Bach transcribed for orchestra and dance

Transcribing and adapting the works of Johann Sebastian Bach for a large symphony orchestra can seem like grandiose puffery -- trying to pump up perfection. It can also resemble a creative attempt to rework a fine play for motion pictures -- a way to expand and enhance a distinguished source.

Either way, reorchestrated Bach has a long, checkered history, and conductor Leonard Slatkin provided plenty of examples Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl in a Los Angeles Philharmonic program also featuring the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Ottorino Respighi’s version of the Passacaglia in C minor fared the worst: tame at the beginning and later commanding only in fitful and often raucous bursts. Slatkin generated excitement with a sustained fanfare and the majestic finale, but the piece never held together.

Not so Eugene Ormandy’s disarmingly delicate arrangement of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and Lucien Cailliet’s lucid reworking of the Fugue in G minor. Slatkin and the Philharmonic rightly attacked the latter as a complex, virtuoso showpiece -- but without ever losing the structural clarity that Cailliet preserved, even in the thunderous conclusion.

And as arranged by Anton Webern, Frank Michael Beyer and Leopold Stokowski, the intense, imposing symphonic Bach that inspired the two Taylor works performed -- “Musical Offering” (1986) and “Promethean Fire” (2002) -- carried a potent rhythmic and even muscular charge. Although plotless, both choreographies represent meditations on history, so orchestrations that mediate between Bach’s time and ours served them perfectly.

With its flat arm positions and steps in which the dancers rocked from one leg to the other, “Musical Offering” looked rooted in antique, two-dimensional depictions of the body. More rounded and visceral movement evolved before the end of the opening section of this 16-part suite, but the past kept reasserting itself, sometimes in surprising permutations (those rocking steps performed while the dancers knelt, for instance).

If you liked, you could have considered the courtly duet for Amy Young and Andy LeBeau (backed by corps couples) a transition from the archaic to the Baroque. However, the final pose (Young tucked into LeBeau’s shoulder) and her sense of loss at his departure fused period style and timeless emotion.

Unfortunately, by following just the key soloist in every section, the Bowl’s video cameras utterly missed relationships between individuals and the group -- a Taylor priority throughout. Yes, Lisa Viola brought a rapt, soulful power to her solos at the beginning and end, and Michael Trusnovec partnered her sensitively. But the video screens told only part of the story.

A wild, whirlwind solo by Orion Duckstein, another by Robert Kleinendorst juxtaposing intricate gesticulation and big jumps, and an enigmatic passage in which the tense and moody Heather Berest morphed into an icon held aloft like some patron saint: “Musical Offering” confirmed the brilliance of a company capable of following Taylor’s imagination anywhere.

If “Musical Offering” looked sculptural, “Promethean Fire” proved architectural, especially its final group deployment establishing the sense of a secure, interconnected community.

But Taylor’s vision of survivors painfully emerging from a body pile and finding the strength to rebuild their world made that security hard won. And whether or not it invoked 9/11, Oklahoma City, Waco or any other specific calamity, the piece captured the American zeitgeist with great surety.

Previously seen on PBS’ “Dance in America” and in a recent Music Center engagement, “Promethean Fire” was led by Viola and Richard Chen See and looked very handsome indeed on the wide Bowl forestage.