Thread: Johann Sebastian Bach

What do you think is the most beautifull work by Johann Sebastian Bach?
Ill have to go for the Prelude in BWV.873 WTC.2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL3STs0ilxc
Please add an Youtube link!

I'm not going to say most beautiful or anything like that but certainly a favorite:

Originally Posted by Philip

+1

KV 466--have you heard Tilman Hoppstock's guitar transcription of BWV 914? I have his recording and score...the last fugue is brutally hard to play!

This piece is the holiest music I've ever listened to. The entire thing is beautiful, but you must at least listen to 12:00-13:10:

I'll go with neither vocal nor keyboard - the double Violin Concerto. Here is the wonderfully beautiful second movement -

Richter's reflective manner of playing the Prelude BWV 873 is so beautiful - I am glad you posted it - I have the GGould WTC complete and his playing of this prelude is much faster. Richter's is haunted or haunting...though Richter can be taken with speed and that's for sure. I've never heard the last movement of the Beethoven Appassionata F minor Sonata played faster by anyone else.

Originally Posted by Hermanberntzen

What do you think is the most beautifull work by Johann Sebastian Bach?
Ill have to go for the Prelude in BWV.873 WTC.2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL3STs0ilxc
Please add an Youtube link!

Originally Posted by mmsbls

I'll go with neither vocal nor keyboard - the double Violin Concerto. Here is the wonderfully beautiful second movement -

YEP! SECONDED! This movement was composed as a tribute to his first wife who had died suddenly about the time the concerto was written. The two violin lines intertwine as one voice and represent the love Bach and his wife shared. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

This is surely one of Bach's most "beautiful" moments.



I probably turn to the cantatas more than anywhere else for a wealth of such brilliance that one could literally spend years there alone. Along with the deservedly famous cantatas 140 and 147, my favorites include the magnificent cantatas Bach wrote for alto soloists (BWV 35, 169, & 170):

The final movement of St. Matthew Passion for me.

This:



Followed by this:



Then a little of this:



And all the ones mentioned above and many many many more. I could not stop....

I'd have to choose Cantata 82 "Ich habe genug."