An Alan Hovhaness World Premiere in Scottsdale

Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH's Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba. St. Apkar Armenian Apostolic Church in Scottsdale presents "Armenian-American Songs and Stories" on Saturday, September 19th. It's a black-tie evening honoring the life and music of Alan Hovhaness, beginning at 7 with a concert of the composer's music, including the world premiere of his String Quartet No. 6. Violinist Levon Zarasian is in the studio to talk about the program along with pianist Larry Loeber and the composer's stepson, Bill Holst. Welcome to all of you.

Larry Loeber / Levon Zarasian / Bill Holst: Thank you.

Kostraba: Bill, how did this evening come together?

Holst: We were living in Seattle in Alan and my mother's house. We had kind of a two-year project to straighten everything up, and then we had plans to move to Phoenix. We had established a connection up there with the Armenian Church in Kirkland, Washington, and had a concert down in Glendale, California, which was hosted by Archbishop Derderian. We told him about our move, and he put us in contact with Father Zacharia. We contacted him. We also mentioned that Alan's piano was coming along with us. He was very much interested in that, and he said, "Hey, let's have a concert." And so that's kind of where the whole concept began.

Kostraba: And then, you need musicians to have a concert. So how did that process work? Did the priest come to you, Levon, and say, "Here we go, we've got a concert. I know you play in the Phoenix Symphony"?

Zarasian: I'm good friends with Father Zacharia, and I belong to the Armenian Church. He contacted me, said, "I met this guy who's famous — the son of Alan Hovhaness — and would you like to meet him and talk to him?" So we kind of met, and I think Father Zacharia had in mind to do the concert on the 19th of September as a fundraiser for the church. So we met the first time with Bill back in July, just informally at church, and we talked about Alan Hovhaness's music and this and that. And being a violinist... and then we met a second time with another friend of ours from the church, Elsie Padavanian, and we decided on this program playing the two violin pieces, the String Quartet "Adana," and Bill suggested we do the piano pieces, and he wanted voice in there—

Holst: Just to add a little variety.

Zarasian: —and then one of my favorite pieces is The Saint Gregory's Prayer for trumpet and organ. It's originally written for trumpet and strings, but I think the organ makes a big difference, and our friend Larry, he does such a great job on the organ to it, and he's going to play the organ for that piece.

Kostraba: Now, we've talked about Alan's piano a little bit. Let's talk about Alan's music. He began writing when he was four years old, and evidently he wrote a lot of it because he destroyed a lot of compositions when he made this new start with music inspired by Armenian music. Tell us a little bit about your stepfather's music.

Holst: The reason why he destroyed so much of his works was he was at Tanglewood. He was in the same class as Bernstein and Copland. Alan was not composing avant-garde music; he was doing very spiritual, mystical-type works. And so he was kind of cast out. They had a class where they would play their compositions and then kind of critique afterwards. There was one day where, during the playing of that, Aaron Copland was talking over the music very loudly. Afterwards, Bernstein called his music "ghetto music." And so Alan was traumatized by that and left Tanglewood, and then destroyed thousands of his pieces. It just so happens that there's a couple of pieces that we'll play during the concert that actually survived that destruction of his works. Alan's music is progressively going through spiritual and mystical-type music, and that's kind of the impact it has on people.

Kostraba: How did his music change after that? He destroyed things, but then he kind of had a new vision for his music, did he not?

Holst: After that, yes. He had a friend that convinced him to go back to his roots and start using Armenian melodies. At that particular time, he was the organist at St. James, Watertown, so he had access to a lot of different Armenian performers. And so in the 1940s, a good portion of it was all his Armenian phase. He then, in the late '50s, went off to India, Korea, Japan, and studied the actual cultures there.

Kostraba: So he studied those cultures and then kind of infused that into the music, so it's not Armenian-specific; it's more general, but it's still mystical.

Holst: Correct.

Kostraba: Let's talk about the chamber music that's on this concert, Levon. Particularly, let's talk about the String Quartet No. 6 "Adana" from 1948.

Zarasian: Yes. I think he writes really well for the violin. It's in two movements: a slow movement, Adagio, and then a fast movement. It sounds very Armenian. I think Adana is where his parents are from?

Holst: His father.

Zarasian: His father was from Adana, so that's why it's called Adana. It sounds very much like the Armenian Mass, at least the first part. As also Varak for violin and piano sounds like that, too. It's a fast and a slow section. It's like a sacred part and a secular part. The first part is very much like the Armenian Mass—the augmented seconds and kind of slowing down. And then the fast part is just like a festive part. It's more like a dance and celebration. Varak is a mountain in Armenia and also it's the festival of the Holy Crucifix. So that's how it started. It starts slow, and then it goes to the to the fast part.

Kostraba: And you're also playing one other piece on this, Oror?

Zarasian: The lullaby. It's a beautiful, haunting melody to that, muted violin, and then just a beautiful conversation between the violin and the piano. It's a haunting melody. There are many Orors, many lullabies, in Armenian music, and I think this one is one of the most underrated ones that we don't know about. I discovered it by just doing research on Hovhaness, and his music popped up — Oror — and I ordered it. At the time, I played it with my friend, late Peter Gharibian, and we loved it, and we performed it at St. Barnabas a few times.

Kostraba: And that's one of the early pieces. That's one of those that survived the purge of his music after that traumatic experience at Tanglewood.

Holst: Yeah, that's correct. He composed it in 1922 at age 11, revised it when he was 15. Alan stated in an interview that it had an Armenian title, but it was Eastern melody to it. What was really odd is that an 11-year-old would be able to understand the Eastern melodies.

Kostraba: That puts him in Mozart and Mendelssohn territory for young, precocious composers. Let's bring Larry Loeber into the conversation now. He's playing a lot of the piano music that's on this program, accompanying Levon on a couple of violin pieces, and playing organ on The Prayer of Saint Gregory.

Loeber: I'm very much looking forward to this concert because it gives me the opportunity to collaborate with a lot of my friends from the Symphony, to do a wide variety of things, and I get to play the organ, which I seldom do. Also, I'm very, very happy that we have Hovhaness's piano. It's a beautiful Yamaha grand. It has beautiful tone, and very responsive.

Kostraba: That's remarkable to play on the composer's piano that he presumably wrote this music on.

Loeber: Yes, it's very exciting, yes.

Kostraba: What strikes you, Larry, about the music of Alan Hovhaness? Does it remind you of other composers? How would you describe it?

Loeber: I would describe it very much as his own thing. No, it does not remind me of anybody else's music. There's a definite difference between the style that he used for the Oror, for instance, for the Armenian music, and what I assume is his later music, such as the "Fred the Cat" Piano Sonata, which to me, I guess I would generally categorize it as new age. Just kind of whimsical and sort of more free-form. He has some interesting patterns that he likes to do in the music where the left hand will play five eighth notes in a 6/8 time, and then the pattern starts over again on the sixth eighth note, etc., so that it kind of wraps around from one measure to the next. And it adds a great fluidity to the music, I think, where instead of having six eighth notes repeated all the time, this kind of propels the music forward in a very interesting way. And I find, especially in his later music, it appeals to me very much because there's a lot of leeway for the performer to make decisions about timing and phrasing and touch, and all those things appeal to me very much.

Kostraba: This "Fred the Cat" Sonata, which I love that title, came from 1977, dedicated to Jurgen Gothe, who I used to listen to. He had a show called Disc Drive on CBC Radio 2. Just an incredible host. I learned a lot from him about how to connect with people, and he obviously connected with Alan enough that he dedicated this piece to him.

Holst: So at that time in 1977, my mother and Alan lived in a duplex very near Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle. And right next door was kind of a truck driver cafe, and from their back sliding glass door, you could see kind of an alley, and then behind it, Mount Rainier. What I speculate that was based on was Alan knew all the cats in the neighborhood and would point them out whenever he saw them. I think Fred the Cat may have been just a stray cat in the neighborhood that they just randomly called Fred. I think some of the parts there, like Give a Cat a Twig and He Takes a Tree, and Purr Dance, Fred the Cat and Mountain, and then Fred Flies to Heaven — I think eventually Fred went missing. He had never mentioned a cat that he had named Fred, so that's kind of just my speculation from that time frame.

Kostraba: That's fantastic. Bill, Levon, Larry, thank you so much for your time.

Bill Holst / Levon Zarasian / Loeber: Thank you.

Kostraba: Bill Holst, violinist Levon Zarasian, and pianist Larry Loeber will be part of the concert "Armenian-American Songs and Stories." It's an evening honoring the life and music of Alan Hovhaness, Saturday evening, September 19th, beginning at 7 at St. Apkar Armenian Apostolic Church in Scottsdale. Ticket information is available at facebook.com/stapkar. For the KBACH Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba.