A Bach thread is something I can get behind. This link won't allow embedding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtyTaE7LvVs
It's Itzhak Perlman playing the Partita in D Minor.

I'm a Bach junky... I even own a t-shirt. For me, Goldberg Variations is the creme de la creme with Glenn Gould's recordings being particular favorites (especially when you can hear him singing/humming along). My wife is a pro-level pianist and plays them for me every once in a while.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aEkXet4WX_c?start=439" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Lucky man, I could listen to piano player all night long. I have a copy of that Gould’s recording, he was something special.

I do not come from a musical family in terms of playing an instrument, instruments.

I dated a woman in college who was a very good musician who was obsessed with Bach and Chamber music. I went to my first CM event with reservation.

I was an idiot.

<iframe width="1189" height="669" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_7pP6pJI7BM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I still go. My wife is a musician and organist and I happily sit and listen with her to both the average and gifted.

Cool quote from niel stephenson's cryptonomicon:

For each stop--each timbre, or type of sound, that the organ could make (viz. blockflote, trumpet, piccolo)--there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short. Long pipes made low notes, short high. The tops of the pipes defined a graph: not a straight line but an upward-tending curve. The organist/math teacher sat down with a few loose pipes, a pencil, and paper, and helped Lawrence figure out why. When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda--the part where Uncle Johann dissects the architecture of the Universe in one merciless descending ever-mutating chord, as if his foot is thrusting through skidding layers of garbage until it finally strikes bedrock. In particular, the final steps of the organist's explanation were like a falcon's dive through layer after layer of pretense and illusion, thrilling or sickening or confusing depending on what you were. The heavens were riven open. Lawrence glimpsed choirs of angels ranking off into geometrical infinity.

XAVER VARNUS PLAYS BACH'S TOCCATA & FUGUE IN THE BERLINER DOM

should do it ..


Rika

There are pieces written by Bach and Beethoven that are so difficult that they can't be played as originally written. Modern artists have had to adapt the manner in which they are played. I am continually amazed at the virtuosity of the old masters.

If any Angeleno's out there that want to experience a really big pipe organ, Google up the Nethercutt Collection. Besides a few restored cars (like 150+), railroad locomotive, some furniture and such, there is an organ collection. The masterpiece, that had a three story building built around it (to house the pipes) is a mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ, one of the largest in the world. It has 5,000 pipes and a 77 rank. It originally sat at the Denver Civic Auditorium. Over the years it was destroyed by earthquakes and each time it was fixed more features were added. Docents play several of the organs, but for the finale they light up the Wurlitzer. Thing makes the building vibrate.

The show and the museum are free but you need to make a reservation. As I recall the organ demo is only on Saturday. Interesting family story of an early soCal car guy & his wife.