In the nineteenth century, piano transcriptions were both standard items in the performing repertory and the way most people got to know new music, or in the case of Bach, newly rediscovered music. There are lots of transcriptions for piano of Bach's works for strings, wind instruments, or voices, and Italian-French-American pianist Alessio Bax has dug into the older repertory and forged a program full of fresh items and attractive contrasts. A few pieces here are widely known: the massive transcription by Ferrucio Busoni of the Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004, is saved naturally enough for a slam-bang finale, and Busoni's counterpart in virtuosity-over-everything transcription, Polish pianist Leopold Godowsky, is represented at the beginning of the program and again by a short bourrée from one of the unaccompanied cello suites. But Bax fills out the main body of the program with a nice variety of transcriptions oriented toward something other than sheer pianistic fireworks, and many of these may be new to listeners (although less to to pianists, who will have run across some of them in piano benches full of old music). They range in attitude from sober simplicity on the part of Wilhelm Kempff in his transcription of "Zion hört di Wächter singen" from the Cantata No. 140 to Gallic flair in Saint-Saëns' version of the gavotte from the Partita No. 1 in B minor for solo violin, BWV 1002, to studious pianistic technique in the rather rare pieces by Liszt's student Alexander Siloti, to ultra-Romanticism of a different kind from pianist Egon Petri in his uniquely decorated Sheep May Safely Graze, to a simple yet highly pianistic reduction of the Largo from the Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056. Bax is technically unimpeachable, and he brings a fine appreciation for the individual languages and stages of Bach reception on display here. The concise notes (in English only) by Bryce Morrison effectively introduce the material and contain the enjoyable detail that Bach's sons referred to him as "the old wig." A delightful tour through the hearings of Bach that rescued him from obscurity and shaped the ways he is played today.
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