This arrangement of music from Bach's suites (or overtures) for orchestra makes a fascinating addition to the history of adaptations of Bach's music. The usual reasons given for making arrangements of Bach is that the instruments he wrote for are obsolete, or that if he had lived today he would have used the full resources of modern instruments or orchestras, or that the music needed to be updated to appeal to contemporary audiences.

Compared to the hyper-romantic arrangements of Bach organ music turned out in the first few decades of the twentieth century (by the likes of Schoenberg, Elgar, and Stokowski/Cailliet) Mahler's version of music from Bach suites is surprising forward-looking and restrained. Orchestrations of keyboard music represent a total shift in sound, and allow the orchestrator free range to their imagination.

Mahler wrote this adaptation of Bach to present at a concert of the New York Philharmonic, of which he was music director. Unlike the other arrangements mentioned above, Mahler was working from a piece whose original version already was an orchestral score. His purpose was to transfer Bach's original sound, as he understood it, to the medium of the orchestra of his own time.

The sound of the orchestration is not Mahler-esque, or even especially Romantic. It is recognizably based on Bach's original orchestration. Mahler does use some orchestral procedures that are quire alien to Bach's style, as we now understand it. These include use of pizzicato in the strings, octave doublings for reinforcement and alterations of orchestral color, and a complete written realization of the keyboard continuo part. The organ is used only in the first movement, which is the Ouverture from Suite No. 2.

In that opening movement, Mahler obtains a rich sound and exuberant treatment of the ornamentation on the main line. Two more movements from the Second Suite follow: the Rondeau and Badinerie. The famous Air from Suite No. 3 (known as the Air for the G String after an arrangement for it for solo violin) is followed by Gavottes 1 and 2, also from Suite No. 3. This makes a bright, brassy conclusion to an effective treatment of Bach's music.

It is often the habit in writing about arrangements like this to make a pro forma observation that "purists may cringe." That is getting to be unlikely, for there is every opportunity to hear the original versions in a style that appears very close to what the Leipzig cantor expected, and probably played better than he can expect. The fact that arrangers like Mahler make additional versions for other purposes does no harm to the original, and creates more enjoyable ways to hear Bach, and that's not bad.

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