Generations of new music-lovers must have experienced a thrill of discovery near the opening of the Disney film, Fantasia, when Leopold Stokowski conducted his monumental orchestral transcription of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It is sad that once the maestro himself stopped recording, that and so many of his other Bach arrangements have been almost totally neglected on disc. This ripely satisfying issue, opulently recorded by Chandos, superbly played by the BBC Philharmonic and conducted by an erstwhile assistant to Stokowski, Matthias Bamert, fills an important gap. It is not so much the unauthentic massiveness of these arrangements or the romantic manners (authentic for Stokowski if not Bach) that strike one first, but the sheer beauty of the sound. Stokowski knew how to make Bach glow, and a modern, wide-ranging recording of the celebrated Toccata and Fugue brings out the tonal light and shade, as well as the wide dynamic range of the Stokowski arrangement, something which was only half-appreciable even in Stokowski's last recording of it, made with the Czech Philharmonic in 1973. The 45 minutes of transcriptions, six of them, which he recorded then for Decca's Phase Four series, appeared on CD in the Decca Weekend series (12/89—nla), but they deserve a reissue, suitably coupled with other Stokowski recordings of that vintage.
Not that Bamert seriously loses out even in direct comparison with the maestro himself. He may not convey quite such weight in the other big organ transcription in both collections, the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, but Bamert conveys if anything even more inner intensity. Plainly the members of the BBC Philharmonic relished throughout this abandonment of modern authentic manners in Bach, playing with heartfelt expressiveness, responding to Bamert's persuasive way with phrasing and rubato. In the choral prelude, Wir glauben (also known as the Giant Fugue) Bamert broadens far more gradually than Stokowski does in his Czech recording, where he suddenly slams on the brakes for the big fortissimo entry, memorably but not quite persuasively. One of the two Schemelli songbook settings, Mein Jesu, is given the wrong BWV number (BWV478 instead of BWV487), but otherwise the documentation, including the authoritative notes of Edward Johnson, is excellent. If you have been feeling guilty over not enjoying Bach as much as you did in pre-authentic days, this is just the disc for you. And in its own right as a musical experience evoking Stokowski's great days in Philadelphia it is very welcome indeed. As a sampler might I suggest the ''Little'' Fugue in G minor, with its sequence of fugal entries, always a Stokowski speciality.'