If you watch closely, you’ll see that Mr. Hell is playing the pedals with his toes only – like Bach would have done. But Bach would’ve played a flat pedalboard, not a curved, American Guild of Organists approved one.
(Sorry, my hubby is an organ technician and his geekiness is starting to rub off on me.)
Thanks for sharing the video. Very cool. Our daughter calls those wood-on-wood keyboards “chocolate organs.” Cute.

Insane. Too many musicians settle at just learning the piano.
Thanks.

What magnificent playing of a magnificent piece on a magnificent instrument. His observation that Bach did not separate “sacred” from “secular” was spot-on; I wonder, though, whether Bach would have defined “spiritual” as he does.
Being a trumpet player myself, and therefore capable of only one note at a time, I can only imagine the electricity felt by someone such as this; to have music flow from all your extremities like water from a hose or so many beams of light, what a feeling!
Edward Elgar did a wonderful arrangement for orchestra of this Fugue and the accompanying Prelude. They (and some equally delightful transcriptions by Respighi) are in a fine recording with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony which I highly recommending buying if you can find it.

In the words of Radar….
Ah…. Bach

Original post by Dmitri Gromov