There is, traditionally, no point in arguing about tastes; but to my mind it's a pity that this disc bears the title ''Chaconne'', since I find Busoni's transcription of the famous violin movement the most jarringly out-of-character item here, completely traducing Bach's noble edifice into an overblown piece of barn-storming (in a way that Brahms's left-hand-only version, for example, does not). Fergus-Thompson plays it with great panache, however (though the forte tone sounds rather harsh), emphasizing its ultra-romanticism with emotional nuances and much rubato. The organ sonorities of the D minor Toccata and Fugue make it better able to support Busoni's pianistic amplifications, as do those of the A minor Prelude and Fugue in Liszt's medium-transference. (But would it not be stylistically preferable to expound the latter's fugue subject straightforwardly instead of shading it 'poetically'?)
Of the chorale preludes here, Nun komm is taken so slowly as to sound somnolent (belying the meaning of the words) and Nun freut euch is a mad scamper quite beyond anything that Bach could have envisaged. The most enjoyable items here are the simple and relatively literal transcriptions of ''Jesu joy'' (Cantata No. 147), the flute Siciliano and ''Sheep may safely graze'' (Cantata No. 208), all played with calm grace (and the Siciliano with beautiful tone), and, at the other extreme of the art of transcription, Rachmaninov's very free version of movements from the E major Violin Partita, with all kinds of additional counterpoints, imitations and harmonies (a la Godowsky), in which Fergus-Thompson shows delicious delicacy.
The most astonishing statement of the month comes from the writer of the booklet note, who declares that Berners's In dolce [sic] jubilo ''is not based on any one particular piece by Bach but is simply a quirky amalgam of Bachian phrases, cadences and harmonic progressions''. Someone should give him a copy of BWV729 for his birthday.'