The American composer of Armenian and Scottish descent, now based in Seattle, Washington, is unbelievably prolific, with more than 400 works listed, not counting over 1000 he destroyed in the early 1940s. That must have made quite a bonfire! I wonder if he ever regretted it. Afterwards, when he made a new start in his early thirties, his music responded particularly to the cultures of Armenia and India. But much of the generally rather simple piano writing on this CD––Grade VI or lower mostly––suggests the modal scales of Vaughan Williams or Bartok. Like Copland, Cowell or Virgil Thomson, Hovhaness is not afraid of plain materials, but his work is barely known outside the USA. It is almost as if performers hardly know where to start with so much to choose from! Hovhaness never needs to complicate anything and works in terms of melody to create a deliberate kind of naivete, sometimes as attractive as Satie and attuned to the 1990s where the spiritual minimalism of John Tavener has a large following.
Lovers of cats will feel at home in the miniature Sonata, Op. 301 (1977), which gives its name to this recorded anthology. Like some of the works of Cowell or Harrison, this music exists midway between East and West. But on the showing of these works, it hardly engages the two traditions as productively as they do. The short movements, unpretentious to a fault, which comprise each Sonata or Suite, sometimes fail to add up to much more than their immediate charm.
Marvin Rosen is an enthusiast who serves the music adequately on the whole. But some of his rapid phrases are lumpy and his articulation is not always consistent. The recording is sometimes shrill in the upper registers and thin lower down and the copy I have will not select every track labelled.'