Who is the most spiritually charged musician of the recorded era?
I don't know shit, but Zuzana Růžičková has to be on the list, and we will eventually come back again and again to Růžičková; a survivor of Auschwitz, Teresin, and Bergen-Belsen, who then refused to join the Communist Party in the aftermath. She lived a whole life of persecution, yet she spent her life playing the composer of affirmation. When I hear Růžičková, I can't stop thinking to myself: yes, THIS is what Bach meant. As I've said before, Bach is music of the soul, not the body. He is pure form, and ostentation would have enraged him, he'd throw a keyboardist of extraneous color out of the organ loft. Yet simultaneously, Bach is all color. He was not a painter but an etcher, drawing only in lines of black and white. I am convinced the instrument in his mind was neither harpsichord nor organ, perhaps a cembalo was closer, but the ideal Bach instrument was one of those hybrid harpsichords the size of a Buick with multiple registers, keyboards, pedals and consoles through which Bach can intone a celestial ring - full of overtones, echoes, bass-rich roars and bell-like pings. The only people in Bach who dance are the angels.
One can easily say that Růžičková conjured Bach's spiritual world so well because of her experience, and maybe there's some truth to it, though only god knoweth how. But however she accomplished it, it is only her and Landowska atop Dante's mountain of paradise where the Divine Presence is truly felt with all glory in the highest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3dS0utEprI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7lO-DCwW4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIkq8wGP-Mg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyma_rCjubg
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