Danielle Woerner write that Bach

>>could raise my spirits and restore me to a sense of emotional
>>balance when I was particularly unhappy or depressed.

How true.  At times of deepest depression or despair, in my earlier days,
I found I could regain my even keel by listening to Kapell's Bach Partita
recording.  Late at night, in a darkened room by myself, with Manhattan's
traffic noise muted, this deeply felt communion between composer and
pianist managed to restore my faith in life and make it worthwhile to
"hitch his mantle blue" (Milton) and face life head on again.  I had other
helpers, too.  Furtwaengler's Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, Schnabel's
Beethoven and Schubert, and Solomon, whose shining integrity illuminated
every work he touched.

In these days of external despair, as the millenium comes to a close with
no lessons learned from the history of this bloody century, we need such
such life-affirming anchors more than ever.

Eric Kisch
(still deeply shaken by the events in Colorado this week, not to mention
the Kossovo mire)