A Bach odyssey by way of a lonely organ or harpsichord can be a little exhausting sometimes; the unabashedly lush symphonic transcriptions from Leopold Stokowski trade in the old Edsel for a loaded Maserati. Whether it's sacrilege to manipulate "Sleeper's Wake" to sound like a Bruckner slow movement or to transform "Mein Jesu" into an English pastoral is up for debate. Still, piling the pathos onto Bach has made for one of the sexiest records of the year --Time Out Chicago, Bryant Manning, March 19-25, 2009I just received the latest CD from Naxos of Bach tranascriptions conducted by Jose Serebrier with the Bouremouth Symphony.  From the very opening of the Toccata and Fugue it's clear that this is another excellent CD from Serebrier and the Naxos engineers.   The sound first of all is splendid, perhaps even better than on their previous Bach transcriptions disc, with perfect orchestral balance, a realistic soundstage, moderate reverberation and a warm overall acoustic.   This serves to make the BSO sound absolutely glorious in the louder tuttis and yet gossamer delicate in the pianissimo playing of say the Boccherini minuet, here realised very lovingly.This disc has several rarely heard items, including a transcription by Matheson with which I was not previously familiar and the adagio from the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564 which was recorded, I believe, by Stoki on 78s but not since and is quite beautifully realised here.There are also several non-Bach transcriptions from the "pre-Mozart" era by Purcell, Clarke and Palestrina.Edward Johnson's notes are, as ever, informative and authoritative.This CD is required listening for every Stokowski fan, even if you have the superb CD by Sawallisch and the Philadelphians, you will still want this for it's (better) sonics and the rarely heard transcriptions in modern sound.  The playing of the Bouremouth orchestra is absolutely top notch (though I wish the brasses were slightly more incisive when they first enter in Ein Feste Burg - sorry) and they are captured in wonderful sound.Jose Serebrier continues to demonstrate a wonderful affinity for these transcriptions and is setting them down with great care and dedication.  His phrasing is aptly "romantic" and the care for balance and textural detail exemplary. --Stokowski_Fans (Yahoo blog), Edward Johnson, CEO of the Stokowski Society, February 11, 2009Leopold Stokowski was famous for making and conducting his own orchestral transcriptions of other composers' music. Stokowski died in 1977, but on a new compact disc, his transcriptions live on.St. Paul, Minn. -- Have you noticed that it doesn't matter if Sean Connery is playing a Brit or an Irishman or even a Russian -- all his characters have the same unmistakable Scottish burr? It's not authentic, but it's still charming as heck.Leopold Stokowski has a similar signature. His fingerprint is unmistakable in any of his orchestral transcriptions, whether he's transcribing Boccherini or Bach or William Byrd.This week's CD features Jose Serebrier leading the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the second volume in a series of Stokowski's transcriptions.Serebrier has had a long relationship with Stokowski, which started when Stokowski conducted the premier of 17-year-old Serebrier's first symphony.He saw and heard firsthand how Stokowski could change the sound of an orchestra instantly, not only by physically rearranging the musicians but also by merely having a certain sound in his inner ear, and expecting -- demanding -- that sound from the orchestra.Serebrier isn't a Stokowski clone, however, and his Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has its own elegant, polite, even careful vibe.You can hear it in "Sleepers, Awake" by J.S. Bach. It's all about sustaining a long line of music, overlapping and weaving threads of melody and harmony and countermelody to create a seamless tapestry of sound. It's not hard to hear the choral and organ origins of these pieces, and how that informs the orchestral performances.Stokowski came to music the way many do, through the church choir. But he didn't just fall in love with choral music. There in the choir loft, he was introduced to the King of Instruments - the pipe organ. It changed forever the way he heard and played and arranged music.Although the organ that Bach played in the 18th century was simpler and sounded different from what Stokowski played in the 20th, the stops (sets of pipes) for both eras were named for instruments of the orchestra-- trumpet, violin, oboe, flute. An orchestra, right there at your fingertips.Movie music composer Bernard Herrmann allowed that Bach never heard his Toccata and Fugue the way Stokowski presented it. But, he said, Bach "must have imagined a great cosmic sound, and Stokowski's transcription is a metamorphosis of that sound."This CD of Stokowski transcriptions reminds me that though, like Sean Connery, the accent might not change, the characters are always unique and engaging. --Minnesota Public Radio, Valerie Kahler, March 10, 2009This is a stunningly successful recording. The opening track is the most famous of all -the resplendent Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which is given a superb and intensely musical performance combining orchestral virtuosity and sensitivity in equal measure. The opening phrase is electrifying: José Serebrier makes a slight crescendo at the end of the third note to astonishingly compelling effect, at once drawing us into the music. Serebrier also begins the Fugue pianissimo while the last notes of the Toccata are still sounding: this is another astonishing and wholly musically correct effect. Throughout this CD, and  in music other than those pieces by Bach, José Serebrier delivers quite superb performances, which I am sure Stokowski would have greatly applauded, and would have understood, given that José Serebrier's own early training as  a violinist stands him in good stead. This is particularly evident in those places drawn from string originals, for not all of Stokowski's transcriptions demand a large orchestra - Mein Jesu is just one which is scored for string only.There have been other recent recordings of Stokowski's Bach transcriptions, but none are as good -or as thrilling- as this one and its predecessor (Naxos 8.557883). The recording quality is splendidly full and rich; for sheer delight in outstanding music-making, this recording deserves the widest success. --International Record Review, Robert Matthew-Walker, April 2009While I am not the greatest advocate of "sequels," popular response to José Serebrier's first volume of selections from the Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) fund of some forty of Bach's works that he arranged for the modern orchestra's realization, has Serebrier and his very gifted Bournemouth players presenting us another eleven of the master's Bach, which exploit the range--or more properly, diapason--of the orchestra's palette to achieve what might be called organ sonority, even when the original incarnation had been a string or klavier piece. Fellow composer Bernard Hermann remarked that Stokowski released "the great cosmic sound" that Bach must have had in mind but could not be realized under the conditions which produced his original organ works.Serebrier begins with the immensely lauded Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (arr. 1926), which many of us know as the musical opener from Walt Disney's Fantasia of 1940. Serebrier's tempos occasionally deviate from those of Stokowski, even to more stunning, virtuoso effect than Stokowski's. That Serebrier keeps his sound absolutely homogeneous itself testifies to a color will-power we tend to ascribe to Mengelberg and Stokowski himself. The plastic, streamlined character of the Bournemouth string section excels equally in Siciliano from the C Minor Sonata for Violin and Clavier, the chorale Mein Jesu, and again, with woodwinds, in the chorale-prelude, Ich ruf'zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ.  The familiar Wachet Auf from Cantata 140 and Ein feste Burg achieve grand sonorities in strings and brass, often suggestive of Wagnerian ambitions, a suggestion made flesh in the C Minor Prelude from WTC I.The six remaining selections from renaissance, baroque, early classical style indulge in the same lush orchestration that is no less capable of charming clarity, as in Boccherini's perennial Minuet from the Quintet in E Minor, Op. 13, No. 5.  I recall Stokowski's own, devotional performance of the Palestrina Adoramus te for a United Artists LP two generations ago. What had been known as Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary now gains political correctness in the name of Jeremy Clarke's Trumpet Prelude, aka The Prince of Denmark's March. The sleeper turns out to be the Air from the Suite No. 5 in C Minor by Johann Matheson (1681-1764), one of those Stokowski dreamy pieces that haunts the musical memory. Recorded 17-18 April 2008, the entire set of pieces rings with ennobled enthusiasm, a testament to Stokowski via the Leopold Stokowski Society and Stokowski's most active exponent, José Serebrier. --AudiophileAudition.com, Gary Lemco, February 16, 2009