Midday Music for Organ: David Yearsley “G. F. Handel vs. J. S. Bach.”

Handel left little music for the organ, apart from a superb collection of concertos written for English organs—instruments that, for the most part, had no pedals. Yet the German organist was surely, especially early in his career, a pedal virtuoso. In a program that includes his own arrangements of some of Handel’s best-loved music, David Yearsley, Professor of Music, stages an imaginary contest between Handel and the definitive 18^th-century virtuoso pedalist, J. S. Bach.