DAVID LEE, professor of organ at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and organist of Dun Laoghaire Presbyterian Church, is a resourceful constructor of recital programmes.
His concert at St Michael's, Dun Laoghaire, on Sunday night showed gumption on a number of fronts. He confined his repertoire to works by a single composer, Bach's great predecessor, Dietrich Buxtehude, not a figure to whom this treatment is often accorded. And he provided on a printed sheet "A few thoughts on Buxtehude's Organ Music", slightly polemical in style (and also highlighting the fact that the St Michael's series, in spite of the sometimes obscure repertoire it covers, avoids the business of music notes entirely in its "Souvenir Programme Book").
Lee's programme ran to 13 works, about one seventh of Buxtehude's surviving output for organ, and included samples of praeludium (freer in structure than Bach's preludes and fugues), toccata, passacaglia, fugue and chorale prelude.
His playing seemed to gain in stature as the evening progressed, reaching, for me, a peak of expression in the extended Magnificat primi toni, BuxWV203, and the finely projected Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott BuxWV199. Not everything reached this high level (for instance, the rhythmic freedom of the Toccata in G, BuxWV164, was not entirely convincing), but the lasting impression was positive, and Buxtehude's individual voice, the characteristic bounce of his rhythmic motion, the exuberance and fantasy of his improvisatory sections, was satisfyingly conveyed.
