Hanson Conducts Piston, Riegger, Hovhaness and Cowell

Howard Hanson

Composer-conductor Howard Hanson was legendary for his devotion to American music, as exemplified in the "American Music Festival Series" of LPs he conducted for Mercury in the mid-1950s.

We've been slowly making our way through the series. Today we have two albums - one devoted to Walter Piston's Symphony No. 3, the other to works by Wallingford Riegger, Alan Hovhaness and Henry Cowell.

Piston - Symphony No. 3

The third symphony of Walter Piston (1894-1976) is a distinguished work that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948.

The critic Alfred Frankenstein has described it as follows: "[T]his is a very profound symphony, one of the most important of modern times ... The sonorities of the slow movements are very large and resonant, with strong emphasis on the darker colors; to this is contrasted a singularly vital, brilliant scherzo, and a broad, fine, march-like finale. The whole thing is mature, ripe, reasoned, and elemental in feeling; it is a symphony in the grand style and the great tradition. Hanson plays it with full, keen appreciation of its stature, and Mercury's engineers have given the music their best."

Walter Piston in 1948

The recording comes from 1954, and was made - like most if not all Hanson's recordings - with the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra in the Eastman Theater. The sound is very similar to the other recordings in the series - clear and just a bit astringent.

Piston's best known work is the ballet suite The Incredible Flutist, which has appeared here in two different recordings by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler - from 1939 and from 1953.

LINK to Piston Symphony No. 3

Music by Riegger, Hovhaness and Henry Cowell

Hanson tended to be conservative musically, and even when he programmed such figures as Wallingford Riegger and Henry Cowell, he was apt to choose their less radical works.

Which is not to say these compositions were without merit. The longest item on this record is the Symphony No. 4 by Cowell (1897-1965). This work is in his later style, markedly less violent and experimental than works using such devices as the tone clusters that made him famous (or notorious).

Henry Cowell

Cowell's colleague Virgil Thomson wrote: "No other composer of our time has produced a body of works so radical and so normal, so penetrating and so comprehensive. Add to this massive production his long and influential career as a pedagogue, and Henry Cowell's achievement becomes impressive indeed. There is no other quite like it."

Another fellow composer, Arthur Berger, said the Cowell symphony "is one of his most successful and congenial achievements. It contains the evocations of early American music that have become a recognizable trademark of Cowell’s style, but never, to my knowledge, has he handled them with more polish. The work is one of the finest examples of the genre that, for want of a better name, we may call 'American neo-Gothic.'"

Wallingford Riegger

The New Dance by Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) is, again, a conventional work. In its initial form it was part of a longer piece for piano four-hands and percussion written for the Humphrey-Weidman dance group. The composer later orchestrated the final section, which is what Hanson recorded.

Critical opinions were mixed, with Berger calling it slick and Peter Hugh Reed, conversely, writing: "This perorative fragment, based throughout on à single rhythmic patter which juxtaposes the rhumba and conga beats is a stunning tour de force that needs no reference to its primary context for maximal effect."

Alan Hovhaness

Critics tended to be dismissive of Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000), often accusing him of producing meandering, innocuous music. Reed was more positive than most: "The Hovhaness effort, subtitled Arevakal after the Armenian word for the Lenten season, is à recent (1951) opus of a kind with every other composition for which this singular figure is known to concert audiences. That is to say, briefly, that it mingles the modes and melodies of the composer’s homeland with a kind of post-Scriabin theosophy." Audiences did and do find Hovhaness' works attractive, and they are pleasant to hear.

This second LP dates from 1953, and displays sound very similar to the Piston symphony.

Hovhaness's St. Vartan Symphony and The Flowering Peach are available on the blog, both newly remastered. Also on the blog is a suite called Images in Flight, with both Cowell and Hovhaness (and Paul Creston) making use of the Eastern Airlines theme in a promotional effort shepherded by Andre Kostelanetz. The resulting LP ican be found here, along with an unrelated PanAm promotional record.

LINK to the Hanson recording of Riegger, Hovhaness and Cowell

Previous Installments in the American Music Festival Series

• Morton Gould's Latin American Symphonette; Samuel Barber's School for Scandal Overture, Adagio for Strings, Essay for Orchestra No. 1

• Barber's Symphony No. 1; Hanson's Sinfonia Sacra and Cherubic Hymn

• Music for Democracy: Randall Thompson's The Testament of Freedom and Hanson's Songs from Drum Taps.

• Edward MacDowell's Second Indian Suite

• Americana for Solo Winds and String Orchestra, including Hanson's Serenade for Flute, Strings and Harp

• Hanson's Symphony No. 4, along with an alternative recording led by Dean Dixon

• American Music for String Orchestra with works by Mennini, Foote and Canning

• Music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Charles Martin Loeffler

Hovhaness Conducts Hovhaness

Longtime friend of the blog David Federman recently sent a plea for more transfers from the M-G-M Records classical catalog. That label was active in the classical realm for several years in the 1950s, and issued many interesting items during its short life.

I do have a number of M-G-M titles, and this one is of perhaps special interest. It presents the idiosyncratic American composer Alan Hovhaness leading three of his own works in what must be considered authoritative readings, in vivid if at times unsubtle sound. (Turn down the tymps, please!)

The first side consists of his incidental music for The Flowering Peach, a Clifford Odets play about Noah and the Ark that was on Broadway for four months in late 1954 and early 1955. (It later became the basis of the Richard Rodgers-Martin Charnin musical Two By Two, a vehicle for Danny Kaye, who infuriated Rodgers with his improvisations.)

Alan Hovhaness, demonstrating his prolificacy

Side 2 is mainly devoted to a suite from the ballet Is There Survival?, which Hovhaness alternatively titled King Vahaken. It dates from 1950, with a revision in 1955. Filling out the side is the composer's Orbit No. 1 from 1952, so titled because it is patterned after astronomical movements.

Hovhaness was famously prolific and reputedly did not try to create a masterpiece with every opus. But with his influences from Armenian and other world musics, he may seem more up-to-date to today's listeners than many of his contemporaries.

In the recording, Hovhaness leads chamber ensembles that I believe were drawn from the New York pool of musicians, who as you might expect are proficient, although they sound a little under-rehearsed. I don't have recording dates for all of the pieces on this LP, but two of them were taped in 1955.

If you enjoy Hovhaness's music, you may also want to go to my post of his St. Vartan Symphony, which I recently remastered and reuploaded at David's request.

Note (October 2024): both Hovhaness discs have now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK to The Flowering Peach, etc.

Pavane for Two Dead Airlines

I enjoy at least some promotional LPs, and here are two good ones, both honoring now-defunct airlines.

Above we have "The Name of the Game Is Go," issued to celebrate a new advertising campaign, circa 1970, for Pan Am, at the time the largest international airline serving the U.S. The audience was likely travel agents, among others.

Below is a 1965 LP, "Images in Flight," which took the unusual step of having three conservative American composers gussy up the Eastern Airlines theme music into an aural travelogue depicting some of the destinations Eastern served. The cover notes imply that the record was a giveaway for Eastern employees, but I have seen the LP many times over the years, so I suspect its circulation was wider.

Both albums come from a time when air travel was rather more glamorous than it is nowadays. My own flying experience spans the period from when these records were issued until today, and I can tell you the only things I don't miss from those earlier days are cigarette smoke in the cabin and the less sophisticated weather forecasts of the time, which often led to bumpy if not dangerous flights.

But rather than going off into a reverie about the old days, let's look at each of the albums in turn.

Pan Am

The Pan Am record is listed online as coming from 1969, but since it references the Boeing 747, which Pan Am did not fly until 1970, I believe it is from a little later. The first side is devoted to several iterations of "Name of the Game is Go" advertising spots, which feature the catchy theme developed for the campaign and various versions of the clever lyrics. Each spot ends with a segue into the older "Pan Am Makes the Going Great" tagline music.

As usual with advertising jingles, the composer and copywriter for the "Name of the Game" spots are anonymous. However, "Goin's Great" music is also present in two recordings made of the music as adapted into song form, as performed by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Steve Allen circa 1969. The credits ascribe the music to Stanley Applebaum and lyrics to Sammy Cahn. Allen helpfully quotes "Shortnin' Bread" in his piano solo, suggesting where Applebaum may have found inspiration.

Gatefold - click to enlarge

The album's covers and gatefold display the ad campaign's print element. The artwork is by Henry "Hank" Syverson, a cartoonist with a very distinct style who worked for magazines and advertisements.

The music, arrangements, lyrics and artwork are all redolent of the time, and were largely aimed at the tired businessman looking to get away from it all. As was the custom then, women were mainly stereotyped as housewives.

Note (October 2024): this LP has now been remastered.

LINK to The Name of the Game Is Go

Eastern Airlines

The Eastern LP is the result of a collaboration between the airline and Andre Kostelanetz, a high-toned mood music maestro and the conductor of the New York Philharmonic's pops concerts. Kostelanetz then commissioned three reputable composers - Alan Hovhaness, Paul Creston and Henry Cowell - to produce a suite, "Images in Flight," making use of the airline's theme music. As with the Pan Am music, the composer of the Eastern theme is anonymous.

The result, as recorded by the New Yorkers in 1965, is surprisingly palatable in its easy-going way. The album is filled out by an instrumental version of the Eastern theme music, called "Bermuda Concerto" for some reason, as arranged by Clay Wernick (I believe) and performed by studio pianist Dick Hyman and the Kostelanetz ensemble. The balance of the LP consists of reissued Kostelanetz sides mainly on the travel theme.

The sound on these records is generally above average for promotional items, which often have dim sonics. The "Images in Flight" suite sounds quite good.

Note (October 2024): this LP has now been remastered.

LINK to Images in Flight

Alan Hovhaness

The striking image above represents a bit of a departure for this blog. Unlike anything else we have presented here, it's a 12-inch LP.

Now, why are we featuring a big LP in this, the land of little LPs? Simple, because a valued visitor to this blog (David) asked if I had it, and I did.

I thought about starting another blog for 12-inch records, and then I thought about the huge number of such LPs in my possession. I have enough trouble choosing what to feature on a blog devoted to the relatively uncommon 10-inch variety. Another blog with such endless choice would be overwhelming.

We will be presenting 12-inch LPs here now and then - but mostly on special occasions.

Not to prolong the suspense any longer - the image above is of St. Vartan, who was the inspiration for a symphony by the Armenian American composer Alan Hovhaness. This is the cover of an album issued in the 1950s by MGM records, devoted to the work, Hovhaness's Symphony No. 9. For this recording, the MGM Chamber Orchestra was conducted by Carlos Surinach. This was one of a number of recordings that MGM did of Hovhaness' work back when that music was much less well known than it is today. The composer's real breakthrough, I believe, did not come until Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony recorded The Mysterious Mountain.

Saints and mountains - you might think that Hovhaness wrote program music, but that really wasn't the case. This is absolute music written (apropos the cover) in a mosaic fashion, heavily influenced by Armenian and other Eastern musics, but assembled in such a way that it leaves a striking impression.

There is at least one more modern recording of this music, but I haven't heard it. This performance and recording is good (although it could be more refined in the busier sections).

David - thanks for all your words of support.

Note (October 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK to St. Vartan Symphony