Fanfare Reviews
from May/June 1994

HOVHANESS: Mountains and Rivers Without End. Prayer of St Gregory¹. Haroutiun: Aria¹. Symphony No. 6 ("Celestial Gate"). Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places¹. Richard Auldon Clark conducting the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra; Chris Gekker, trumpet¹. KOCH INTERNATIONAL 3-7221-2H1 [DDD]; 62:46. Produced by Michael Fine.

Is it surprising that the music of Alan Hovhaness (b. 1911) receives so much attention from orchestras and record companies in this day of the quick sell, the overnight sensation, the Next Big Thing? Not really. Hovhaness's long-limbed, tonal (frequently modal) melodies were popular with audiences long before there was a whiff of New Romanticism in the air; his ethnic resources (Indian, Armenian, Balinese, Japanese, etc.) put him in good stead with the current World Music club; and the simple, striking construction of his symphonies (fifty-plus and counting) and evocatively titled tone poems is easy to grasp on first hearing. What's not to like?

This new collection from the ambitious Manhattan Chamber Orchestra offers familiar works, four of which feature the trumpet prominently. Guest soloist Chris Gekker does yeoman's service in music that seldom calls for flashy passagework. He captures the solemnity of the "Prayer of St. Gregory," phrases the brief "Aria" from the longer "Haroutiun" (or "Resurrection") with just the right amount of restraint, and is a vibrant presence as the melismatic protagonist in "Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places."

Conductor Clark brings out the pungent harmonies that underscore the introduction and eventual song of reconciliation in "Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places" more so than his previous competition, a crackly vinyl version on Mace (with trumpet soloist Gerard Schwarz, these days interpreting Hovhaness with a baton). This performance of the Symphony No. 6 likewise takes precedence over that led by the composer on a Crystal disc (see Fanfare 17:2). Clark paces the music so that the slowly unfolding sequence of events and repetitions of the theme in different instrument guises do not sound episodic. I do prefer Hovhaness's atmospheric account of Mountains and Rivers Without End (on a different Crystal CD), however, to Clark's rather more literal one. The music was inspired by a Korean landscape painting, and though both conductors integrate the bell-sounds and distant drums into the fabric of the orchestra convincingly, Hovhaness induces images of mist and mystery. Clark's trombone soloist, Thomas Hutchinson, is impressive here, but I enjoy the slightly tipsy quality--like that of a Chinese poet wandering through the hills and valleys drunk on words and wine--which the unnamed soloist of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra brings to the part.

On the whole, though, up-to-date sonics and sympathetic readings make this release easy to recommend.

Art Lange

HOVHANESS: Mountains and Rivers Without End. Prayer of St. Gregory¹. Haroutiun: Aria¹. Symphony No. 6 ("Celestial Gate"). Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places¹. Richard Auldon Clark conducting the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra; Chris Gekker, trumpet¹. KOCH INTERNATIONAL 3-7221-2H1 [DDD]; 62:46. Produced by Michael Fine.

HOVHANESS: Symphonies: No. 6 ("Celestial Gate"); No. 25 ("Odysseus"). Prayer of St. Gregory'. Alan Hovhaness conducting the Polyphonia Orchestra of London; John Wilbraham, trumpet'. CRYSTAL CD807 [ADD]; 60:02.

In view of the recency of general remarks that have appeared in Fanfare concerning the music of Alan Hovhaness made by Art Lange (17:3, pp. 206-07) and by me (16:6, pp. 158-59; 12:4, pp. 189-90), I will try to restrict my comments here to the music at hand. The Koch release features brand-new performances of music that has been recorded before, except for the aria from Haroutiun (noteworthy when one considers that the composer is up to somewhere around 500 opus numbers, of which fewer than 100 are currently available on recording). However, having said this, I should immediately add that the Clark/Manhattan performances are exceedingly good, exceeding any previous versions. The Crystal disc consists of reissues of material that was previously available on LPs from the composer's own company, Poseidon. (With this release, most of the Poseidon material is now available on Crystal CDs.) The reader will note that there is a certain amount of overlap between these two discs; because of this and because of the widely varying quality of the music--and the concession that individuals may differ about this--general purchase recommendations are impossible for me to make.

The most auspicious item here is the Symphony No. 6, "Celestial Gate." In my view, as someone who is familiar with about a third of Hovhaness's output, this symphony is one of the three or four most inspired and deeply moving works of his known to me. In one movement and scored for chamber orchestra, this twenty-minute piece, composed in 1959, is one of the few that really achieves the sense of fervent mystical rapture, serenity of spirit, and pure spiritual beauty for which Hovhaness has so often strived. Why does this particular work succeed where so few others have? Perhaps mine is a purely subjective reaction, but I am inclined to credit it to a coherence of both formal and expressive content, with an integrative relationship--however rudimentary--among its various episodes, and an overall sense of direction, combined with more than the usual degree of contrapuntal interest, and some particularly attractive and memorable melodic material, all of which is tailored with a concision that the composer abandoned more than twenty years ago. Of the two performances, the Clark/Manhattan is a good deal more polished, with especially refined solo playing and more subtly nuanced phrasing. The composer's own reading displays a tad more animation, however. Needless to say, Hovhaness enthusiasts are strongly urged to acquaint themselves with this work, whichever recording they choose.

Both recordings also offer performances of the Prayer of St. Gregory, a short, modal aria for trumpet against simple diatonic counterpoint in the strings, with a hymnlike interlude in the middle. Its convincingly reverent quality has earned for this interlude from the 1946 opera Etchmiadzin a widespread popularity and quite a few recordings. Of the two under discussion, the Koch again displays greater polish and more sensitive phrasing.

Along with these two works, the Crystal disc includes the Symphony No. 25, "Odysseus," composed in 1973. (Since then, incidentally, Hovhaness has completed more than forty additional works he labels "symphonies.") "Odysseus" is remarkable as an example of a secular-dramatic side to the composer's musical personality that is less widely represented in his output, though somewhat more so in recent years. Again a one-movement work for chamber orchestra, this one is thirty-six minutes long. Here are encountered the simplistic episodic structure, repetitive, slow-moving harmony, plodding melodies, and two-dimensional textures that can make so much of Hovhaness's music so excrutiatingly boring, although there are some welcome attempts at dramatic contrast.

Turning now to the remainder of the Koch disc, let us confront Mountains and Rivers Without End, which can also be found on a Crystal disc (CD804), in a performance under the composer's direction. This is a twenty-four-minute "chamber symphony," written in 1968 and scored for a small group of woodwinds, brass, harp, and percussion. Based on material also used in the contemporaneous opera The Leper King, this work derives from Hovhaness's "Korean period," and features much use of trombone glissandi, free-rhythm passages, unison woodwind canons, and a virtual absence of harmony. Partly owing to a recurring 7/4 refrain of mind-numbing banality, I have always considered this piece to hover at the nadir of the composer's entire canon. However, I must say that Clark and his group try very hard to make an artistic statement of it, and succeed in so doing, to a certain extent, creating the effect of a dreamlike journey through a strange, exotic landscape (which is the composer's intended effect).

Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places (no one can deny that Hovhaness chooses his titles with great imagination) is a ten-minute piece for trumpet and wind ensemble that was available at one time on a Mace LP, with Gerard Schwarz as trumpet soloist. The piece comprises materials in both quasi-Armenian and quasi-Korean styles, written during different periods of the composer's career, from the 1940s through the 1960s, yet hangs together fairly well, concluding with the hymn that ends the incidental music to The Flowering Peach. Again, the performance here is superb.

Haroutiun is a ten-minute aria and fugue for trumpet and strings, composed in 1948. Why the producers decided to omit the fugue from this recording is beyond me, as this is one piece that has never been recorded. However, the incantatory aria will sound familiar to some, as the melody appeared later in Meditation on Orpheus, though in a different sort of context.

With this release and the Cowell disc that appeared a few months ago, Richard Auldon Clark and the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra appear to be convincing advocates for some little-known but highly accessible American music, which they are presenting with rare sensitivity. There is plenty more waiting to be discovered, and I hope that consumer interest will prompt further explorations. The orchestra has dedicated the Hovhaness disc to the memory of Maureen Snyder, a talented and much-beloved young horn player who was killed in an automobile accident shortly after making this recording.

In closing, amid the current plethora of highly uneven Hovhaness recordings, I thought it might be useful to mention those current CDs that contain what I feel are the composer's most indispensable works, in addition to the Symphony No. 6: Crystal CD810 for Alleluia and Fugue, Anahid, and Concerto No. 8; Crystal CD806 for Lady of Light and Avak the Healer; and MusicMasters 7021-2-C for Lousadzak and Mysterious Mountain.

A final postscript: Crystal ought to know that Stokowski's name ends in an i, while someone needs to tell Koch how Otto Luening's name is spelled.

Walter Simmons

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Fanfare Reviews from May/June 1994

Fanfare Reviews
from May/June 1994