The fact that Leopold Stokowski could, in a personal but reverent fashion, transcribe the music of Bach is all-but-universally known: remember the first piece in the movie Fantasia? This collection shows that he had a way with other baroque composers as well, including the likes of Handel, Buxtehude, Gluck, and Vivaldi. Stokowski doesn’t simply recast this music for a larger ensemble; rather, he uses his ear for orchestral timbre to add color and to apply more than a little of his own “spin” to the works. The orchestrations aren’t meant as a substitute; it’s more the result of one great musical mind commenting on the work of others. Do not expect Wagnerian bombast or baroque music simply and inelegantly “taken up a notch”; you will find only subtle shading here.
Stokowski’s arrangement of the suite from Handel’s Water Music is worth the price of the disc. Stoki has at it with a Stravinsky-like distance (think Pulcinella) but with Mahler’s instrumentational cleverness, creating a true piece for a modern orchestra. Christopher Blake’s oboe is ravishing. As an orchestrator, Stokowski tends toward the idiosyncratic, often boldly defying the nature of the music yet managing to sound “right”. Take the horns in the final movement of the Water Music, or the low strings in the opening of Vivaldi’s Concerto grosso No. 11, both of which are unexpected but welcome. Such is the personality of Stokowski. Imagine giving the melody of Buxtehude’s Sarabande and Courante to the ondes martenot!
Most of this disc is taken up with dirges–a Pavane and Gigue by William Byrd, Gluck’s “Sicilienne” from Armide, or Handel’s rapturous “Dead March” from his oratorio Saul. When the music asks for slow and moving, Stokowski responds by using aching, lush strings or dark crackling winds, all of which is graphically depicted by the BBC Philharmonic under the careful (if sometimes too-deliberate) baton of Matthias Bamert and by the full, resonant, life-like engineering.
