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It’s pretty wonderful nonetheless, and I recommend it highly. I suspect it’s a little of both, and it’s the only issue that precludes giving this disc a highest rating. Whether this is a function of the engineering, or of many English orchestras’ chronic lack of fullness in the bass register, is hard to say. Stokowski 25 Audio CD 30 offers from 3.34 Orchestral Transcriptions By Respighi & Elgar BACH / RESPIGHI / ELGAR 14 Audio CD 13 offers from 7. List of Orchestral Transcrotions: Composer, Title, Score + Parts. 2 Stokowski 47 Audio CD 19 offers from 5.78 Stokowski's Symphonic Bach L. Leopold Stokowski Collection: Stokowski’s Transcriptions: Performance Sets. Those rumbling “organ pedals” for brass, basses, and timpani in the Toccata and Fugue don’t have quite the amplitude that they should, despite the theatrical flair that Serebrier imparts to them. Transcriptions, arrangements and original compositions by Leopold Stokowski.
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My only reservation with this second installment concerns the bottom end of the orchestra. This is undoubtedly the real deal, even if more than an hour of largely gentle, elegiac bonbons may be a bit much to take in at a sitting. Listen to the violins attack and sustain the opening of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor to the rich tone of Sleepers Awake! or to the amazingly sweet violins and oboe in Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. The final sound is the only significant issue. It doesn’t matter whether the sound is achieved naturally or through sonic manipulation–witness Stokowski’s own recordings with the Houston Symphony on Everest, for instance. His timbral palette was based on a rich string sound, with splashes of color. Stoki was not really a great orchestrator, if by this we mean organic and idiomatic, but he was distinctive. Serebrier understands this, as others who worked with Stokowski (such as Matthias Bamert for Chandos), do not. José Serebrier’s several discs of Stokowski transcriptions for Naxos were very successful, as this well-chosen selection reminds us. Key to any successful new recording of his arrangements is string sonority, that special, luminous sheen, especially in soft passages. Stokowski, as I mentioned in that earlier review, was not really a brilliant orchestrator in terms of timbral variety, but he was a very characteristic one. Outstanding items among the latter include Palestrina’s Adoramus Te, Byrd’s Pavane and Galliard, and a really yummy (but never too droopy) Boccherini Minuet. New Broadcasting House (Chapel, Concert Hall & Studio 7). As in his previous recording of Stokowski Bach transcriptions for Naxos, José Serebrier deploys an imaginative mix of the great man himself with other early masters. Orchestral Transcriptions of Leopold Stokowski BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/Matthias Bamert rec.