On the other hand, Anthony Burton of BBC Music Magazine was more critical of the symphony, writing of it and other late-period Hovhaness works, remarking:When it was new in 1955, Hovhaness's Second Symphony, Mysterious Mountain, must have seemed remarkably fresh in its simplicity and serenity. But the prolific Armenian-American composer was to draw from this well many times, and his characteristic modal hymns, irregular metres, oriental-sounding melodies, static ostinatos and rough-hewn fugues occur equally in the last but one of his 67 symphonies, Hymn to Glacier Peak, and, with the addition of some filmic depiction of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, in No. 50.