Review Details
MUSIC AT 9 - Graeme Scott
Alan Cooper
06 August 2009
King's College Chapel
The fourth annual series of late night concerts, Music at 9, opened with an inspired organ recital given by the Aberdeen born artist Graeme Scott who is currently Head of Keyboard at Bryanston School in Dorset.. He last gave a recital in King’s College Chapel in the 1990’s on the previous organ so this was his first chance to stamp his own particular style on the new Aubertin. As Dr Roger Williams said after the recital it is amazing how every organist who plays this instrument makes it sound different.
Graeme Scott concluded his recital with the Toccata in E (BWV 566) by J. S. Bach and he led up to this magnificent virtuoso work with music by four of the German composers from the previous generation. Toccata Prima from the Apparatus musico-organisticus by Georg Muffat opened with full organ in impressive processional mood but swirling cascades of notes soon welled up and then took over the music entirely before the more solemn chords fought back to reassert themselves. This was our first experience of Graeme Scott’s marvellous fluency of finger work which was to colour much of his recital.
Georg Böhm’s Partita: Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig took a basic chorale melody and transformed it into a series of seven variations often using flute or in one case cromhorne blends to bring an elegant series of dances into the chapel. The lines of the chorale became dance sequences and in the pause after each of these long phrases of music, I could imagine the elegant couples bowing respectfully to one another.
Upper flutes were used exclusively in Johann Adam Reinecken’s Fuga in G which Graeme Scott turned into a kind of magical dawn chorus of highly musically literate birds – a wonderfully effective idea.
Franz Tunder’s Komm Heiliger Geist, Herr Gott was another invention based on a chorale melody but here it was developed quite differently from Georg Böhm’s example which we had heard earlier. This was more solid serious music built in layers with impressive keyboard and pedal work.
I have said before that hearing Bach after these composers is like imagining the jet liner having been invented just a couple of years after the Wright Brothers made their first flight. With the Toccata in E, Bach and indeed Graeme Scott brought all the capabilities of the Aubertin into full play including powerful pedal work that gave this piece a thunderous solid foundation. Rich full chords and virtuoso finger work in dazzling runs made this a splendid conclusion to an inspirational recital. It also went down well with the audience too since after the recital nobody seemed to want to leave the Chapel and go home.
Next weeks recital brings Peter Stephens senior organ scholar at King’s College Cambridge to the Chapel. Another one not to be missed.