Organ transcriptions of classical works – do you prefer to or from?

To me, the console of a modern concert organ looks more like a jet cockpit than a musical instrument.  Even when the pipes are mechanically operated, there is a lot of automation available to the organist.  Rows of buttons (pistons) appear below the keyboards, and arrays of similar buttons (stops) open valves to ranks of similar sounding pipes.  One push of a piston can make dozens of stops switch in or out.

I recently went to an organ recital at the Sydney Opera House where a large screen gave the organist’s view of the console.  I found it next to impossible to make any mental connection between the keyboards, stops and pistons in terms of the sounds being produced!  The organist had an assistant to turn the scores, who sometimes also swooped in to poke buttons.  In other words, there was a lot of technology to set up and operate short-cuts.  Does this make it hard to keep up a musical flow?

Over the years, I have acquired recordings of orchestral music transcribed for organ.  At the same time, I have about an equal number of organ works transcribed for full orchestra.  By and large, I greatly prefer the latter.

Sir Edward Elgar transcribed a couple of JS Bach’s organ sonatas for full orchestra, and they are magnificent.  There are award winning orchestral transcriptions of Bach by Stokowski.

On the other hand, famous composers like Liszt have converted works by Wagner to the organ.  In the days before recordings, this was probably a way of publishing great music so it could be played without huge expense in the local church or hall.  But to me, even when played by a great organist, it misses the musical ebb and flow of the original work.

My last example is of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  Originally a piano score, it was initially picked over by his contemporaries to correct what they thought were wrong notes.  Then Ravel orchestrated it, magnificently, followed by Stokowski and others.  My example however is a transcription of the original piano for organ, and it sounds woefully pedestrian even where appropriate in the bits where Modest walks between the pictures.

What do you think?