Organist Wisely Doesn’t Pull Out All Stops at UCLA

Veteran organist and educator Robert Glasgow, professor of organ at the University of Michigan since 1962, paid a visit to UCLA’s Royce Hall on Tuesday night to give its restored pipe organ a spin. In doing so, Glasgow offered a wide-ranging, mostly subdued program that sagely saved the organ’s full thunder for the concluding pieces in each half.

For a start, there were transcriptions of two movements from Handel’s four-movement Overture to “The Occasional Oratorio,” followed by somewhat wandering performances of two J.S. Bach Chorale Preludes. There were two Domenico Scarlatti keyboard sonatas (K. 288 and K. 255) that the composer evidently wrote with the organ in mind--and Glasgow made a convincing case for that treatment, calling upon witty, contrasting voices.

Four brief “Noels” by Jean-Francois Dandrieu exploited some special-effects stops on the organ, followed by the chromatically active Franck Chorale No. 1, which built to a magisterial finish. As part of a Schumann segment, Glasgow referred cyclically back to Bach with the “Fugue on B-A-C-H,” in which Schumann ruminates on the same pattern that Bach used in his final unfinished entry in “The Art of the Fugue.” Finally, Glasgow played three movements from Widor’s Symphony No. 7 for Organ, which had a tendency to ramble uncontrollably but culminated in a flamboyant finale.

In a brief closing talk, Glasgow said that this was his second appearance at Royce--his first since the restored organ was unveiled last season--and while he enjoyed playing the instrument, he claimed there were a few bugs in it. One wondered whether the flaws were responsible for some curious episodes: the Franck stopped in its tracks in midstream, and twice in the Schumann fugue, Glasgow held some notes out while seemingly searching for different timbres.