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Although a bad recording experience ten years earlier led Lorenz Maycher, organ and classical piano instructor at Lafayette, to vow never to do another one, he couldn’t resist the call of a masterpiece instrument.
His new CD, The Aeolian-Skinner Sound, has been released on the Raven label.
The Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, which, according to Maycher, was the finest organ company in the United States in the 20th century, built organs that could play any type of repertoire, from German to Baroque, from French Romantic to 20th century American. Today, many of these organs have fallen into disrepair.
“I felt it was important to document the genius behind the Aeolian-Skinner sound, and to maybe help educate organists of the younger generation about its beauty,” Maycher says.
The recording took place in early January 2004 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pa., where he is the organist-choirmaster.
“Week after week it is so exciting that it gives me chills,” Maycher says.
He spent several weeks fine-tuning the phrasing, nuance, and technical aspects of the program, working both at home and at the church.
“By the time the date came around for the actual recording, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with each piece,” Maycher says.
Although this is a solo recording, he finds it exciting to collaborate with others on music.
“I just love talking about music with the students at Lafayette, because each one has a different perspective on the music they’re working on, or a different approach,” Maycher says. “Working on music together helps, I’d like to think, both the student and myself grow and become better musicians and people.”
In addition to his work at Lafayette and Trinity Episcopal Church, he is assistant director of music at DeSales University.
He was formerly organist at the historic First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City, for ten years. A native of Oklahoma, he has studied organ with Margaret Lindsay, Thomas Matthews, Clyde Holloway, and William Watkins, and is a graduate of Rice University.
While a student at Rice, Maycher won the Gibbons Prize in organ, placed first in the San Antonio Pipe Organ Competition, and won the Houston AGO’s Mary Ellen Bond Award.
In 1989, Lorenz was a featured recitalist at the Organ Historical Society national convention held in New Orleans. He has since been invited to play for seven OHS national conventions, and was recipient of an OHS E. Power Biggs Fellowship. He has played over 50 recitals on the 1830 Appleton organ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and has appeared in recital in such places as Wichita State University, Rollins College, Irvine Auditorium (University of Pennsylvania), and Philadelphia’s Lord and Taylor Department Store (on the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ).