A completely French concert awaits you this week: conductor Bertrand de Billy, who has been our guest several times, comes from Paris. He is joined by soloist Olivier Latry, titular organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, who will take his place at our Jehmlich organ for an unusually scored concert by Francis Poulenc: alongside the “queen of instruments,” the stage belongs to the strings and timpani.

Even though it only contributes its enormous tonal diversity in two of four movements, Camille Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony has rightly been nicknamed the “Organ Symphony,” because it makes the work—in the composer's words—“monstrous” and greatly thrilled the audience at its London premiere in 1886. Saint-Saëns' assessment: “I have given everything I could give here... What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.”