WIGHT (''JACK'') HENDERSON, who died last month at the age of 76, was

the most distinguished Scottish pianist of his time and a doughty

champion of music in the doldrum days before the Scottish musical

renaissance.

Through his Viennese teacher Emil Sauer (with whom he studied in the

thirties) he could claim a direct connection with Liszt and the great

European virtuoso tradition. When still a boy in Glasgow he had already

attracted the attention of the legendary Frederic Lamond, himself a

pupil of Liszt. The composer John Ireland was among the young

Henderson's teachers at the Royal College of Music in London and

Ireland's music in turn was part of the adventurous repertoire he

encouraged his own piano pupils to explore.

Henderson's natural virtuosity on the keyboard, combined with an

instinctive musicality and calm temperament, made him equally popular as

a concert and chamber music performer. He broadcast regularly with the

BBC Scottish Orchestra, under the conductor Ian Whyte, on the Home

Service and Third Programme, and in the decade from 1950 to 1960 made

frequent appearances with the Scottish National Orchestra. Rachmaninov's

First Piano Concerto was his star piece; he played it no fewer than nine

times with the orchestra.

He was a member of the original Scottish Piano Trio. When the trio was

reformed in l958, his collaboration with cellist Joan Dickson and

violinist Louis Carus (later joined by James Durrant, the violist) made

him familiar to chamber-music audiences throughout Scotland. The group

also performed in England, appeared on TV and radio, and took part in

Edinburgh Festival programmes.

Fellow musicians speak of his warmth and wit (sometimes risque but

never offensively so) and of how stimulating and generous he was as a

teacher. His association with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music (now

the RSAMD) dates back to the early 1940s and from 1955 to 1978 he was

head of the piano department there.

Henderson's repertoire was remarkably wide. He could range

effortlessly from Bach and Mozart to Poulenc and Ravel. Though an

accomplished Beethoven player, he once confessed that Beethoven would

not be included among the composers he would take to his desert island.

He championed the sophisticated, semi-jazz music of Billy Mayerl, the

composer-pianist who premiered Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in London --

a work Henderson also performed. Equally to his taste was Constant

Lambert's Rio Grande, the piano part of which he once played memorably

with the Glasgow University Orchestra and Choral Society. He was a

frequent guest at the university's lunchtime concerts, either as a

soloist or with chamber groups.

Much in demand as an adjudicator at music festivals throughout

Britain, he was also a formidable organist and a talented landscape

painter.

Generations of students and colleagues will remember a man of engaging

personality as well as outstanding musical gifts. ''Within his own

period he was a musical colossus in Scotland,'' said one former

colleague.