Dallas Symphony Orchestra Strikes Out

So all the Halloween candy has been disbursed (and we've yet to stock up on Decemberween weevils yet), and so Maddie and I settled back to listen to WRR play their Halloween special, which's a panoply of pieces that they adjudged appropriate -- first up, was the Toccata from Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor. That's kinda cool, although I've always thought the fugue was the cool part, I can see the "evil-scary" purpose of putting the 1st part in. But this was something of the conductor's own arranging: a mixture of Bach's version for organ and Leopold Stokowski's rendition for symphony orchestra.

And it sucked. Chuped. Choked on the big one. I mean, lemme ask one sovereign question to put it in perspective: how does anyone who has half a clue as to what they're doing arrange Bach to be sluggish and leaden?

It was almost as bad as the Bolshoi's rendition of Khatchaturian's Masquerade Waltz, aka, to quote Maddie, "You'd think the Russians could conduct a Russian". It nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol. It was almost enough for me to want "MTT" back. Almost.