For the popular nicknames attached to certain classical symphonies—designations not given by their composers—there is simply no rational explanation. Why is Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 called “Jupiter,” or why is Haydn’s Symphony No. 82 “The Bear” or his No. 22 “The Philosopher”?

But with Camille Saint-Saens’ Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, there has never been the slightest mystery why the work immediately attained the sobriquet “The Organ Symphony.”When the stentorian organ chords come crashing into the final movement, there is not the slightest doubt that the organ’s overbearing presence brands the symphony and makes it its own.

San Diego Symphony Music Director Jahja Ling brought his spacious—even majestic—vision of Saint Saens’ “Organ Symphony” to Copley Symphony Hall Friday (November 5) to show off the hall’s recently refurbished pipe organ. I stress “pipe” organ, because people frequently ask me what kind of organis in the hall—or more bluntly if it is a “real” organ, because there are no pipes visible.

Unlike, say, the eye-catching, whimsical Frank Gehry designed façade at Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall (the organ façade that was inspired by a packet of fast-food French Fries dumped upside down) or the more conventional pipe displays at San Francisco’s Davies Hall or Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, all the pipes at Copley Symphony Hall are neatly tucked away in deep bays on either side of the stage. And the reason is simple: before the edifice became Copley Symphony Hall, it was a Fox movie palace, and its organ was a theater-style organ intended to accompany silent films. And in the 1920s, organs, unlike well-behaved children, organs were heard but not seen.

Guest organist Robert Plimpton gave his usual authoritative, rhythmically precise account of the organ solos, drawing from the modest resources of the Robert Morton theater organ the best possible simulation of sounds that Saint Saens intended. Of course, the sonic potential of a theater organ versus a concert organ is not unlike the horsepower difference between a Mini Cooper and a Jaguar.

Although the violins lacked clean definition in the "Organ" Symphony’s opening bars—that rapid, fluttering motif from which the composer extracted so much of the later thematic development—the orchestra acquitted itself well. By the middle of the first movement the players had found their stride, and the brass sections, especially the trumpets, projected ringing, beautifully focused volleys over their colleagues’ roiling fortes.

I admired the supple, sinuous, sustained melodies built over subtle crescendos that Ling extracted from the strings in the Poco adagio, and his take on the big fugue in the Finale was vigorous and exciting.

American pianist Garrick Ohlsson set an admirable Gallic tone for the evening with his ever buoyant, sparkling interpretation of two Chopin works, the familiar “Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor,” Op. 11, and the infrequently programmed Variations on “La ci darem la mano,” Op. 2. Both of these early works—Chopin was all of 20 when he completed this piano concerto--are youthful showpieces that keep the spotlight fixed on the soloist, leaving the orchestra with a decidely secondary function. Unlike a Mozart piano concerto, which is a spirited dialogue between soloist and orchestra, these Chopin works are extended piano monologues that allow the orchestra occasional nods of approval.

Chopin’s variation cycle based on the lovely duet from Mozart’s opera DON GIOVANNI (dashed off at age 17 and immediately published) was his calling card to his contemporary music world. When Robert Schumann came across the then recently published Chopin score, he wrote in his influential music magazine that immortal riposte, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” In retrospect, no one today would describe this particular composition as a work of genius, but what Schumann undoubtedly saw in the piece was a radical new style of piano playing that fused the potent emotions and bravura technique of bel canto opera into virtuoso piano performance.

What was there not to like about Ohlsson’s performance? His explosive, blistering figurations and lightning parallel octaves never lost their elegance and luster, and his catalogue of emotions proved as varied as the composer's own. The variation cycle pumped him up for the Piano Concerto No. 1, where he was able to develop more complex ideas and thematic relationships, especially in the opening Allegro maestoso. He wedded his evident empathy for the composer's effusive style with his formidable technique, for which we could ask no more.

Ling and the orchestra proved attentive and supportive to Garrick throughout the concerto. Although Ling was using a revised orchestral version of the Piano Concerto, aside from a slightly fuller string texture and some more prominent wind solos, I did not detect a major difference from Chopin’s original, modest orchestral accompaniment.

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