As much of a Bach lover as I've ever been, listening to these orchestral transcriptions shows me Bach as a futurist as much as the crowning genius king of the baroque. This is a quality that many Bach devotees feel. In these pieces, Stokowski brings to life how much Bach's music influenced the next 150 years of music after his death. The blue print is all there, amazing. The greatest musical genius to ever live.
In this version Bach sounds a lot like some of the composers who learned SO much from his style-- Strauss, Wagner, Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven. You hear some of that bombastic, ENORMOUS Romantic, sound but it's truly faithful to Bach's musical sense, in my opinion.
Listening to Bach must be what it's like to listen to God's meandering thoughts while they brush their teeth. Thoughts about how great everything could be but isn't.
Keep in mind this piece was written for a _single_ violin. The fact that it can be transcribed successfully for an entire orchestra is unique. No other piece that I know of would hold up so well to such an expansion. This piece has tremendous internal potential energy, so much that even the orchestral transcription feels like it could be expanded. It's like an image that is small but is so resolved that it can be expanded to the size of the solar system and all the details would be as crisp as ever. It's like a black hole - an unimaginable amount of musical matter forced into an unimaginably small space. It is the gift that keeps on giving. The Chaconne is the clearest, best, signature of humanity.
Bach's mastery of harmony and counterpoint is beautifully enhanced in Stokowski's transcription. The extra depth and range of sound the orchestra brings is simply breathtaking. Simply wonderful to listen to!!
Bach's Chaconne is a towering work, surely one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. It is inconceivable to me that Bach intended it to remain within the confines of such a small instrument as the violin. But so it rested for centuries. Finally, Stokowski has expanded it to embrace the full orchestra, giving it the sort of treatment it so richly deserves. Truly, it is a testament to Bach's brilliance (and Stokowski's skill) that this transcription does such a masterful job of expressing what surely must have been his vision.
I have this on an LP called Stokowski Plays Bach. It’s a later recording but sounds very similar to this, and it’s magnificent. It’s something you play only late at night in darkness when you wish to contemplate the universe. It’s probably my favorite piece of Bach, quite miraculous.
La rencontre intemporelle de Johannes Sebastian Bach et de Léopold Stokowski est un monument dédié au beau, à la musique classique , c'est absolument formidable et émouvant.... :-))
Ne mélangeons pas tout, le rap est expression artistique qui peut être d'une excellente qualité, mais s'il vous plaît ne comparons l'incomparable !!!! La chaconne elle est magnifique, géante, grandiosse!!! Je l'aime joué par Perlman au violon ou par hopkinson Smith sur luth baroque... Je pense que des rappeurs l'ont déjà largement samplé pour faire leurs instrus ... C'est intemporel, universel... Incontournable !!! Un must!
This composition of sheer beauty definitely deserved it that someone rearranges it for a full orchestra. Anyone that loves the chaconne should know this masterpiece of Stokowski.
The Bach work to hear after recovering from this d-minor Chaconne, and also orchestrated by Stokowski, is "Come, Sweet Death." These are why someone famously observed that JS Bach was the beginning and END of music.
Bach did not look himself as a genius, he considered himself more like a humble workman. But his music will be sounding trough ages. The chaconne kept me afloat during a very dark time in my life. This orchestrated version is a very good way to appreciate the depth and revolutionary character of the piece
@@kneza96BG It only proves that Bach was a believer and naively thought it was ‘’God’’ who composed his music. It also proves that Bach was very humble.
@@leocadieux6781 If you want to believe that, sure. I'm no specifically christian,but listening to Bach i'm fully convinced that he had access to higher power :)
It is THE greatest work of musical art! Brahms, who wrote a left-hand version for Schumann, claimed, that he would gladly give up his entire production to be the creator of this chaconne.
Well, thankfully that didn't happen, for Brahms gave us many great works of exquisite beauty as well, his second piano concerto comes first to my mind. Oh, and this way he didn't have to go out of his mind with excitement either, I think that was something he said about what would have happened had he actually written the work.
I think many renditions interpret the pain JSB must've felt when composing this piece; but this one is so emotional, it pretty much seems to inflict that pain upon the listener. 🥺😭
Agreed, but I think that's what makes this orchestrated version of beautiful: it's so moving, yet so subtle in its delivery-- meaning, I've heard musicians on solo violin and piano, respectively, attack the chords and notes to, perhaps, emphasize the emotion, but it just makes the piece sound harsh. I love this rendering, if you will. All great music touches the Heart-- that which connects us all on a primal and metaphysical level. This is a trombeau to Bach's first wife, the mother of seven of his children. At 9:51 it also seems not only a memorial piece of painful emotions, but of celebration of her life-- for a short while, and then it gets somber again. What a lovely tribute to the love of his life. Itzhak Perlman's famous recording of this piece, as I'm sure you know, also conveys, through tempo and clarity of voicings, the emotions Bach felt, I would think, and intended to be experienced while listening to this masterpiece. Would you agree?
If this universe were completely empty, we all will be nothing forever, it is better than any life, it is better than everything, it is the best situation, ever, we don't have words to express this situation !!!! ✌😎 💔
Bach/Stokowski. Less is sometimes just that....less. Stokowski brought the full sound of the full orchestra to Sebastian Bach’s compositions and the result? Full-blown, magnificent sound to the glory of the finest music ever written! I know (without a doubt) that Mr. Bach would have been so pleased to hear his music transcribed in this way utilizing a full symphony of which he only dreamed. Stokowski was divinely destined to ‘partner’ with Bach.
Many years ago, not long after I got a recording of the Berlin Phil playing this, I lost a child. One day, i came home and put this on, laid down on the floor and let it just flood all over me as i cried and cried. It's that sort of piece, and there aren't many pieces that do it. I must say though, I have done something similar with Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd. :-)
He departs from the score at the very end by adding one extra statement of the theme, and changes some of the harmony a bit, but I actually am quite fond of these changes.
Unbearably sad. Variations of this music were used in a 1940s horror film, BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, which for some reason my grandmother took me to see at the age of 5. Scared me shitless.
Fun fact: Stokowski was from a tragically short-lived family, but his work with Bach touched the divine and he continued to conduct his transcriptions into his 90s.
This is almost a different piece, but it sounds wonderful. Have never really appreciated the Chaconne introduction but, in this orchestral transcription, I think it regains the meaning that the composer might have had in mind.
@@slipkinti Hideo Saito, Seiji Ozawa's mentor did a full orchestration that's been recorded by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Joachim Raff orchestrated it, Brahms and Busoni both did piano versions, and many more.
Je découvre cette transcription et suis fasciné, évidemment. Magnifique. A cette époque, les chefs d'orchestre avaient une imagination, une fantaisie et un courage formidables. Chaque interprétation donnait à entendre un autre aspect de l'oeuvre et c'était à chaque fois une découverte excitante. Aujourd'hui on entend mille fois la même chose. Et cette chose est en général vide, insipide, insupportable.
I told my fellow violinist that the chaconne sounded so much better on my guitar than on his violin ( he disagreed); until you hear this orchestral version. Beautiful lyric version. Stokovsky, did I ever hear of him before? Bach keeps you amazing. So many interpretations. Thanks for posting this amazing version.
Cette version pour orchestre donne de la majesté à cette oeuvre puissante de J.S. Bach et aussi à certains moments de la légèreté ou au contraire de la gravité comme chez Mozart ou Schubert
Merveilleux pour les uns,kitch et quasi-crime de lèse majesté pour d'autres...Pour ma part, j'entends un très sincère hommage à JS.Bach, une profonde compréhension de l'œuvre et de ses potentialités, une imagination et une connaissance de l'orchestre exceptionnelles.Loin du définitif "bon pour l'asile" de Toscanini (beaucoup plus compréhensif pour Respighi, soit dit en passant).
Greatness! and tragedy - almost unbearable! Bach wrote this work shortly after returning home from a journey - only to find, that his young, healthy, pregnant wife and their expected child had both died.
@@card797 that's right, everybody must be and is free to express their preferences. in any case we are in front of two giants, maybe the best musicians ever. best regards.
These pissing competitions are ridiculous. Why the necessity to crown a ‘king’ . It is so limiting and antithetical to the wonder and universality of music as a whole. Just enjoy and marvel.
For me, this is one of those (very rare) occasions where the transcription is an improvement on the original in terms of colour. the original is for violin - and you have to be one heck of a violinist equipped with a Stradivarius to do it justice - here, with full orchestra, and its expansions, it is easier to understand and appreciate the music with greater depth. In terms of orchestration, this work seems to me at least to be the companion piece of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor's transcription, in terms of woodwind orchestration. I have recently bought an oboe and playing it is no harder than my clarinet, so I do long to play this with an orchestra some day...
You know that Bach uses the oboe I think in all his cantatas. It is an instrument of great beauty. Rostropovich, in spite of beeing cellist, wrote a beautiful text about the oboe which he love.
Mais uma vez chorei com uma transcrição de Bach feita pelo Stokowski. A primeira vez foi com Passacaglia + Fugue. Cheguei aqui como indicação do RU-vid - amém, algoritmo! - e estou emocionado com essa experiência. A beleza me comove. 🇧🇷
Боже, как прекрасно!!!! И.С.Бах - это Величие Вселенной, а Стоковский - это удивительное погружение в бездонный смысл этого непостижимого Мироздания!!!
Eliot Z., I agree, except that J. S. Bach was almost forgotten between 1750 and 1829, when at the age of 20 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy launched a Bach-Renaissance by performing his Matthäus-Passion, and that Bach influences to this date and will continue to do so.
There is no sound nor has there ever een a sound like the Stokowski sound nor will there ever be again!! Of all the sounds in this world ( and outer worlds) the only sound of consequence is the Stokowski sound!!!!
Back in Bach's time, orchestras in Germany were very small and the instruments had more limitations. I can only imagine what monumental symphonies he would had composed if he had access to modern orchestras.
🇮🇹 Bellissima...... Fa riflettere e mi domando..... Ma cos'è successo alla musica di oggi? 🇬🇧 Awesome... It makes me reflect and I wonder.... What happened at today music?
Solo la genialidad de Juan Sebastian Bach pudo transformar una gran tragedia personal en esta magnífica obra que consigue hacernos sentir en el presente su inmenso dolor de hace siglos.
It certainly is Gods laguage and also Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, Vivaldi, Tschaikowsky, Smetana, Dvorak and many many more.
Wspaniały J.S. Bach i nasz polski daleki rodak Leopold Stokowski ., który pieknie dyrygował. Kiedyś w polskim radiu bardzo często słyszało sie muzyke powazna i wszelkie orkiestry pod dyrekcją Leopolda Stokowskiego. To były lata 50 siąte, 60 siate i 70 siąte, i tez pod dyr . Bruno Waltera, Teraz słyszy sie hip hop i disko-polo i angielsko jezyczny szmelc. Szkoda.
Stokowski received a truckload of criticism from Bach purists and even from leading scholars. They seem to ignore the fact that Bach always encouraged his professional students to tinker around with his works.Transcibing works by other composers was seen as a respectful gesture, not as a breach of copyright laws. Bach himself transcribed and reworked pieces by Vivaldi.
Stowkowski was for a time organist at Saint Bartholomew's Church in New York City. He left that post to take up his work as Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
