Simply Brilliant
In honor of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 330th Birthday (Yes, today!) …
Here’s a unique performance of Bach’s famous “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”. It’s played by wooden balls rolling down an incline of wooden steps … in the middle of a forest.
I kid you not.
Watch the following video.
Seeing (and hearing) is believing!
Elizabeth Fais 
Reblogged this on Kurt Nemes' Classical Music Almanac and commented:
Happy birthday, JS!
How wonderful! What precision this must have taken – JS would have approved, I have no doubt. A fitting tribute!
It’s amazing that someone took the time and attention to accomplish. I don’t suppose Bach would be too pleased with my mistakenly calling “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” his “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3”, but I’d bake him his favorite birthday cake and grovel sufficiently until forgiven. 😉
Cake prompts forgiveness in all things in my experience. I’m sure JS wld agree 🙂
It is delightful, but it’s not the 3rd Brandenburg. It’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”. Unless I’m mistaken.
Oh my gosh! You are right! Thank you for calling that to my attention. I’m am going to fix that mistake right now. I have no idea why I had Brandenburg on the brain. 😉
Well, there are many worse things that having Brandenburgs on the brain!
I do love the Brandenburg concertos, especially No. 3 🙂
Wow. Just wow. Must have taken them hours and hours of planning and building to get that just right. I wonder how many takes it took when filming it… 😉
Seriously. And then to set it up in a wilderness setting to boot. Getting the levels right over that long of a distance on uneven terrain… I don’t even want to think about it. It had to be cold, from the way the people assembling the structure were dressed. Extreme dedication to craft. Gotta love it!
That really is a tremendous way to play it! They even got the ritentando right. Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (BVW 147) is one of my favourite pieces of Bach. Closely followed by the 3rd Brandenburg (I have the Wendy Carlos synth version in my music collection and another CD with an orchestra using genuine baroque instruments, which pretty much emulates the actual sound Bach would have heard. Possibly).
I think JS himself would even be pleased, or at least amazed, by their achievement. The 3rd Brandenburg is my second Bach favorite too. He wrote the Brandendurg concertos on spec, hoping to get a job because of them. So hard to believe he didn’t get the job. And worse, that his music was stuffed in a drawer and (thank goodness!) discovered years later. Sheep May Safely Graze is another favorite. But the more I listen to Bach, the more of his pieces become *favorites*.