Hovhaness: Mysterious Mountains.

Gerard Schwarz, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Telarc CD-80604.

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) was one of the last of the Romantics, a composer who still believed that music should be enjoyed for its melodies, its harmonies, its sheer beauty of expression rather than any radical experimentation. Apparently, the public appreciated his work, too, because he become one of the late twentieth century's most popular classical composers.

This Telarc disc presents an album of four works on one of his favorite subjects: mountains. As Hovhaness said, "Mountains are symbols, like pyramids of man's attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual world." The program begins with his most celebrated and most recorded work, the Symphony No. 2, "Mysterious Mountain." It was written in 1955 and premiered by Leopold Stokowski. The composer's own comment about his music in general applies equally to "Mysterious Mountain": "My purpose is to create music, not for snobs, but for all people--music which is beautiful and healing--to attempt what old Chinese painters called 'spirit resonance in melody and sound.'"

The conductor Gerard Schwarz recorded ...