Though a devoted fan of Leopold Stokowski for more years than I can remember, the coupling of the names Stokowski and Stravinsky on the booklet cover allied to the title The Rite of Spring filled me with momentary dread: could this be a digital re-enactment of the mauled Rite arrangement as rendered soundtrack material for Disney’s Fantasia? Happily it isn’t. Rather it harks back to Stokowski’s premiere 1929 Philadelphia recording (far more impressive) with a performance that, while not comparable with the very best (Gustavo Dudamel is among the newest contenders for that accolade), has many fine points. The opening is especially memorable, with a darkly wailing, characterfully intoned bassoon and some notably fluid woodwind phrasing. Thereafter the performance rides a course somewhere between guarded brilliance and elevated routine until we reach the closing ‘Sacrificial Dance’, which, frustratingly given the context, is granted one of the most balletic performances I’ve ever heard, edgy, buoyant and viscerally exciting. If only what had gone before had been quite as engaging.

The Bach transcriptions are in a different class, so good in fact that they compare with Stokowski’s own recordings: the Passacaglia and Fugue thrilling to the core, the Fugue forging towards an exhilarating climax, much more full-bodied in this guise than in the raucous transcription that Respighi fashioned and that Toscanini favoured. The ‘Little’ G minor Fugue also works well and the closing pages of the ubiquitous D minor Toccata and Fugue really do raise the roof, with a recording that allows for the requisite level of dynamic expansion, the sort of effect that Stokowski must have had in mind when he arranged the piece (and that Bach wouldn’t have objected to either, I’m pretty sure of that). Not too convinced by Stokowski’s fleshy version of Stravinsky’s wittily doleful Pastorale – rather too much going on – but it makes for a pleasant enough encore.