Philharmonia Orchestra of London, David Amos - Alan Hovhaness: And God Created Great Whales (1989)

Unlike the recordings featured on many other discs in the series this one is not composer-conducted. It also happens to have the longest playing time. Amos is pictured in conducting action on the back cover insert. The notes are on a three way fold.
We start with one of Hovhaness's most celebrated works: And God Created Great Whales (1970). This mixes the taped sounds of the 'song' of various species of whale (there is a scholarly introduction from Peter Christ indicating the source of the various recordings and the species of whales) with a mystical score calling up the wash and depth of an imagined Eastern sea. There are some parallels here with the taped birdsong in Einojuhani Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus. This is a powerful amalgam and made extremely moving in the counterpoint between the whale song and Hovhaness's inspired music.
The orchestral Concerto No. 8 of 1953 is more even, a thoroughly entertaining (if undemanding) five-movement suite, inspired, in part, by a flight over Greenland. The string writing in Alleluia and Fugue (1942) betrays the early influences of Vaughan Williams as well as Roy Harris's best wide spaces and open-air manner. Elibris and Anahid (both 1944), by contrast, derive from Hovhaness's mid-Asian heritage, and make telling use of a solo flute, here beautifully played by Christine Messiter.