I may point out a personal experience with Bach, which may be a similar one: after having spent a long time alone in studying Bach's "Orgelbüchlein" at the organ, I recently heard about this book by a small chamber music group, with a soprano, a tenor viol, a bass viol, an arch lute and a portative organ.

It was a special experience: I was used to hearing each voice as part of a construction which would be developped alone at the keyboard: suddently, each voice got its own life, with a specific atmosphere. The theme of the choral came back to its original nature, through a beautiful woman's voice, and the internal voices got their own movements thanks different kind of viola di gamba.

Seing Bach's contrapuntist structure, written for keyboard, broken down and played by several musicians, may change something in one's personal approach of such a piece. it may help to improve our own interpretation, by developing at the keyboard certain voices as if they were different music instruments: thinkhing the pedal keyboard as a contrebass or as a bass viol, using the left hand as a violin, and the upper voice as a human song. Finally, thinking Bach's music as songs.

After this experience of "seeing the metaphoric split", I had the feeling to become better: I improved my understanding and maybe my playing of this precious music.

Should we make a rule of that, and use the metaphoric split in learning Bach at keyboard-instruments ? 

Bach's son wrote that his father intended all of the contrapuntal lines to be interpreted as VOICES with their own character..

Fits-in quite well with the Baroque aesthetic...decoration etc.

today we are used to listening to Bach in the 'industrialized', institutionalized version, where the notes are played together in a more mechanical and mathematical fashion. The logical and mathematical element dominates the interpretation, but Bach was much more than that.. and he played to people in Church.. in a time when industrial machinery did not exist, and nature and god were at the centre of the human experience.

I Heard some of Edna Stern's Bach and found that it has more of this human element than many other players who have a large following, BTW. My compliments.

One only needs to consider that Chopin played Bach regularly, and he was certainly one of the most humanistic composers, if not the most humanistic in approach..

I think we simply need to re-evaluate what Bach was doing in a more wholesome and natural fashion