Joshua Bell

And you're doing it alongside thousands of other people from different walks of life, different ages, races, religions, political persuasions.

None of those differences at that moment

mean anything because you're unified by the music and reminded of your shared humanity.

So don't you think we need that in today's world?

So you've just heard a little bit of, as you probably know, Vivaldi, Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which he wrote 300 years ago in Italy.

Incidentally, my violin that I'm holding in my hand was made five years before that was written, in 1713, just down the road in Cremona, Italy, by another Antonio, Antonio Stradivari.

Yeah, it's kind of amazing.

And at that very same time, across the Alps in Germany, there was another man writing the most glorious music ever, and that was Johann Sebastian Bach.

Now, Bach was expanding and experimenting on the idea of what an orchestra could sound like.

He created his monumental St.

Matthew Passion, which he wrote for two string orchestras on the stage at the same time.

Double chorus, wind soloists, vocal soloists.

It's just the most immense and spiritual piece really ever written.

And it's three hours long.

So we're going to play just a tiny bit of it from its most

really its most poignant moment, and that's the moment in this biblical story where Peter has just betrayed Jesus, and he's stricken with remorse and regret, begging, basically, for forgiveness.

This is Erbarma dich, which means have mercy, my God.

So, just after Bach died, another genius was born, and that was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mozart wrote 41 symphonies in his lifetime.

We're gonna play a little bit from his 25th symphony, which really marks the beginning of his middle period.