Rest Magazine

Aspen's Mysterious Mountain

These days acquiring the old-school, long-playing vinyl of Alan HOVHANESS’S sonic knockout “Mysterious Mountain” takes big-bucks – much like nabbing a Honus Wagner baseball card, a copy of Fantastic Four issue #55 or a golf jacket belonging to part-time Aspen resident Jack Nicklaus.

By Ken Friedenrich. Photography by Eric Stoner.

Dedicated audiophiles can now find the momentous symphony on CD, including the “Living Stereo” adaptation released by RCA with the venerable Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony.

To hear this symphony is to understand, as Hovhaness himself noted, “the mysterious feeling that one has in the mountains — not for any special mountain, but for the whole idea of mountains, a universal mountain… any mountain that one loves.” It’s also a good starting point when trying to comprehend why so many people have fallen in love with Aspen Mountain and the big little town that’s grown up in its shadow.

Janice Szabo of the Aspen Music Festival checked performance history and, sure enough, “Mysterious Mountain” has been played in Aspen several times, including a performance in 1971 – an entire generation before I first trekked to these captivating slopes. Hovhaness’s music made me spiritually ready to savor the sensuous glories of Aspen (I admit I have friends who can’t help piping in full-throttle to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High, inspired, of course, by the late Aspenite’s heady surroundings).

So, clearly, I’m not alone in having a thing for these mountains. And, who wouldn’t? Aspen makes you love mountains the way cold streams make you love fly-fishing or a lush symphony leaves you as breathless as your first love.

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