Liszt, Rachmaninov, Busoni - Back to Bach – Tributes and Transcriptions

The Guardian 60

Kenneth Hamilton (piano)
(Prima Facie)

The title is not quite right: back to Bach is where period-style performers take us; this is rather “what Bach did next”, the expanding story of a great baroque composer turned into a 19th-century icon. Kenneth Hamilton has studied his sources in minute detail and brings new insights to Liszt’s Fantasia on Bach, his “Weinen, Klagen” variations, and dispatches Busoni’s great arrangement of the violin Chaconne with magnificent aplomb. You might wish for a warmer tone, and a lighter touch in Rachmaninov’s witty transcriptions (which Gordon Fergus-Thompson achieves on Eloquence), but this is another compelling episode in the story of JS Bach 267 years after his death.