Leopold Stokowski was music director of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1909 to 1912, some time before he created his series of orchestral transcriptions, 11 of which appear here. The disc opens with perhaps the most famous of all, Bach’s D minor Toccata & Fugue (which also served as the musical introduction to Disney’s original Fantasia), and ends with The Great Gate of Kiev from Stokowski’s aggressively vivid arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Between these, the selections range from astonishingly idiomatic renderings of Debussy’s Clair de lune and The Engulfed Cathedral, to a doom-laden Rachmaninov C-sharp minor Prelude. There are also the refined delicacies of Boccherini’s Menuet and Albeniz’s Fête-Dieu à Séville, while Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata emerges here as an intense and profound miniature symphonic poem. Even with all of this, the star of the collection must be Stokowski’s brazenly majestic rendering of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops take to these gems with sheer relish, resulting in highly persuasive and enjoyable performances. Telarc’s rich, wide-ranging sound makes it easy to take off your purist’s hat for and hour or so, and just kick back and have some fun! [11/9/2002]
