(++++) BACK AND FORTH, FORTH AND BACK

Jia Has a Dog Problem. By Stephanie Ellen Sy. Illustrated by Isabella Kung. Kokila. $18.99. 

     The title here tells only half the story, the second half being “Charlie Has a Kid Problem.” The total tale is Stephanie Ellen Sy’s clever balancing act about the unexplainable but nevertheless very real fear that a little girl has of dogs – and the equally unexplainable but nevertheless very real fear that a dog has of children. It is the way the two fears are shown in parallel, and the unexpected way they are resolved at the same time, that gives this book its charm – of which it has a lot. 

     The underlying premise here is that “unjustifiable” fears are every bit as real as ones rooted in reality. Helpful adults specifically ask Jia – and helpful dog friends specifically ask Charlie – whether anything has actually happened that would justify their fears. The answer in both cases is no; but the fears remain and are no less real for being irrational. 

     The dual protagonists have their own ways of trying to avoid what scares them. Before going outdoors, Jia wears kid-designed armor: oven mitts, leg guards, elbow pads, a helmet and goggles, plus a baby bib “to protect her favorite dress from dribbly drool.” The getup is imaginatively shown in Isabella Kung’s illustrations, which at the same time show Jia’s imagination working overtime as she thinks about how dogs just might “EAT HER WHOLE” if she is not suitably protected. As for Charlie, when his human, Lucy, says it is time to go out, he figures out multiple ways to be as uncooperative as possible until he eventually ends up on his belly doing passive resistance and she has to drag him out the door. 

     Inevitably, Jia and Charlie, who live in the same apartment building, are going to meet, and they do, when Charlie and Lucy are in an elevator that stops on the floor where Jia is waiting, causing her to run away as the elevator door opens and shout “TAKING THE STAIRS!!” What follows is Kung’s most-amusing illustration, in which Jia and Charlie both reimagine the unexpected encounter and think of the terrible things that could have happened, from the pup growing horns and charging to the child running wild and spinning the little dog around. 

     Jia and Charlie meet again, fearfully, outside the building, when something surprising happens: Charlie thinks Jia’s hands smell from cookies and Jia notices that Charlie’s fur looks soft. A bit later, momentarily left to look at each other, the two have the same fear reactions – initially to each other and then, suddenly, to a fast-arriving thunderstorm that quickly drenches them both and forces them to seek shelter together, since the only dry place nearby is a sidewalk bench under which they both crawl. The immediacy of the storm threat forces the two together, literally: as the downpour continues, “they inch closer and closer” until they are side by side awaiting the reemergence of the sun. And when the storm ends – the two-page wordless drawing of Jia and Charlie with a big bright rainbow in the background is the book’s most inevitable illustration – the girl and the pup have started to develop a bond that quickly strengthens to such a point that Jia accepts Charlie’s leash from Lucy and everyone walks home together, even getting into the elevator as a group despite encountering a different dog and a boy there. Clearly this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship on which both protagonists will build in the future – and clearly, for young children and the adults who will enjoy reading Jia Has a Dog Problem with them, this is a roadmap for confronting and coping with kids’ real-world fears. 

     Sy’s story has some narrative holes in it, notably the fact that Lucy, who has left Charlie tied to a fire hydrant while she goes into a store, does not come out to look for him when the storm starts and in fact does not show up at all until the cloudburst ends. Kids are likely to worry about that if they notice it – and many will. Also, Jia’s parents are nowhere to be found in the story – the people concerned about her fears are her friends and adult neighbors. Still, the absence of family is a way of showing just how alone Jia feels when trying to cope with an inexplicable but very real fear that is based not in reality but in imagination. When imagination and reality eventually meet, the pleasantly upbeat outcome is one that, while not guaranteed in real life, certainly makes Jia’s world – and Charlie’s – richer and more enjoyable, not to mention tastier and softer.

(++++) STILL A STANDOUT

Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies. Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. Berlin Classics. $29.99 (5 CDs). 

     Herbert Blomstedt’s long and storied career – he was born in 1927 – includes, scarcely surprisingly, a long and storied relationship with the symphonies of Beethoven, both in concert and in recorded form. It can be easy to forget, from an extramusical and geopolitical perspective, just how far out of the ordinary the first cycle he recorded was. These analog recordings were made in 1975-1980, when Blomstedt  was chief conductor of Staatskapelle Dresden – a position he continued to hold until 1985. They represented a rare and risky collaboration between an American-born Swedish conductor and a preeminent East German orchestra, at a time when tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc were high and cultural exchange was a comparative rarity – with Blomstedt’s full commitment behind the Iron Curtain even rarer (and somewhat controversial). 

     This Beethoven cycle was originally released on East Germany’s state-owned ETERNA label and subsequently, as the world changed in many ways (and failed to change in many others), reappeared on Brilliant Classics; and now here it is again, on Berlin Classics, having been suitably remastered during the 2019-2020 time period. It brings its history with it, and Blomstedt’s – but given the reality of Blomstedt’s significant rethinking of Beethoven’s symphonies for his much later (2017) cycle with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, released to celebrate the conductor’s 90^th birthday, it is fair to ask what place there is for a recording made in a very different time, under very different circumstances. 

     The answer lies where it should: in the music. Recorded in Dresden’s Lukaskirche, the symphonies in these performances sound warm and resonant and at the same time intimate. The performances have a relaxed quality about them, not in the sense of being slow-paced but in terms of being presented by musicians who have lived with the music for so long and so closely that there is no sense whatsoever of any strain in bringing forth its shape and emotional communication. Indeed, excellent emotional balance – as well as excellent sectional balance – is a hallmark of this set, especially in symphonies that it can be all too easy to present in over-the-top versions: the Fifth, in particular, opens with somewhat less drive and drama than usual and therefore builds all the more effectively to a very powerful finale. 

     There is grandeur aplenty here. Despite the irritating omission of the repeat of the first movement’s exposition (a common, unfortunate practice in performances in the 1970s), this “Eroica” sounds genuinely heroic, with a finale that comes across as a genuine capstone rather than the slight letdown it sometimes turns into in lesser readings. The Ninth is exceptionally well sung by Helena Doese, Marga Schiml, Peter Schreier, Theo Adam, Chor der Staatsoper Dresden and Rundfunkchor Leipzig – and the string sound is exceptional as well, notably in a buoyant Scherzo that fits the scale of the symphony perfectly (as is not always the case with this movement). The winds are excellent, too, not only in the Ninth but also in the rest of the symphonies – and the brass, especially when given a chance to dominate the conversation as in the Seventh, is absolutely outstanding. Indeed, the Seventh is a highlight in this set: although the first movement is overly broad, the others are exceptionally well-paced and expressive, with considerable emotional heft in the Allegretto and utter joyousness in the finale. 

     The less-dramatic symphonies fare as well in their ways as the more-dramatic ones do in theirs. The First here sounds carefully poised between the Classical era and the proto-Romantic, although the orchestra’s warm sound looks more toward the future than the past. The Second is strongly rhythmic and has enough intensity to show its kinship with the “Eroica,” which is not always apparent. The Fourth is simply gorgeous: lyrical, beautifully paced, expansive in feeling, with well-chosen tempos that enhance its flow and allow listeners to revel in its many lovely turns of phrase. The Sixth sounds suitably rustic: Blomstedt, through the strings and winds, brings forth its many touches of the countryside, from birdsong to dance to the post-storm celebratory thanksgiving. And the Eighth is in no way minimized because of its scale, as it is in some Beethoven cycles: it comes across here as a more relaxed, less intense exploration of many of the rhythmic nuances and subtleties that are more brightly illuminated in the Seventh – an intriguing and wholly successful approach. 

     Despite all its excellences, this set will not be to everyone’s taste. The playing and pacing are somewhat “old school,” which is to say they predate both the excellences and the rigidities of the historical-performance era, including the more-recent preoccupation with examining the composer’s own time period to decide on orchestral size, tempos and balance. The warmth throughout of Blomstedt’s Dresden performances, and their comparatively slow pacing in some places, have an old-fashioned feeling about them. The conductor’s own 2017 cycle is generally much quicker (and closer to Beethoven’s own tempo indications), and the orchestral balance is different – not better or worse but more in line with more-recent notions of how Beethoven “should” sound. The Dresden readings are not over-Romanticized, but they are Romanticized to a certain extent, with a greater emphasis on emotional communication than on precision of adherence to a predetermined set of historically established norms. They are essentially expressions of a worldview determined not only by Blomstedt’s musicality and high level of comfort with the music but also by the time period and sociopolitical circumstances in which they were performed and recorded. But great performances transcend their external trappings, and like other top-notch Beethoven conductors who have visited and revisited the symphonies – Herbert von Karajan comes immediately to mind in this context – Blomstedt produced readings in his Dresden recordings that were of their time and place but not limited by them. His later set sees Beethoven from a different place and a different angle, but this earlier one remains fully worthy and fully relevant in its own right, is frequently revelatory, and is always a joy to hear and a moving experience in which to engage.

(++++) KEYBOARD INSPIRATIONS

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Complete Piano Music, Volume 8—1^er Nocturne; 1^er Recueil d’Impromptus; 2^e et 3^e Nocturnes; 3 Airs à cinq temps et 1 à sept temps, 2^e Recueil d’Impromptus; Le Grillon, 4^e nocturne; Impromptu; Réconciliation; Zorcico, danse ibérienne (à 5 temps); Une fusée, introduction et impromptu. Mark Viner, piano. Piano Classics. $19.99. 

Prayers for a Feverish Planet: New Music about Climate Change, Vol. 1. Ann DuHamel, piano. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     The unique complexities of the piano music of Alkan are everywhere apparent. The eighth volume of a projected 18-or-so-volume series of Alkan’s complete piano works, powered by the utter dedication and utterly amazing pianism of Mark Viner, includes music with typical Alkan indications of performance expectations that are simply not found in other composers’ pieces: infiammatamente, rasserenato, sottilisismamente and many more. The works themselves often feature curious titles whose relationship to their content is not always obvious. And some pieces are titled so elaborately that their existence essentially as miniatures seems overweighted by the words used to describe them: the full label of Rèconciliation is Rèconciliation, petit caprice mi-parti en forme de zorcico ou air de danse basque à cinque temps. Viner wades through all these curiosities with tremendous understanding that is both musical and verbal: he writes these Piano Classics volumes’ program notes himself and personally translates all the quotations he includes from non-English-language sources. Each of the Viner discs is a treat to experience – and all the enjoyment traces back to the immensely interesting, packed-with-unique-elements nature of the music itself. Alkan’s creative spark seems to have been almost entirely internal: perhaps a commission here and there, but by and large the need to express himself – for a while as a virtuoso composer/pianist but otherwise, during his multi-decade life as a recluse, simply because music was his form of saying something that the world at large might or might not ever hear. Viner is expert at exploring the ins and outs of Alkan’s creativity, which in this latest release is in a kind of “salon-plus” mode, including works that in other composers’ hands could be light and limited but in Alkan’s (and therefore in Viner’s) are of much greater interest and of exceptional value. It is often bits of these works, more than the works in their entirety, that make listeners sit up and take notice. For example, La foi, the fourth and last of the 1^er Recueil d’Impromptus, is straightforwardly devout at first (its title means “Faith”), but its middle section is dark, spooky and genuinely strange. And Une fusée (“A Rocket” or “A Burst”) starts with well-made but largely straightforward material that meanders through several keys and then suddenly leaps into a hyper-fast mode that seems impossible to sustain – with Viner sustaining it, of course. An occasional work here, though charming, is on the obvious side: Le Grillon (“The Cricket”) features upper-register chirping sounds that are less interesting than a section marked quasi-tremante (“as if trembling”). Some pieces have forward-looking elements that are common in Alkan’s music (a couple of pieces here anticipate Satie); others explore the piano’s evocative capabilities, such as several designated as zorcicos (Basque dances featuring five-beat rhythms) – and the last work that Alkan wrote in the genre, called Zorcico, danse ibèrienne (à 5 temps), was not rediscovered until 2012 and has never been recorded before. There is a sense of a time tunnel and a “rabbit hole” experience when it comes to Alkan’s music, which Viner performs with unwavering panache and complete dedication. This composer and this pianist form a truly remarkable team. 

     Teamwork of a very different kind underlies a project created by pianist Ann DuHamel. This is the piano as “cause instrument” rather than a keyboard for making and performing music for its own sake. DuHamel has commissioned a series of works relating, at least in their creators’ minds, to the issue of climate change, and has received pieces from 170 composers in 35 countries. A New Focus Recordings release called Prayers for a Feverish Planet: New Music about Climate Change, Vol. 1, is the start of a planned CD series that will showcase these creations for the purpose of, presumably, demonstrating the composers’ concern about climate change and their desire somehow to use music to – what? Highlight it? Fight it? Create greater awareness of it? Evoke aspects of it? This is not music designed to entertain but to, perhaps, inspire or motivate or otherwise have some sort of nonmusical effect; but it is hard to see just what DuHamel’s and the composers’ expectations are. Like other cause-driven music, the eight works in this first volume have a relationship to their underlying inspiration only insofar as the composers and DuHamel say they do – advocacy tends to translate poorly into music, and effective music tends to transcend whatever advocacy may have inspired it. So this (+++) CD, which is certainly not lacking in sincerity and which showcases DuHamel as pianist as well as commissioning spirit, will be primarily of interest to audiences that understand its reason for being and that share the angles and attitudes evinced by the composers herein. The disc opens with Erick Tapia’s Solipsismo, a meandering mixture of chordal and linear material. Next is Karen Lemon’s Forgive Them Not, For They Know What They Do, whose pleasantly almost-peppy first section gives way to slower and eventually more-serious material. Laura Schwendinger’s Air (from Magic Carpet Music) uses individual well-separated notes to create a feeling of space and distance. Juhi Bansal’s Land of Waking Dreams starts with flourishes and uses prepared-piano elements to create a heightened sense of sustained sonority. Ian Dicke’s White Parasol contrasts the piano’s upper and lower registers and, in addition, its individual-note and chordal elements. Donald Blinkhorn’s avant-garde-titled frostbYte: chalk outline includes recorded nature sounds and numerous electronic modifications of those sounds and of the piano itself. Plain Song by Judith Shatin, the longest work on the CD, is also largely electronic and is verbal as well: poet Charles Wright reads four sometimes modified, sometimes repeated examples of his work (“the small crack where the dead come out and go back in,” “live your life as if you are already dead,” and so forth), while occasional piano notes (including some played from inside the instrument) provide contrast and supplementation. Then the disc’s shortest work closes it: Gunter Gaupp’s Those Who Watch, an electroacoustic layering of media voices with flowing piano accompaniment that both underlines and interferes with the increasingly incomprehensible verbal commentary. The connection of the various pieces with the reason for their being is far from obvious in most cases and is over-obvious in a few; pamphleteering makes for poor musical connections (except for the already-connected cognoscenti), but lack of clear attachment to the cause requires the music to stand on its own as music, which is not the intent of this project. The composers’ undoubted sincerity parallels that of DuHamel herself, but whether audiences will find themselves more energized or more enlightened after hearing this CD than they were before sitting through it is at best an uncertain proposition. And what listeners will then actually do after listening that they would not have done beforehand – for that matter, what DuHamel wants or expects them to do – is even less clear.

(++++) STRINGS, SUMPTUOUS AND POINTED

Elsa Barraine: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Song-Koï—Le Fleuve rouge; Les Tziganes. Orchestre National de France conducted by Cristian Mǎcelaru. Warner Classics. $17.75. 

Eric Chasalow: Music for Strings. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     Virtually unknown today, Elsa Barraine (1910-1999) was something of a phenomenon in the early-to-mid-20^th century: a student at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine, winner of top prizes there for harmony (1925) and counterpoint and fugue (1927), and winner of the Grand Prix de Rome composition prize (1929). It would be facile, if currently fashionable, to charge the neglect of her music to her gender, and there is undoubtedly some truth to that assertion. After all, she has a distinctive compositional voice firmly grounded in tonality but using dissonance regularly and unhesitatingly, and her juxtapositions of rhythmic angularity with lyrical warmth are impressive and somewhat reminiscent of the work of Paul Dukas, with whom she studied. But there may well be non-gender-related reasons that her works are not often heard. On the basis of a very well-played new Warner Classics recording of Barraine’s two symphonies and two shorter works, it seems possible that the neglect of her music is tied at least in part to her tendency to smooth the rough edges of her music’s sounds, especially its string sounds, during an era when dissonance had become more pronounced and insistent. Barraine also seems, at least on the basis of this recording, to produce more-effective work in shorter forms than in longer and more-elaborate ones. Her Symphony No. 1 (1931) is interestingly structured, with each of its three movements starting with a slow introduction before moving to a significantly brisker tempo. Taken as a whole, the first movement is strongly contrasted between its more-deliberate and faster material; the second features references to Beethoven’s 1795 song Adelaide in the brass; and the third, although containing dance elements, is rather sober, if not wholly humorless, in Cristian Mǎcelaru’s carefully modulated performance. Barraine’s Symphony No. 2 (1938) bears the title Voïna, Russian for “war,” and was created on the cusp of World War II – but although its three movements seem to move from overt conflict in the first to bereavement in the second (which is designated Marche funèbre) to some level of optimism in the third (and shortest), the overall impression is too subtle (and in Mǎcelaru’s reading too string-focused) for the piece to be an effective commentary on the incipient hostilities. Both the symphonies are very well-made: Barraine’s skill with orchestration is, indeed, their most notable characteristic. And it may be that some of the comparative communicative weaknesses of the symphonies come from Mǎcelaru’s interpretations, abetted by the very warm and smoothly flowing strings of Orchestre National de France. But at least as heard here, the symphonies are less than gripping emotionally and, all in all, less impressive than the shorter works that surround them on the CD. The first of those is a set of eight brief variations for orchestra called Song-Koï—Le Fleuve rouge, dating to 1945 and focusing on a river that runs from China’s Yunnan province to the sea near Hanoi, Vietnam. The work traces – again, as with the symphonies, subtly rather than with clarity – the river’s course, its variations bearing labels identifying specific portions of its length that are not communicated directly through the music itself. The word “red” in the title appears to reflect Barraine’s admiration for the Communists leading the struggle for Vietnam’s independence from China: Barraine was a strong advocate of left-wing causes and, at the time she wrote this work, had just survived her intense involvement in the French Resistance against the Nazis. Barraine’s river portrait, although it is more atmospheric than overtly pictorial, is notable, like her symphonies, for its careful instrumentation and close attention to the contrasting sounds of instrumental sections. The strongly rhythmic La ville de Son-Phong and Le retour des pavillons noirs are especially effective. Very engaging in a different way is the last work on this disc, Les Tziganes (1959), wherein the string writing is highly virtuosic and the gypsy flavor indicated by the title is, if never strongly delineated, communicated with care and subtlety. Indeed, “subtle” is an adjective that applies again and again to Barraine’s music, which may simply be a touch too careful and emotionally reserved to gain a solid foothold amid other, more-direct works of its time period. Still, it has a great deal to recommend it and is more than deserving of at least occasional revival, and hopefully the high quality of this beautifully played disc will bring it to new audiences. 

     Strings are used much more sparingly and acerbically in the chamber music by Eric Chasalow on a (+++) New Focus Recordings release. Although Chasalow’s lifetime overlaps significantly with Barraine’s, the two approach string writing from very different angles. Chasalow (born 1955) is avowedly seeking a hyper-modern sound, as is apparent even in the two longest works on the disc, both of which use a traditional instrumental complement: Second Quartet (played by the Lydian Quartet) and String Sextet (played by the same ensemble plus violist Sam Kelder and cellist Hannah Collins). Just how different from more-traditional classical models Chasalow wants to be is shown by the fact that the Second Quartet not only exists in the 15-minute version on this CD but also has an hour-long form designed for gallery performance. Fifteen minutes will be plenty for many hearers, though: the one-movement work has the usual avant-garde-style mixture of angularity, disjointedness, harmonics, strong volume contrasts, and other characteristics familiar from countless works from the same aesthetic. The extended quiet stasis midway through the piece eventually gives way to matters that chug along much more feverishly, at least for a time. In the three-movement String Sextet, Chasalow first takes a bit of Brahms and creates a distinctly non-Brahmsian, devoid-of-warmth sound from it, then proceeds to a second movement marked “beautifully imperfect” and a finale labeled “asymmetrical march,” appearing to enjoy the evocative verbiage as much as the associated sounds, which are thoroughly atonal and combinatorially unsurprising. The other works on the disc are shorter and somewhat more focused. The Wings That Bear the Night Away is for solo violin (Mari Kimura) and fixed media – yes, Chasalow employs electroacoustic methods from time to time, and here also shows his fondness for microtonality – and is based on the fatal flight of Icarus. Third Piano Trio: Rock Hill Variations (played by Clara Lyon on violin, Collins on cello, and Steven Beck on piano) is dedicated to Aaron Copland – not the Copland well-known for folkloristic and accessible works but the Copland whose more-caustic music is less frequently performed – and contrasts quickly darting material with somewhat longer (but not lyrical) lines. The Snow Man and Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock, based on Wallace Stevens poems, require cellist David Russell to recite and sing as well as play, all while engaging with electronics that envelop everything in a cloud of sound whose bearing upon the words is less than apparent. The CD concludes with To the Edge and Back, a flute-and-piano work here arranged by violinist Julia Glenn and played by her and pianist Beck. Somewhat less abstruse and more lighthearted than the other music on the CD, this piece plays the instruments nicely against each other and manages to make several comparison-and-contrast points without overstaying its welcome: running less than five minutes, it is the shortest work on the disc. Audiences predisposed to enjoy self-assertive avant-garde expressiveness showcasing strings and their interactions with other instruments and electronics will enjoy the Chasalow works here, although the pieces are not really very differentiated in any stylistic sense from those by other composers who employ analogous techniques for many of the same expressive purposes.