Markus Becker - Max Reger: Bach Piano Transcriptions, Vol. 7 (2009)

Max Reger just couldn't stop composing. With 131 published works, most of them compendiums of several pieces in the same genre, Reger was relentlessly, even recklessly prodigious as a composer. And apparently when he wasn't writing his own music, the fin de siècle Bavarian composer was arranging Bach's. In addition to arrangements of the Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites for four-hand piano, Reger also transcribed 22 works for solo piano, four organ pieces, and 18 choral preludes, and all of them are included in this two-disc Hyperion set. Performed with veracity, vivacity, and virtuosity by young German pianist Markus Becker, Reger's Bach transcriptions, like most Bach transcriptions, are as much about the arranger as they are about the composer. In the choral preludes, Reger is faithful to the originals, but by adding chromatic counterpoints and copious expressive markings, he makes the music sound much more modern. In the organ works, he is strict with the notes, but by doubling lines and adding arpeggios, he significantly transforms the music's tone from the august austerity to grandiloquent verbosity. Still, there is undoubtedly much to enjoy here for the Reger fanatic, for example, his melancholic setting of Das alte Jahr vergangen ist and his portentous arrangement of the Toccata and Fuge in D minor, and Becker's playing is simply stupendous throughout. Hyperion's sound is a bit distant, but clear and evocative.