alan_hovhaness.pdf

Generally something of an outcast among establishment musicians (the composer recalls Leonard Bernstein, at Tanglewood, denouncing his Symphony No. 1 as ‘filthy ghetto music’), much of Hovhaness’ work looks Eastward almost in defiance — not just to Armenian modal church music but to Indian ragas and Japanese gugaku music. Symphony No. 3 is the grand exception: an eager embrace of everything Western and classical. In notes supplied by C.F. Peters, publisher of Symphony No. 3, Hovhaness calls the score ‘a tribute to Mozartian classical sonata form.

Label: Soundset Recordings
Item Number: SR1004
Format: CD
Year Recorded: 1996

". . . a crystalline performance by Long with the strings of the Korean Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Vakhtang Jordania".

. . . I was astonished to hear the Symphony No. 3 and to realize that this strongly felt and surely crafted work had all but disappeared after its world premiere in 1956, conducted by no less than Leopold Stokowski. The previous year, Hovhaness' Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain), which also was introduced by Stokowski, won critical raves and audience approval. It went on to enter the mainstream repertoire; the Phoenix Symphony closed out its 1996-97 season with it".

- Kenneth LaFave Music and Dance Critic The Arizona Republic

"The Symphony is conventionally structured in three movements rather than the smaller pieces of mosaic used by the composer elsewhere. The first movement is an example of the dancing energy we all associate with Hovhaness as well as deploying the mysticism typical of the man. There is a dourly incantatory trombone and some Sibelian string and wind writing. The soulful andante broods in benevolence and mystery bathed in subtle light. The finale dances with spiky energy in which the voices of Sibelius (of Lemminkainen and En Saga), Holst (Brook Green and St Paul's), Elgar (Introduction and Allegro) and Vaughan Williams can be easily enough identified. There is a greater sense of continuity than many will expect from knowledge of his 60+ other symphonies."

"The Mystery is a great concertante work for orchesta and guitar. Its overwhelming homage to the famous Finn's Swan of Tuonela is patent. What a tide of sound Mravinsky might have made of this work if only ..... There are seventeen patins in the work each with an Armenian title. The plangency of the guitar's slowly paced meditational role is set against music echoing Myers' Deerhunter (Oorakh Ler and Hayr Mer) a coolly oriental equivalent of Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, tenderly pietist hymnals in the strings and slantwise versions of the softer-centred Hovhaness (cf the wilder wastes of the Vishnu Symphony and Mountains and Rivers Without End). This is undoubtedly one of Hovhaness's finest works on record and is not to be missed. It is well subtitled 'Seventeen Prayers'."

"Recording quality: very acceptable, conjuring an open acoustic."

"Music: sincere and of a gently ecstatic inclination. A true Baedecker of Hovhaness's palette; in the symphony conveying a stronger sense of linear development than in many of the less obscure symphonies. In the Martyrs it communictaes as a great tapestry of devotional serenity."

"Recommended".

-Rob Barnett, Classical Music on the Web, August 2000