“Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford, at St Albans, he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at King’s College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for and appreciation of the organ works of J.S. Bach, which remained a lifelong passion. Sir Andrew made all the transcriptions on this album for the BBC Philharmonic, and four of them were recorded in November 2023. Sadly, Sir Andrew died before the final recording sessions for the album could take place (September 2024): we are immensely grateful that he completed the arrangements, and very thankful to Martyn Brabbins for completing the recording with the sense of style, love, and affection that Sir Andrew would have admired.”
The eleven pieces here were orchestrated in 2023 and 2024, all are first recordings, Sir Andrew conducting four, Martyn Brabbins the rest. Performances are consistently excellent and beautifully recorded by Stephen Rinker. Davis’s transcriptions are hallmarked by imagination (respectful) and clarity in music that ranges from sublime to stirring. Maybe not always the equal of, say, Respighi, Schoenberg and Stokowski in their respective examples of Bach penmanship, Davis’s work nevertheless has twinkle-in-the-eye attractiveness and will appeal to his many admirers, offering a different side to his talents as he colours one of his earliest enthusiasms, and this is also a tribute to Martyn Brabbins’s versatility and generosity. Chandos CHAN 20400 is released on August the First.
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2020400