Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Seiji Ozawa, Boston Symphony Orchestra :: Bach: Orchestral Transcriptions

Highly recommended

D. Jack Elliot | Omaha, Nebraska | 09/29/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These are not the gauche pops orchestra transcriptions of Bach that you might expect. They are, rather, the work of some of classical music's great masters: Webern, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Stokowski. The weakest of them is Hideo Saito's transcription (Saito was Seiji Ozawa's conducting teacher in China, I believe) of the Chaconne from the Partita in D minor for solo violin, and even that one is still a fine setting. All of these arrangements are the sophisticated, well-crafted works of great musicians who thoroughly understood Bach's writing.



I can't say that these transcriptions actually change the music all that much. Bach wrote at a time when the different instruments of the orchestra were not treated idiomatically. He wrote for the violin essentially the same kinds of lines he might have written for the oboe, or even the valveless Baroque trumpet. So when those lines are transcribed for different instruments as they are here, they retain their character all but entirely.



Nevertheless, each composer's orchestration here affords us a sense of how he heard Bach's music. Stravinsky's setting of the Choral Varitions on Vom Himmel Hoch da komm' ich her is unmistakably Stravinsky, and so as well with the others here. I think the most effective work of this program is Webern's transcription of the Musical Offering: a subtle, intimate masterpiece of writing for chamber orchestra that employs Webern's Klangfarbenmelodie (sound-color melody). Also compelling is Schönberg's arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue in E flat (one of the very last pieces Bach finished before he died). What a remarkable piece! If you didn't know otherwise, in certain passages you could easily be convinced that this was one of Wagner's scores."