John Smyth: >My orchestra opened its season with Samuel Barber's "Toccata Festiva," >for organ and orchestra. Wow. And I thought I had heard everything. >It's @17 minutes, very virtuoso and it has some deliciously wicked chord >progressions. (Moments of poetry too, of course--it's Barber.) > >Highly recommended. Second that! The classic recording is E. Power Biggs and (I dimly recall) Ormandy leading the Philadelphia. For some reason, it's a killer piece that hasn't caught on. People *will* insist on the dreary Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3 (dons asbestos windbreaker). In fact, I'm not sure that recording's been released on CD. I can find only a Cedille release *not* by those forces. Steve Schwartz