The Trio Organ Sonatas not among Bach's more popular works. He wrote them as homework practice for his son, Willhelm Friedemann Bach, sometime in the late 1720s. This recording was released on the ultra-cheap Naxos label, famous for releasing not particularly noteworthy classical recordings on cassette for like $3. All my classically trained friends, back when I still hung out with disreputable classical musicians, looked down their noses at it.
This is one of my favorite albums, full stop. Like it or don't. I'm not going to try to defend it. I've heard other recordings of the Trio Organ Sonatas; there is none that I like as much. Something about this one is like magic: independent melody lines—played one with each hand and one with the organist's feet on the pedals—pulse and snake, laugh and skip and dance around each other as if they have a life of their own. It's incredibly lyrical. Along with perhaps only Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge", this is one the pieces of music that I love so much and identify with so closely I would almost think it is as close as another person will ever get to the experience of being inside my head.
