King of Kings: Orchestral Transcriptions of Bach by Andrew Davis album review – the late conductor’s first love

BBC Philharmonic/Davis/Brabbins

(Chandos)

Davis’s fastidious and thoroughly musical orchestrations of Bach’s organ works become a touching memorial as Martyn Brabbins steps in to finish the recordings

L

ong before he became a conductor, Andrew Davis was an organist. As a teenager he had played the organ at the Palace theatre, Watford, and in the 1960s studied at the Royal College of Music before becoming organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge; he began his professional career as the keyboard player for the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.