It has only been since the turn of the twenty first century that Leopold Stokowski's transcriptions for orchestra -- particularly those of Johann Sebastian Bach's music -- are an important part of the orchestral literature. Before that, opinions regarding them mainly ranged from necessary evil, owing to the popularity of certain ones, to that of wholesale bowdlerization, abuses committed against unwitting composers unable to object to such treatment because they were dead. However, the value of Stokowski's transcriptions as ...
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It has only been since the turn of the twenty first century that Leopold Stokowski's transcriptions for orchestra -- particularly those of Johann Sebastian Bach's music -- are an important part of the orchestral literature. Before that, opinions regarding them mainly ranged from necessary evil, owing to the popularity of certain ones, to that of wholesale bowdlerization, abuses committed against unwitting composers unable to object to such treatment because they were dead. However, the value of Stokowski's transcriptions as a kind of personal outlet of creativity for a great conductor -- who couldn't seem to get his game on as a composer himself -- is gradually being recognized; their worth from the perspective of pure, high-quality orchestration has never been in doubt. Conductor José Serebrier was one of Stokowski's rare followers among conductors and has never had a problem with reviving his master's orchestral transcriptions. Naxos' Stokowski: Bach Transcriptions 2 features Serebrier and the...
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