STOKOWSKI Bach Transcriptions
The All-American Youth Ensemble / Leopold Stokowski
CALA CACD 0527 [70:49]
The provenance alone makes this disc remarkable. Between November 1940 and July 1941—most sessions concentrated in that summer month—Stokowski assembled his All-American Youth Orchestra and set down these; Bach transcriptions for Columbia, creating what amounted to a rival catalog to his own earlier RCA recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Then Pearl Harbor intervened.
The orchestra dissolved, its young players scattered into military service — and these performances became historical artifacts before anyone quite realized what had been preserved. But history isn’t the point here—or rather, it shouldn’t be. These recordings stand up without apology or contextual pleading.
What strikes you first is the sheer tonal opulence Stokowski coaxed from this ensemble. Yes, he stiffened the ranks with younger Philadelphia players, but the sonority achieved in the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor or the Toccata and Fugue in D minor suggests an orchestra that had absorbed his aesthetic completely. That famous seating arrangement—woodwinds front and center, strings behind, brass to the left, horns and percussion right—wasn’t mere eccentricity.
You hear its logic in the spatial gradations of the Toccata, where violin and brass sections emerge and recede with almost stereophonic clarity despite the monophonic limitations. The transcriptions themselves remain controversial, naturally. Purists will never forgive Stokowski for what they consider his baroque hubris.
But listen to “Mein Jesu” (BWV 487) with its glacially slow tempo and seamless legato—the control required to sustain that line without sentimentality is considerable. Or the “Air on the G String,” where the portamenti are judged with such precision that they enhance rather than distort Bach’s melodic architecture. These aren’t the crude romanticizations his detractors claim.
I’m particularly taken with the "Andante" Sostenuto from the Violin Sonata BWV 1003, Stokowski’s only recording of this transcription. Here his craft of alternating string and woodwind choirs creates a dialogue that feels almost conversational—an intimacy that belies the orchestral forces involved. The “Little Fugue in G minor” shows another facet: his ability to progressively lighten string texture, letting the contrapuntal lines breathe and separate even as they interweave.
The “Arioso” from Cantata 156 shows him at his most subtle. That progressive lightening of texture Edward Johnson mentions in his authoritative notes isn’t just technical manipulation—it’s interpretive insight, revealing structural depths in Bach’s writing that keyboard or chamber performances sometimes obscure. Technical matters: CALA’s transfers are exemplary, preserving the warmth of the original Columbia 78s without excessive filtering.
There’s surface noise, yes, but it never intrudes on the musical substance. The documentation includes a superb photograph of Stokowski and orchestra in that unorthodox — seating arrangement—worth studying if you want to understand how he achieved these particular balances. One caveat.
The warm acoustics of the concert hall seem to breathe through the disc.
If you already own Stokowski’s stereo remakes, you might wonder whether these earlier versions justify purchase. They do. The spontaneity here—that sense of discovery in execution—got smoothed out in later recordings.
These 1940-41 sessions capture something more volatile, less calculated. Whether Stokowski’s Bach transcriptions belong in the repertoire remains debatable. Whether these particular performances deserve preservation isn’t.
This is essential documentation of a controversial but undeniably important chapter in twentieth-century performance practice.
