Mountain Music

The organ generally gets short shrift outside of baseball fields and liturgical settings these days, but Harold Stover has created a whole disc of secular music and, in doing so, attempts to recapture a time in America when the organ was closer to the center of popular entertainment. Recorded on the 1928 Ernest M. Skinner organ housed in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Portland, Maine, Stover plays through work of early 20th century composers such as Sowerby, Alter, and even a Gershwin arrangement. The other half the disc, however, is devoted to original compositions by the soloist. The long tones and sparsely ornamented melody of the opening movement to his Mountain Music will definitely allow the listener to leave all memories of Sunday services behind.

—MS