Music: Bach Marathon

For six successive days last week the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach hovered in the wings of Manhattan’s Town Hall. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the great composer’s birth, Pianist Harold Samuel gave six Bach programs which, added together, took more than twelve hours. When the marathon was ended no member of the audience questioned Samuel’s reputation as the prime interpreter of Bach’s piano music. The 55-year-old Briton set about his task modestly, unaffectedly. At the piano he made a bulky unimpressive figure, seemed all forehead and shirt front. But his Bach was anything but dull. The many pianists who heard him marveled at the design of each phrase, the variety and vitality which suffused everything he played. Laymen forgot that they had ever associated Bach with their youthful five-finger exercises and the stern ticking of a metronome.