Stations to the ... Music of JS Bach.
As a child the very first classical music I listened to was on a little nine volt miniature transistor radio I found in the attic. I did not work, so being the naughty eight year old I was I opened the radio, and found a single internal wire that was broken off at one end. I soon found where it should connect to, and used one of those copperhead soldering irons that you put into a fire [in the front room, when nobody was about] to get it hot. I fixed it, and played about with the tuner. This was in the days of Home, Light and Third as the BBC national stations. We had the Light on the kitchen radio, and the Home was all grown up talking, which interested me as much as Malcomb Muggeridge on Sunday afternoon TV!
But I found the Third broadcasting Jesu Joy Of Mans Desiring played on organ.
I got a little ear-piece so I could listen to "my" radio in bed. I soon discovered the "symphony concert" of an evening so listened intently to everything I could in the safety of my little bed.
My taste was for Beethoven, Schubert, and even Elgar. My first LPs were The Great C Major of Schubert and Elgar's A Flat Symphony [First] as a ten year old. Both from Glorious John Barbirolli on HMV when best LPs cost £2/1/0.
Bach was rarely performed in those days on the BBC, and so my next enthusiasm [which remains today] was the music of Haydn.
In 1985 Radio Three had a year long broadcasting feast of JS Bach from where I discovered so much including Edwin Fischer's recording of "Ich ruf" which strangely introduced me the keyboard oeuvre of Bach. That same year there was a live relay from the QEH of the Linde Consort playing two orchestral suites and two concertos of Bach, and this converted me in one fell swoop to playing Bach on the instruments of his time. A great door had opened.
In about 2002 I eventually found organ recordings that pleased. Walcha, in the mono series, and a few examples may be found above in this thread.
Since then I realised that there is so much music from Bach that it would be more than a lifetime's wok to "know" all of it, and so far I have not found any music from the master that did the reward the effort of getting to know it by heart.
So I say this that with the exception of Haydn, I investuigate no other composer's work with a systematic determination. OIf course I listen to concerts on the radio of all classical genres, and sometimes I really like something completely unexpected. Surprisingly to me, I find quite some pleasure in Stravinsky for example. I adore Sibelius, and that is rather a contrast. But I return to known and unknown [to me] music from JS Bach every day.
If music had an octane rating Bach's would be consistently of the very highest grade. "Why waste time with Parafin music?" is my own question to myself. Of course most would disagree [and possibly correctly] with my mono-thematic approach!
I think the reason I took a while to get to Bach was that I had a music teacher who called Bach's music, "musical barbed wire." I have never found it so, but I was fifteen years before really working on it after first finding it.
Best wishes from George