In 1929 Sir Henry Wood, fearing from past experience that any Bach arrangement of his would be singled out for critical censure, decided to announce the D minor Toccata and Fugue as scored by the “Russian composer, Paul Klenovsky”. The result was that it became a critical hit and was played many times before the deception was discovered. Scored for a bigger orchestra than Stokowski used, Wood’s version is more plangent in its woodwind effects, full-blooded and dramatically laced with percussion. It works very well indeed.

Wood’s other arrangements are more uneven. The dances by Scharwenka and (especially) Granados are engagingly scored, and the Funeral March of Grieg (originally written for concert band) is richly sonorous, but the Chopin “Funeral March” is sentimentalised by the addition of a solo violin as a centrepiece (as the original performance marked the death of Joachim). The famous Rachmaninov Prelude in C sharp minor opens explosively and even uses organ pedals. But the transcription of Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie is just as imaginatively different in its sonorities from the piano version as Stokowski’s and adds spectacle by the use of gong and bells.

Wood’s scoring of Mussorgsky’s Pictures is another success, as striking for its delicacy as for its bold, bass-rich textures. “Tuileries” is scored for flutes, clarinets, two horns, triangle, and violin, and the “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” features six solo violins. “Catacombs” is both powerful and menacing but has a gentle, reflective interlude with a chorale, underpinned by harp. The most striking change, however, is in “Baba-Yaga” where Wood cuts the coda joining it to the finale and instead has another gentle interlude for mystic church bells; then the finale bursts in on the listener dramatically. Indeed, “The Great Gate of Kiev” is enormously spectacular. The brass sounds plangently Russian and there are bells and even an organ. Wood withdrew his transcription when Ravel’s appeared, which was a pity for it has a distinctive character all its own. The performances here are all excellent and the recording, made at Watford Town Hall in 1990 and 1993, is very successful.