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Diane! Abbraccio! Miss you!

Gracias, querida Sara! Un fuerte abrazo!

Muchas Gracias! Que bueno que lo disfrute.

y la mía también!

não acredito em Deus, mas creio em Bach.

Beautiful

I couldn't agree with you more!

I agree! Just gorgeous and very profound!

@@ozielich "Profound"... Excellent word to use! 👍

Thank you for your comment, Pavel.

Nicely put and couldn't agree with you more!

"Beauty will save the world" (Dostoïevski, Prince Mishkin, "Idiot"). Stokovski's arrangement and Bach's himself are proof of it. Sublime.

@@micaelabonetti949 Great quote. I have that book somewhere. I promised myself that I will read it in some distant day.

@@ginomorales8989 Please, Gino, open this book as soon as possible! Now! I'm already finishing my third reading of it. Fourth one won't be far away... Profoundly mesmerizing, a book (an author, Dostoïevsky) that can change one's life, gracing it. 🙏

@@micaelabonetti949 Rereading a book is the highest tribute to an author. The good old man must feel really proud somewhere. I have already read Humiliated and Offended, The Gambler, White Nights and Memories from the Subsoil. I have a stack with Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov pending. If you think it's a good read to deal with persistent sadness, I promise to read a few pages of The Idiot tomorrow (it's 5:00 am in my country). Thanks for your time.

I know! That aria alone makes that whole LP worthwhile.... The violin playing of Welk is unparalleled!

@@ozielich Wonderful indeed. There was a 2-CD album of the Bach Aria Group recordings available on Vox (I think it could still be found on Amazon), but the violinist featured there was Oscar Shumsky (also one of the greats)

@@spind Oh! I thought this was Welk. Someone had told me this at some point. Well... It's just incredibly beautiful, the violin solo is just another level of musicianship!

@@ozielich I meant Shumsky was the violinist in the recordings featured in that CD set, not the recording you posted.

@@spind Ah! Ok! Thank you for clearing that up. It was Robert Bloom's wife who had told me the playing in that aria was Welk's. Indeed wish they reissue those in CD. There is a soulfulness in these recordings that transcend style.

Donna! Thank you so much! I miss you!

Thank you, Caro Stefano!

Dude, it was an honor!!! The man is such a musician! It was a privilege!

Franklin! Muchas gracias!

Eric! I know.... the solo violin of Mr. Wilk is sublime! I miss you and I hope we can indeed sing together soon. I'd be delighted!

Yes, I had heard that! Makes perfect sense. Thank you for posting.

Absolutely!

Rubén! Muchas gracias!

Gracias querida, Rosario!

Qué bellamente lo has expresado, Manuela. Stokowski, con Bach, en efecto, inspiran y nutren el alma y la existencia!

@@ozielich Muchas gracias por valorar mi comentario. Me limité a expresar lo que siento. No concibo la vida sin la compañía de la Música (con mayúsculas). En esto, Bach es sublime, y Stokowski viene a ser un excepcional ayudante, consiguiendo una perfecta simbiosis. 💚

@@manuelaformoso4647 Así es. He escuchado tantas nobles expresiones de esta pieza pero ninguna más hermosa, noble, inspirada y me atrevo a decir, trascendental, como ésta.

@@ozielich Gracias de nuevo. No creo merecer tantos elogios, pero admito que para mí supone un enorme consuelo saber que alguien comparte lo que siento, lo que pienso. A veces, me resulta difícil encontrar las palabras adecuadas con las que describir tanta belleza... Mil gracias por contribuir a difundirla

@@manuelaformoso4647 Pienso lo mismo, Manuela.

Lovely!

Beautifully stated. It is one of the most glorious interpretations and arrangements of this piece one could ever hope to find. They breathe together, play together.... do ritardandi together and then some....I join you in thanking J.S. Bach and thanking Leopold Stokowski.

Agreed, and yet we may never know with precision the exact tempo. Which makes it even more beautiful to find so many versions that are profound and transcend performance practices of any given era.

Oziel, I regret my final sentence: "...to bring the old music back to the original style." It's better to say: to bring the music closer to the original style.

There's been a long debate about tempi and while indeed, there are markings from Romantic era composers, even those are highly debated. There's very little solid evidence to go by just how fast or slow to conduct a composer from Bach's era. I often feel too many HIP conductors perform the pieces too fast, to the point that it truly feels rushed. There's a channel on RUclips dedicated to the argument that it should be slower, Wim Winters runs it...though at times it feels like too hard of a step in the opposite direction. Pieces really feel weighed down and tired. I'm kind of on the fence on both. I feel that the performer or conductor should have more say in the tempo. I've got recordings of Stravinsky conducting his own pieces, and they're not my go-to performances.

EyeShotFirst. Wim Winters is controversial because he interprets the metronome of the romantic era differently than is usual. But the metronome came long after Bach's time, which is why Wim Winters is irrelevant here. What did tempi in the Baroque? As I understand it, they were based on the heartbeat. Therefore, different time signatures had different tempi. Air was written in the time signature C, a time signature neither fast or slow, but something in between. In the time signature C, about 60 crotchets per minute were counted. Therefore, we know that this version is too slow.

Never do I stop listening to it. It's downright sublime.

Indeed! Simply sublime!

wow.... what a beautiful way to know this exquisite piece!

That was beautiful. Thanks, Manuel.

Charles Barry, I am sorry for my inadequate English. Charles, quote: «..music is a matter of taste». Oh no, it isn’t that simple! Old music is an important part of our history. Therefore we should understand the need of listening to the music also in a historical context. In Bach’s day, the composers used «tempo ordinario» if they did not add any tempo indications. Bach don’t say anything about slow tempo in his well known Air. The time signature is C, and without tempo indications, the tempo should be «tempo ordinario». Hey counted four beats per measure, but what kind of beat? Heart beats! A human function normally with 60-80 heart beats per minute, some sources say 50-80. In this performance the number of heart beats per minute are 26… Therefore we know that this pace is way too slow, a romantic version far from the original style.

Exactement!

Nicely put, Max. Still my favourite version.

Claude Alain, loin de moi l'idée de faire des comparaisons: et je trouve cette interprétation sublime. Puis-je me permettre, puisque vous aimez cette œuvre, de vous conseiller l'écoute (et la vision, touchante elle aussi) du bis dirigé par Mikhail Pletnëv avec son fabuleux Russian National Orchestra? Je ne peux l'écouter sans pleurer. Et depuis AVANT la première note jusqu'à l'extinction totale de la dernière...

Janet Smith beautifully put!