Bach Piano Transcriptions Vol 9 (Harriet Cohen and other British transcriptions)
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J.S. BACH
Bach Piano Transcriptions Vol 9 (Harriet Cohen and other British transcriptions)
Jonathan Plowright (piano)
[ Hyperion / CD ]
Release Date: Wednesday 1 September 2010
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen is in that sense a fascinating anthology of British transcribing manners of the inter-war period.
'What a lot of bunglers these English composers are in piano-writing, as evinced in this album, which was a good idea spoilt!' Thus wrote the composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson in 1982 to the critic Colin Scott-Sutherland. Under discussion were the contents of A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen, which Stevenson summed up as 'a manual of "how not to write for the piano"'. Stevenson's criticisms, which in a subsequent letter he extended to Herbert Fryer's transcriptions of Bach cello pieces, focus on the fact that, however faithful (or not) the transcriptions may be as arrangements of Bach's material, they are not in his view 'real piano music'; and he compared several passages in parallel with their treatments by the prince of all Bach transcribers, Ferruccio Busoni.
These are severe strictures from an acknowledged modern master of piano transcription (Stevenson has made over 300 transcriptions of works by at least 85 composers). But we must regard British composers' transcriptions of Bach in the early twentieth century as coming, for the most part, from a different (non-Busonian) tradition. If they offer a view of the music partly formed under the highly Germanic influence of the London music conservatoires, and partly under the more neoclassical aesthetic of the 1920s, they surely provide a musical experience that is stimulating in its variety and encompasses both the dutiful and the masterly. A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen is in that sense a fascinating anthology of British transcribing manners of the inter-war period.
Tracks:
1 Little Fugue in G minor, BWV578 [3'27] arr. Leonard Borwick (1868-1925)
Mein Gott, wie lange, ach lange?, BWV155 arr. Harriet Cohen (1895-1967)
2 Movement 1. Recitative and Aria: Be contented, O my soul [5'13]
Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV564 arr. Dame Myra Hess (1890-1965)
3 Movement 2: Adagio [3'39]
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV147 arr. Dame Myra Hess (1890-1965)
4 Movement 10: Jesu, joy of man's desiring [3'45]
A BACH BOOK FOR HARRIET COHEN
5 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV645 [4'58] arr. Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946)
Fantasia in G major 'Pièce d'orgue', BWV572 arr. Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953)
6 Part 2: Gravement [4'15]
7 In dulci iubilo, BWV729 [1'50] arr. Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Lord Berners (1883-1950)
8 Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, BWV614 [3'30] arr. Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)
9 Komm, süsser Tod, BWV478 [3'43] arr. Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Brandenburg Concerto No 2 in F major, BWV1047 arr. Sir Eugene Goossens (1893-1962)
10 Movement 2: Andante [3'58]
11 O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross, BWV622 [5'32] arr. Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
12 Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn, BWV648 [1'39] arr. John Ireland (1879-1962)
13 Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich, BWV605 [1'31] arr. Constant Lambert (1905-1951)
14 Ach bleib' bei uns, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV649 [5'35] arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
15 Herzlich tut mich verlangen, BWV727 [2'39] arr. Sir William Walton (1902-1983)
16 Wir glauben all an einen Gott, BWV740 [4'34] arr. William Gillies Whittaker (1876-1944)
17 O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, BWV656 [7'11] arr. Leonard Borwick (1868-1925)
Ich bin ein guter Hirt, BWV85 arr. Hubert Foss (1899-1953)
18 Movement 5: See what his love can do [3'20]
Cello Suite No 6 in D major, BWV1012 arr. Herbert Fryer (1877-1957)
19 Movement 4: Sarabande [2'57]
20 Komm, süsser Tod, BWV478 [4'53] arr. Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) & Ronald Stevenson (b1928)
