Tonight is the Bach and Prayer service, which occurs on the fourth Wednesday of the month. It only lasts a half hour, and at least half of it is the music of Bach. I’ll be playing three chorale preludes from Bach’s Leipzig collection, also called the Great Eighteen. This morning as I was on my… Read More Bach as comfort
Until the year 2013, if it was the first Sunday in Advent, you could 100% count on hearing me play “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” Johann Sebastian Bach’s transcription of the fourth movement of Cantata 140 for organ. It is also known as the opening piece in the collection known as the Schübler chorales.… Read More It’s Advent, already!
[Apologies! My original post stated May 4th! That is because I heard so many ‘May the Fourth be with you’ jokes today!] This Sunday, May 7th, is Good Shepherd Sunday and is so named because of the Gospel reading of the day—the story of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, willing to lay down his life… Read More Good Shepherd Sunday
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4sZRY79zo?rel=0] “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,” played by Ton Koopman at St. Mary’s, Freiberg, Germany. (We heard this extraordinary organ this past summer!) If asked who my favorite composer is, I would say without hesitation, J. S. Bach. After conquering the technical challenges of playing his highly complex music, I must say that I… Read More Bach delivered me!
At last night’s concert at the Nicolaikirche, one of Bach’s church jobs here in Leipzig, our son Stephen decided that their pews were so uncomfortable that they must have been a device for medieval torture! Seriously, they were selling (and we bought) Bachfest logo-imprinted pew cushions at the St. Matthew, but we forgot them in… Read More Dorothee Mields at Nikolaikirche