Hovhaness: Symphonies Nos. 4, 20 & 53; The Prayer of St. Gregory

Alan Hovhaness (Composer), Keith Brion (Conductor), Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra
• Conductor: Keith Brion
• Composer: Alan Hovhaness
• Audio CD (November 15, 2005)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos American
• ASIN: B000BK53H4
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,677 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #65 in Music > Classical > Instruments > Brass > Trumpet

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hovhaness' Wind Symphonies, November 25, 2005

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hovhaness: Symphonies Nos. 4, 20 & 53; The Prayer of St. Gregory (Audio CD)

The late Alan Hovhaness (1911 - 2000)has received considerable popular attention but too little critical appreciation. Hovhaness was a prolific composer of 67 symphonies and over 400 works in a variety of forms. He wrote a great deal of music for band, and his output includes eight wind symphonies. Three of these symphonies are offered on this CD. Keith Brion conducts the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra. Brion first conducted Hovhaness' wind music in 1964 with a high school band and recorded an all-Hovhaness disk with Gerard Schwartz on the trumpet in 1969. He has also made extensive recordings for Naxos of the music of John Phillip Sousa.

Hovhaness' symphonies are generally short and programmatic. The three wind symphonies on this CD emphasize the mystical, spiritual music of the composer. They consist of long choral passages for brass intertwined with solos for many different wind instruments, and for gongs, bells, cymbals, and drums. Much of the music, for the solos in particular, is modal in character, and it is contrasted with tonal passages in the larger ensembles. (Jean Sibelius did the same thing at times and Sibelius was a great influence on Hovhaness.) Hovhaness makes extensive use of counterpoint. The music is, and was composed to be, immediately accessible to a broad audience.

The three movement Symphony no. 4, opus 165, probably Hovhaness' best-known wind work, was composed in 1958. It contrasts brass chorales for trombone and trumpet with long solo themes in the bass clarinet and bassoon. It closes with an extended fugue. The unusual second movement features a haunting solo for xylophone extending the length of the music. It reminded me of a Milt Jackson solo for the Modern Jazz Quartet, which was active at the time this work was composed. The final opens with an extended brass chorale followed by solos for trumpet and winds. Bells and gongs give a mystical character to this symphony throughout.

Hovhaness' three -movement symphony no. 20, "Three Journeys to a Holy Mountain" opus 223 dates from 1969 and was one the composer's works commissioned and performed first by a high school band. Each movement represents a pilgrimage. The tripartite first movement opens with a clarinet solo, followed by an English horn solo, and a long, lyrical climactic section. The second movement begins with a long solo for alto saxophone, and the band gradually joins in over a low droning theme and the roll of drums. The finale features a brass chorale and fugue. Here again percussion and chimes add much to this piece.

The final symphony on this disk, the two-movement "Star Dawn" opus 377 dates from 1983. Hovhaness apparently was fascinated by the possiblity of space travel, an interest I find it best to disregard in hearing the music. Chorale sections are contrasted with long, flowing solo passages for clarinet in the first movement. A drum-roll opens the second movement followed by a long reedy solo and a fugual close. The accompaniment of bells is to represent the stars or, perhaps,human yearning.

The CD includes two short Hovhaness works for band. The "Prayer of Saint Gregory" is a short piece Hovhaness arranged from an earlier composition for trumpet solo, played here by John Wallace, and band The trumpet solo predominates in this brief work with a meditative, searching character. The other short work, "Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places" also features John Wallace on the trumpet. The work opens with a piercing trumpet solo, followed by a loud helter-skelter passage for the ensemble. The second movement also is lead by the trumpet and is a call to rebuild the world from chaos.

This CD and its earlier companion will introduce the listener to the music of Alan Hovhaness. I understand that further releases of Hovhaness' music may be in the offing on Naxos. Naxos is performing a real service to lovers of music in its ongoing "American Classics" series.

Robin Friedman

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hovhaness for Winds, December 3, 2005

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hovhaness: Symphonies Nos. 4, 20 & 53; The Prayer of St. Gregory (Audio CD)

I would urge you to read Robin Friedman's excellent review dated November 25, 2005; his descriptions of the music are excellent and give a pretty good idea of what to expect, especially if you are not that familiar with Hovhaness's music. Hovhaness wrote a great deal of music, and like some other very prolific composers (Milhaud comes to mind) some of Hovhaness's music treads a thin line between real merit and kitsch. For instance, the first of the 'Three Journeys to a Holy Mountain' sounds very much like clichéd snake-charmer music to me. That said, I found most of this disc to be extremely enjoyable. Much of it is based on chorale harmonies in the brass with occasional fanfare-like episodes, plus very imaginative use of percussion, both tuned and untuned. And, of course, there is much use of Near Eastern melorhythms.

By far the most amazing thing in this program is the noisy eruption shortly after the trumpet's oration in the first movement of 'Return and Rebuild the Desolate Place.' If one tried to imagine the cacophony of hell, one couldn't do better than this. And it sounds for all the world as if it is aleatoric, with each instrument going its satanic way, each one slowly dropping out until all that's left are sinister low growling trombone glisses. Wow! What an imagination Hohvaness had to come up with this!

The performances by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Wind Orchestra (what an ungainly name!), which I take to be a student group, is quite good. Solo trumpet work is done beautifully by John Wallace, as one would expect by this fine Scots trumpeter who has recently become the principal of the Academy.

I would suggest that whoever listens to this CD make sure not to listen to the whole CD in one sitting, but rather to each piece on its own. Otherwise there is some tendency for it to all run together and sound alike. Close listening, however, reveals that each piece has its own charms.

Scott Morrison

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hovhaness at his Best, September 30, 2007

By 

John E. Mack (New London, Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hovhaness: Symphonies Nos. 4, 20 & 53; The Prayer of St. Gregory (Audio CD)

Hovhaness is one of those composers whom you are likely either to adore or despise. After a considerable apprenticeship, during which he wrote a fair amount of rather conventional contemporary music, Hovehaness received considerable criticism from composers like Copland. Taking this to heart, he destroyed almost all his unpublished works and set out in a wholly new direction, one which inclined him toward Eastern melodies and techniques, and which brought him back to his Armenian roots. So while several of his best known works, such as "Mysterious Mountain" and "St. Vartian" have opus numbers consistent with early works, they really represent mid-period Hovhaness.

Hovhaness produced a large body of works which, after about his 30th symphony, began to sound alike. Of course, he lived to a ripe old age, and toward the end, his inspiration began to flag. But his early "Eastern period" works have an undeniable freshness and power, managing to be simultaneously weird, exotic, and conventional.

Some of his best stuff is on this CD. The 4th Symphony is one of my favorites. Not only does it build on instrumental solos (the passage for contra bassoon is particularly effective) into a really impressive climax. It is almost an experimental work, showing how much can be done when an entire symphonic piece has virtually no fast passages. Another piece, "Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places" (a great name, that!) is also powerful and evocative. It is basically a series of catastrophic yelps, followed by an extended trumpet threnody. Hovhaness is famous as a proponent of harmonic consonance, but sometimes he only gets there after extended periods of dissonance and chaos. And his meters ( I recall one 11/2 passage) sometimes border on the alien. But they make sense when you hear them.

The works here are scored for wind band. Some of these pieces were also released in a version for full orchestra, but I like the wind arrangements better. The sort of orientalism (better, Middle-Easternism) which permeates Hovhaness' music somehow sounds better without the smooth gracefulness of strings. As the fan mags would say, "Highly recommended."