Glenn Gould’s (Wikipedia) recordings of the Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach are among my all-time favorites. Amazon has excerpts of both his 1955 and 1981 recordings.

My favorite is his 1981 recording, which I’ve probably listened to more than any other piece in my music collection (over 200 times according to iTunes, but that doesn’t count years of listening to it on cassette tape and then CD prior to importing it to iTunes).

You can also watch him play on Google video (though I admit that he is eccentric!).

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6984208089899995423#

Brilliant. Masterful. Edifying. And as Bach would say, Soli Deo gloria.

Interesting trivia: Kevin J. Vanhoozer (a.k.a. KJV) plays the piano beautifully!

Dr. Vanhoozer’s DST 980 class (Advanced Theological Prolegomena, a Ph.D. seminar required for all Ph.D. students in theological studies at TEDS) spent this evening at his home for dessert and our final theological discussion of the semester. Jenni and I really enjoyed it (Jenni audited the course). I had heard that Dr. Vanhoozer was a “concert pianist,” but he clarified that he’s an “amateur pianist”—but a good one, nevertheless. I asked him to play for us, and he was kind enough to play two nocturnes, one by Chopin and the other by Beethoven. And true to form, he bookended his playing with theological discussions about the hermeneutics of music!