GENRE; Classical
RELEASE DATE; 1 August, 2025
RATING; 4/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sir Andrew Davis’s King of Kings is at once a valedictory labour of love and an unexpectedly radiant reimagining of Bach for full orchestra. The programme collects Davis’s fresh orchestral transcriptions of organ and choral-prelude repertoire, realized in the studio with the BBC Philharmonic and released on Chandos in 2025.
What makes the disc emotionally resonant is context: Davis began recording several of these transcriptions in 2023 and conducted four of the pieces himself, but died before the project’s completion; Martyn Brabbins steps in with sympathetic continuity to finish the sessions. That backstory gives the performances a quietly elegiac cast without diminishing their exuberance.
Musically, the transcriptions walk a tasteful line between fidelity and imagination. The Toccata and Fugue in D minor explodes with orchestral colour — brass and low winds lending cathedral weight while nimble percussion and woodwind preserve Bach’s articulated motoric energy. The Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor and the St Anne Prelude and Fugue emerge as centrepieces: Davis’s scoring emphasizes inner-voice clarity and contrapuntal sparkle, making familiar gestures feel newly illuminated.
The BBC Philharmonic respond with luminous ensemble and keen stylistic awareness; the engineering is clean and immediate, placing us inside the orchestra where details like marimba, bass-clarinet and vibraphone accents register vividly. Chandos’s notes and the album sequencing frame the disc as both tribute and discovery — listeners who love Bach’s organ works will find these orchestrations a compelling alternative viewpoint.
If the recording has a single drawback it’s occasional temptation to “orchestrate” timbral novelty at the expense of austere baroque austerity; yet that is a small price for music that so lovingly extends Bach’s architecture into new colours. King of Kings is a generous, humane album: elegiac where it needs to be, triumphant where it must.
