Leonard Slatkin - Bach: Transcriptions (2000)

Having already extensively explored Leopold Stokowski's famous Bach transcriptions, Chandos now turns to famous arrangements by everyone else. There are some real discoveries here, particularly Raff's warmly Romantic setting of the famous D minor Chaconne, which has some amazingly Brahmsian moments and clearly deserves an occasional airing in concert. Honegger's version of the Prelude and Fugue in C BWV 545 also is quite impressive and undeservedly neglected, though Leonard Slatkin anchors this collection with three more-familiar Bach transcriptions by some of orchestral music's real heavy hitters: Schoenberg's fascinatingly sinewy "St. Anne" Prelude and Fugue, Respighi's sexily gothic Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, and my personal favorite, Elgar's sublimely vulgar Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, which in the course of the fugue transforms Bach into something akin to the "March of the Mogul Emperors" from the Crown of India Suite. The other arrangements, by Vaughan Williams/Foster, Reger, Holst, and Bantock are all good pieces of work, if without quite the glamour of their disc mates. Slatkin and the BBC Philharmonic perform this music with great enthusiasm, and have the benefit of typically brilliant Chandos sound. Given the interest of the repertoire, this splendid disc is self-recommending. -- David Hurwitz