There is no question that a well-recorded QUALITY piano in good tune played by a pianist who really knows and understands the piano, is an essential litmus test to appraise the tonal verity of an audio system. The same applies to reproducing the human voice, male and female alike, as well as "massed strings" and a full symphony orchestra.
ALL of these music sources must be as well-recorded as humanly possible - it can be very difficult sometimes to single out really GOOD recordings from lesser-quality ones to use as our be-all and end-all test recordings.
The pipe organ is another very difficult instrument to record well - and it is often overlooked as a means-test to judge the performance of an audio system. Like the piano and the symphony orchestra, the pipe organ possesses a very wide frequency and dynamic range. There are some splendid examples of organs found today around the world - for example, the organ that J. S. Bach himself knew well and played, the very beautifully restored (in 2000) instrument the renowned organ-builder Zacharias Hildebrandt (1688-1757) built between 1743 and 1746 in the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg, Germany. Bach himself highly praised Hildebrandt’s work, and there has recently been released on the Aeolus label an audiophile-grade recording of J. S. Bach’s Art of the Fugue ("Die Kunst der Fuge") played on this historic Hildebrandt organ. Here’s a brief YouTube video describing the making of this recording:
The excellent recording introduced in this short video (I have a copy of this SACD/CD which I highly recommend), gives us listeners the opportunity to hear how the well-recorded sound of a fine pipe organ can also be used to evaluate the quality of our audio systems.