Best sounding Saint-Saens Sym No. 3?

Having both of the Telarc versions, I feel the more recent one was preferable sonically and interpretively. My only quibble with the second version is that the organ was recorded in a different venue than the orchestra (the intent was to use an organ which was the same as the one Saint Saens wrote the piece for), and while the editing was done very well I still think you lose some spontenaity in playing by recording the parts in separate sessions.

There are many who like the Fremeaux/City of Birmingham Orchestra release on EMI (re-released on vinyl and CD, I believe, by Cisco). Very lush acoustic. Another well-recorded version is with the Dallas Symphony and Jean Guillou on Dorian, with a good pairing of the Jongen Symphonie Concertante (which is the main reason to buy that recording, in my view). The old Telarc recording with Michael Murray/Ormandy conducting is sonically spectacular (the vinyl was famous for causing cartridges of the time to mistrack), but I really think the performance in the second half of the piece is so slow and unexciting as to be unlistenable. My favorite overall is with Guillou and the SFO (DeWaart conducting) on Phillips, not so much for the quality of the sonics overall (they're OK, though a little "thick" sounding, not really as transparent as others) as for the fact that Guillou used the 32 foot stops more than most organists do in this performance--far more than he did on the Dorian recording, in fact--so you get full 16Hz notes in the second movement (or the second half of the first movement, depending on how you look at it). This one apparently has become available again on CD, worth looking for, and far better than the DeWaart recording with Chorzempa that came out on PentaTone SACD, IMHO.

I'll point out, as I have elsewhere, that the Dorian disc is an audiophile's delight, because it was recorded in the Meyerson Hall in Dallas in two different acoustics. For the Jongen, since the organ is featured as a solo instrument, the hall acoustics were set to be more reverberant; for the Saint Saens, where the organ is meant to be part of the orchestra, a more normal concert setting of the acoustics was used (for those of you who are unaware, the Meyerson hall has adjustable panels in it which can change the acoustics of the hall itself). A good system will easily show the differences. In the performance, Guillou doesn't use the 32 foot stops that much in the Saint Saens as he does on the DeWaart recording, but he sure does on the Jongen--if you have subs prepare to be shaken!