of five new SACD's failed to live up to the promise of the SACD being "the best thing out there." We'll see what the next four sound like!