To commemorate the Moog Synthesizer’s 50th anniversary, composer and keyboard virtuoso Craig Leon has recast some of J.S. Bach’s most familiar works in new arrangements for orchestra and the recently created Moog modular 55 synthesizer, an instrument that duplicates the sonorities of the classic 1973 model with modern technology. The results are bafflingly uneven, and even diffident at times.
In the opening selection, the Preludio from the E major Partita for solo violin, the synthesizer and violin soloist trade solo passages, while the string orchestra comes to the fore with seemingly arbitrary accented notes. The reverberant recording exaggerates the ensemble’s general lack of rhythmic vivacity, and the percussive synthesizer punctuations add nothing beyond irritating sound effects. The Siciliano from the C minor sonata for violin and keyboard proves more musically focused yet texturally diffuse. The legato phrasings and dynamic swells in Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring are about as grounded as a portion of gelatin, while the melody, inner voices, and short bass lines in the D major orchestral suite’s so-called “Air on the G string”melt into each other, higgledy-piggledy.
The synthesizer dominates the solo violin in the D minor Toccata BWV 565, while its following Fugue features uneventful, often predictable back and forth dialogue between keyboard and strings. Close miking and excessive reverberation transform “Ich Steh Mit Einem Fuss Im Grabe” BWV 156 into mush. While the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto’s first two movements benefit from clearer sonics and more transparent instrumentation (effectively so in the animated Andante), the fugal finale is rhythmically blobby and gets marginally slower as the performance progresses. Ironically, the Moog-only Aria from the Goldberg Variations and the 14 canons based on the Goldberg Aria’s ground bass provide this release’s most lucid and diversified orchestrally-oriented sonorities. Granted, they’re relatively thick, but they’re not vague.
Inevitably listeners of a certain age will measure Craig Leon’s synthesized Bach alongside Wendy Carlos’ groundbreaking late 1960s albums. I find Carlos’ ear-catching timbral preferences and tempos reveal Bach’s linear structures with far more cogency, incisive shaping, musical personality, and sheer joy. By contrast, the present release might have been subtitled “Swished-Around Bach”.
