Customer Reviews

Hovhaness: Lady of Light/Avak the Healer

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Lady of Light is one of the this important composer's most mysterious and beautiful works. Scoring is often sparse, serene and orginal. Like much Hovhaness, this work seems inspired by Christian mysticism and contains mysterious scoring effects. The music is modal, and the vocal writing at times reminds one of big Oratorios (eg, Handel) with its masterly contrapuntal dexterity. Avak The Healer is a 1940s work, again digestible, sincere and refreshing. Performances are very good.

Hovhaness was a wonderful composer. In Lady of Light we have a long piece for orchestra and choir plus soloists on the theme of Love. Avak the Healer also carries these love vibrations. I particularly enjoyed those passage for 'free' rhythmless voices. These were reminiscent of Ligeti's vocal works as used in 2001 but here Hovhaness manages to create vocal textures that are far more elemental - in particular the element of Fire comes immediately to mind - as the 'Lady of Light' is consumed in her passion for divine Love. This is truly a beautiful work. I played it to my wife when we first met and although she'd had no interest in classical music before and was hostile to opera the strains of warm harmony (human not necessarily musical) and the inspiring theme of this work made it very easy for her to warm to such things. We also had passages played at our wedding - we moved out of the temple to the love dance on marimbas etc.

As a caveat, let me say I am not a musician. That, in my experience in the past, will not lessen the rage that professionals in the field will have of a lay person presuming to just say he likes the music. I'll say it: I like this. What I don't like is the libretto. Or, perhaps, that it is in English. In German, Armenian, Russian or some other language I don't know the banality would not interfere with the beauty of the musical composition. To an anglophone the text is worse than simplistic.

But to professionals in music, as in most creative fields, the curse Hovhaness endured was that he wasn't composing music substantially like other composers of this time. Poets, writers, photographers, sculptors, actors, or anyone in the arts must create what is currently approved. One can't go back to a previous style, one can't be way out front of curve, one can't copy one's peers too slavishly, one must win awards, get reviewed, have the right credentials ...

Contrary to what one might expect, the Arts are just as tough on non-conformity as any conservative corporation, religion, government, or political party. You had better do what other artists expect you to do. Maybe Hovhaness didn't meet all these criteria. Bernstein and Copland disparaged his work at Tanglewood so much that he left.

This work is beautiful to hear although I thought I could hear some audio 60Hz hum or buzz at a very low level in the soft passages possible as a result of the recording engineer having an off day. This is the un-cola of 20th century classical music composing. I think many who have heard little of Hovhaness will enjoy this CD enormously. We can depend of the college professors of music to fill in the details I omitted. Mea culpa.