At Home, a Dramatic Organist

A well-remembered highlight of the Boston Early Music Festival a year ago was a Bach organ recital by John Scott. Mr. Scott, the organist and director of music at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York, is better known here for his work with the splendid St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys than as an organist.

But there he was last year, at the First Lutheran Church in Boston, playing Bach's 'Clavierübung,' Part III, an imposing opus consisting of 21 chorale preludes bracketed by the glorious 'St. Anne' Prelude and Fugue. He performed with style and panache and won considerable acclaim.

So it was a canny move for the Early Music Festival: NYC, which opened its inaugural season on Friday, to link itself to a venerable model by presenting Mr. Scott in a similar recital on Saturday afternoon at St. Thomas. Here, on the smallish Loening-Hancock Gallery Organ, Mr. Scott presented a comparable encyclopedic collection, the great 18 Leipzig Chorales (BWV 651-68).

Still, there was no guarantee of easy success. Like the 'Clavierübung' preludes, the Leipzig works, performed in quantity (as was surely not Bach's intent), can seem austere to listeners unfamiliar with the hymn tunes on which they are based. And in this case, there is not even the fillip of a grand prelude and fugue, like the 'St. Anne,' to leaven the mix.

Bach compiled the collection during the last decade of his life from works dating back to his years as court composer in Weimar (1708-17). Mr. Scott, in his exemplary program notes, dismisses as apocryphal the tale that the fragmentary final chorale, 'Vor deinen Thron tret'ich hiermit' ('Before Your Throne I Now Appear'), was dictated by Bach from his deathbed in 1750.

Demanding repertory or not, Mr. Scott once again carried the day handsomely, with a lively touch, meticulous care for articulation and colorful yet restrained registrations well chosen to clarify the teeming wealth of contrapuntal lines and their rich ornamentations. Most members of the sizable audience stayed for the duration and rewarded Mr. Scott with clamorous applause.

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