Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountains

"Warmly recommended: this would make an excellent introduction to Hovhaness's music.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“It's easy to dismiss the music of Hovhaness, who was was suspiciously prolific, with opus numbers nearing 500. But despite such sustained productivity over more than seven decades, his work is stylistically consistent – so much so, in fact, that some only half-jokingly claim he wrote the same symphony 67 times. Certainly, the profusion of sing-song fugues and modal, hymn-like tunes throughout his output can give a feeling of predictability.

 And yet listening to the opening movement of the Mount St Helens Symphony (1982), it's difficult not to be entranced, even awed, by the music's sensuous beauty – those luminous clouds of strings, that majestic rising theme in the horns, then, a little later, the delicate spinning of the harp and a procession of ecstatic, exotic woodwind solos. Perhaps the depiction of the volcano's eruption is a bit primitive, though it's fascinating that Hovhaness seems to view the explosion not only as an elemental event but also as a ritualistic one.

Hymn to Glacier Peak (1992), the composer's penultimate symphony, is also appealing. As the title suggests, it has a preponderance of hymnlike melody, yet there's a touching valedictory quality to the music. The finale is particularly effective, moving from hymn to one of Hovhaness's most tuneful fugues via a darkly atmospheric interlude.

"Warmly recommended: this would make an excellent introduction to Hovhaness's music.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountain; Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kijé Suite; Stravinsky: The Fairy's Kiss

According to most Hovhanophiles, the first and best recording of the work. From his Chicago players, Reiner conjures up a majestic peak, glistening water streams and a serene state of mind. Although he takes a few liberties with the score (such as a daringly fast second fugue), his lush and effervescent reading works magnificently and has become the work's definitive performance; one Amazon reviewer put it thus: "This recording is transcendent ... the title of the piece is MYSTERIOUS Mountain, and on this recording that is precisely what we get".

Hovhaness was little-known when this high profile recording appeared, which may have been in response to consistently laudatory concert reviews, such as those in Cleveland just 4 months previously, which probably added to the initial buzz begun by Stokowski's performances. Hovhaness apparently knew nothing of this release until its appearance in record stores, coupled with Stravinsky's ballet The Fairy's Kiss, which was programmed on the B-side. Thus RCA definitely saw the Hovhaness work as the main attraction, even commissioning special mountain cover artwork from Robert M. Jones.

RCA made a faithful transfer to CD for the re-issue. Re-mastering was apparently handled by John Pfeiffer, the engineer on the original 1958 recording, and the tape master was transferred from the original analog recording equipment, which had to be somewhat rebuilt. Tape hiss remains audible on the digital reissue, no doubt a decision to avoid all 'post-transfer' noise reduction so as to preserve as much of the original performance detail as possible. But such is the strength of Reiner's 1958 reading that it has held its own against all later digital-era recordings.

MP3 320 · 138 MB