Disconcerting but often delightful new Bach transcriptions

Spectator

2 days ago

Grade: B
Everyone loves the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Rather fewer people love the sound of an unaccompanied organ, so a cottage industry has developed among conductors and composers, retrofitting Bach for full orchestra. From Elgar and Mahler to showman-maestros like Stokowski and Henry Wood, orchestral Bach transcriptions have tended towards the spectacular, and they annoy all the right people. When Wood arranged the D minor Toccata and Fugue for a super-sized orchestra, he pre-empted the backlash by crediting it to a fictional Russian modernist, 'Paul Klenovsky'. The critics duly raved.
Still, who knew that the late Sir Andrew Davis – the closest thing we had to a latter-day Thomas Beecham – was in on the same game? Davis was working on this recording at the time of his death in 2024, and four of the 11 transcriptions recorded here are conducted by Davis himself, with his colleague Martyn Brabbins stepping in for the others. Play it blind and see if you can tell who's who.
It begins with that same D minor Toccata and Fugue, decked out with bells (a sort of fluorescent highlighter effect) but otherwise surprisingly lean and clear. That's a hallmark of Davis's orchestrations. Slimmed- down chamber textures (often plain woodwind or solo strings) are tinted, Warhol-style, in sonic neon, with marimbas, glockenspiels and more. It's disconcerting and often delightful, though purists shouldn't panic. Davis prefers to err on the side of (contemporary) good taste. But the mighty St Anne Prelude and Fugue – which begins like a colliery brass band and ends by letting the organ itself back in on the celebration – has swagger to spare. And then some.