Symphony No. 2, "Mysterious Mountain", Op. 132

The symphony unfolds in three connected movements played without pause, so listeners should not expect applause breaks between them.

The first movement opens quietly with sustained strings and a solemn, chant-like melody that feels almost suspended in time, gradually joined by winds and brass in slow-moving harmony. There is no dramatic conflict here, just a steady expansion of sound, like light spreading across a landscape.

The second movement is faster and more contrapuntal, built from fugue-like entries where instruments chase each other's lines. It has a driving, almost dance-like energy that contrasts with the stillness around it, and it builds to a brassy, resonant climax before subsiding.

The third movement returns to the hushed atmosphere of the opening, bringing back that same chant-like theme, now colored differently by the orchestra. Listen for the horn calls and the way the strings seem to hang in the air near the end, fading rather than concluding with a bang. The whole piece favors glowing chords and long melodic lines over fast development, giving it a meditative, almost devotional character that many listeners find calming on first hearing.

Hovhaness composed "Mysterious Mountain" in 1955 on commission from Leopold Stokowski, who conducted the premiere with the Houston Symphony in 1955. The title reflects Hovhaness's lifelong fascination with mountains as symbols of spiritual solitude and grandeur, though he did not attach it to any specific peak. The work is sometimes counted as his Symphony No. 2, though he composed it before assigning symphony numbers to some earlier works, part of the confusion around his catalog since he was extraordinarily prolific and revised numbering over his career. It quickly became one of his most frequently performed works, championed by conductors including Stokowski, and it remains a staple of American orchestral programming, often used as an accessible introduction to his large output of symphonies and other orchestral pieces.