This recording proclaims itself as the “Inaugural recording on the World’s Largest Church Organ”, the latter being further described as the organ of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Listing the stops takes two full CD booklet pages, so Delos might very well be right. I won’t argue the point, but I do wonder if anyone had in mind, “if we build it, the recording engineers will come”? It seems inevitable. Even Mercury Living Presence was tempted by the Atlantic City organ that was then claimed to be the world’s largest. I found this CD, like that earlier Mercury LP, more of a grand and glorious circus stunt than any sort of meaningful musical experience, and if you take it that way, you are liable to find this CD a lot of fun. But I tired quickly hearing the instrument struggle against the decay of sounds it just produced, creating a welter of sound that simply seemed too labored for comfort. The quieter pieces work best here, and the whole affair has been handsomely captured in Dolby surround sound by engineer John Eargle. The recording really gives a sense of the vast recording space, warts and all. He and organist David Briggs do their best but ultimately are defeated by the instrument and the acoustic–the music loses out.
