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.
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