Two years ago, the Argentinean Murray Perahia did, making his Bach recording debut with English Suites No 1, 3 and 6. For him, "Bach's genius is to evoke timeless and true human emotions through the purity and spirituality of his writing". Ireland's Peter Sweeney, who studied under Lionel Rogg, and has performed Bach's complete organ works, agrees: "His work represents the greatest synthesis of emotion and technique. Playing him, for me, has been the most powerful discipline of my entire life."
As an artist, Bach transcends all borders. Masaaki Suzuki, organist and conductor, who founded the Bach Collegium in Kobe, Japan, almost a decade ago, and whose recording of St Matthew Passion has recently been released, stresses Bach's habit of composing his music "carefully around each word". Another conductor, Britain's John Eliot Gardiner, has set out to perform each of Bach's 198 surviving sacred cantatas by the close of this centenary year. For him, Bach, more than any great composer, remains fresh. The cantatas are crafted gems, each a self-contained drama demonstrating the clarity of Bach's choral work.
The twice-married, once widowered, father of 20 who survived 11 of his children, eptomises the idea that the greatest artists are those who discover freedom in rules and nature in artifice. Born into a seventh generation family of musicians, as a music scholar he was aware of the French and Italian styles, looking towards Vivaldi, Corelli and Lully as well as his own German masters such as Schutz and Telemann. But much of his magic lay in his ability to create music that leaves musicians and listeners convinced he is definitive. A possible clue to his art may be his curiosity; Bach was never self-satisfied. He never lost the interest which in his youth had inspired him to walk 250 miles to Lubeck to visit the master organist Buxtehude whom he admired.
Such is Bach's achievement, it surpasses the respective, and possibly even collective, contributions of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Stravinsky - and this from a composer whose life predates the symphony. In common with Shakespeare, his work and life is surrounded in mystery. Why did Bach, a devout Lutheran, draw on Catholic liturgy for his Mass in B Minor? Indeed it is not really a Mass, and while it dates from late in his life, along with The Art of the Fugue and the Musical Offering, its genesis spans many years. An early setting of what became the Sanctus dates back to 1724. For such a major work, it was never performed in his lifetime. More than a century would pass after his death before the first complete performance took place in 1859. After his death, his music, the least contested part of his estate, was divided between his sons, and many works were never written down, much less published. Civilisation owes the continued existence of many of his works to Bach's musician sons and to the number of musicians he trained. Even so, no complete version of his St Mark Passion which was performed in 1731 has survived. For all the riches we have by him, how many have been lost? He left six motets, were there more?
Most bewildering of all is that his work was criticised during his lifetime for being too difficult. He was castigated for expecting his singers' voices and throats to match the artistry of his fingers. Although his cantatas and other church music were composed as part of his daily work, he never lost his spontaneous love of music. The Bach family enjoyed themselves playing at home.
The master, who was never an apprentice, was nevertheless a working musician all his life; a performer, composer, teacher and scholar, he knew how instruments were put together, and he supplemented his income testing new organs. As a young man he had travelled around to see at first hand the great organs of north Germany. Thanks to his background he had a very practical attitude towards his destiny. Unlike his contemporary, Handel, who was born a month earlier and survived him by nine years, Bach's life and career were played out within a relatively small area of central Germany. Widely acknowledged as a superb keyboard player, who dazzled his audience when at the harpsichord, Bach was primarily the local church organist; the cosmopolitan Handel was an international celebrity. They never met. Bach's interest in Handel was not returned.
Last summer, while photographing the 11th-century Kaufmannskirche in Erfurt where Martin Luther had once read a sermon, I noticed a discreet plaque on the wall, announcing that the parents of Johann Sebastian Bach had been married there in 1668. Born 17 years later, he was the youngest and longest-surviving child. Both of his parents died at 50, leaving him an orphan before his 10th birthday.
Compared with that other giant of German cultural life, Goethe - a privileged son born two years before the composer's death - Bach had a hard youth. For him there was no chance of the university education he would have loved, though his musical ability, soprano voice, obvious intelligence and good performance at the strict Latin schools ensured he secured for himself a fine primary education. But he was a scholar with a fondness for theology and maths.
In nearby Weimar, where the young Bach had once worked, the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birthday was being celebrated when I was there last year, but most Germans agreed that even Goethe would have to concede pride of place to the musical genius whose love of God and man continues to shine through his glorious art for all musicians from Mozart to the present.
Bach - The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff is reviewed on Weekend 11, by composer Raymond Deane