(+++) HO-HO-HO TO GO

I Think I Saw Santa Claus. By Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Srimalie Bassani. Silver Dolphin Books. $10.99. 

     A cute idea significantly marred by inept versifying, Adam Wallace’s I Think I Saw Santa Claus will be a lot more fun for young children just learning to read than for adults trying to read to them and being forced to stumble over subpar attempts to write in rhyme. Some of those attempts result in forced language, as in “I’m so excited” being paired with “the lights are all lighted” rather than “lit.” But most of the time, the issue is simply one of Wallace being unable to create lines that scan, or unwilling to take the time to do so: “People are singing. Presents are under the tree. / There are so many magical things I can see!” One easy change for the first of those lines: “People are singing. We’ve gifts by the tree.” Almost every page is poetically off-putting: “I race ’round the corner. It was him! I know! / But all I can see are footprints in snow.” That’s an unusually simple fix: just add the word “some” before “footprints” and the verse works. 

     Thankfully, the unfortunate laziness of the writing does not fully diminish the charm of the story, which takes place two days before Christmas and involves a little girl becoming convinced that she just saw Santa walk past her house – which shouldn’t happen, because he needs to be at the North Pole putting the finishing touches on everything for the holiday. The unnamed girl narrator rushes to tell three of her friends about the sighting, and Wallace expects kids to be thoroughly in tune with pop-culture slang, because he has her exclaim excitedly, “Oh my lanta” – which adults are required to understand as a reference to a phrase form the TV show Full House, and if they (or, for that matter, kids) don’t know or watch that program, that’s just too bad. 

     Anyway, the four children – who have interchangeable personalities but, thanks to Srimalie Bassani’s pleasant illustrations, different appearances – spend several pages trying to discover whether Santa really is in town: “We examine the footprints as close as we can,” and yes, that should be “closely.” After a while, the kids locate Santa doing some ice fishing, and try to find out what is going on: “‘What are you doing here?’ Maddie asks the big guy. / ‘Is Christmas still on? Are you still gonna fly?’” (Yet again, the lines do not scan. Simple fix: “‘Why are you here?’ Maddie asks the big guy.”) 

     Santa does not really offer much of an explanation: he’s “just testing to make sure that everything’s right,” seeking out cookies, measuring chimneys, and so on. But why he’s in this town is an unanswered question – one that even the youngest readers are likely to ask when encountering this book, so adults should be prepared to come up with a reasonable or at least true-to-fairy-tales answer. 

     The real high point of I Think I Saw Santa Claus turns out to appear only after the kids locate and talk to Santa and after he shows them his newly dry-cleaned suit and gets back the keys to his newly serviced sleigh: the kids get to meet his reindeer (“I can make them appear!”) and get an actual ride in his sleigh as he takes it for a test run before heading back to the North Pole to load all the toys and prepare to take off for his yearly distribution of delights. Like the rest of I Think I Saw Santa Claus, this scene is just a touch offbeat and just a touch unusual: the book is fine for very young children as one entry among the inevitable flood of seasonal cutenesses. The illustrations, pleasant but undistinguished, work well with the tale, and the underlying mild amusement will keep very young readers engaged, if not necessarily enthralled, by the goings-on. I Think I Saw Santa Claus would have worked much better as prose, but it’s really not bad at all in the form in which it was actually created. It could have been verse.

(++++) TOPICS AND TALE-TELLING

Harriet Steinke: Strange Lights; Mark Engebretson: Sonata for Soprano Saxophone and Piano; Dorothy Chang: New Stories. Susan Fancher, saxophones; Ināra Zandmane, piano. Neuma Records. $15. 

Richard Festinger: String Quartets Nos. 2, 4 and 5. Verona Quartet; Telegraph Quartet; Jasper String Quartet. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     Stories inspire music – which, in its turn, tells stories. A frequent question is how literally this back-and-forth works outside the realms of song, opera and ballet: to what extent are audiences expected to imbibe verbiage directly and clearly from musical notes? Contemporary composers seem especially attuned (so to speak) to the notion of requiring listeners to know the inspiration underlying music and only then to listen – making it difficult for audiences not familiar with the foundational material to respond “appropriately” to performances. But whether it is in fact “appropriate” to expect listeners to pre-study the motivation and purpose of music is as open a question now as it was when Liszt created his 13 symphonic poems – most of which, however, drew on stories and literary works with which his audiences would have been familiar, not the much more obscure ones that inspire many composers now. And even though today’s audiences are likely not familiar with Liszt’s inspirations, his works resonate with those who hear them simply because the music itself is so effective as music. Nowadays, it is modern composers who seem focused on music that can be enjoyed for its own sake as well as for its underlying illustrative purpose who communicate most effectively. Dorothy Chang (born 1970), for example, does so in New Stories (2013) for alto saxophone and piano. The four movements’ titles are generic enough to guide audiences in listening without requiring them to know the specific Chinese folk-song roots that, among other things, inspired the music. The titles are floating worlds (no capital letters), A Tall Tale Told, Reflection, and Folksong, and the aural connections between the titular elements and the music are comprehensible and enjoyable without greater specificity. The jaunty second movement, for example, has a stop-and-go pace and is filled with irregular rhythms that Susan Fancher and Ināra Zandmane handle adeptly, carrying the audience along skillfully and without the requirement of knowing which specific “tall tale,” if any, is being illustrated. The other works on this Neuma Records CD are equally well played if not quite as immediately appealing. Strange Lights (2019) by Harriet Steinke (born 1994), also for alto saxophone and piano, is in two movements marked, in a traditional way, for interpretation purposes rather than audience guidance: Freely and With movement – Slow, relaxed. Fancher and Zandmane, who play with a very strong sense of unity and interconnection, certainly pay attention to the designations, and what is especially impressive here is Fancher’s exploration of the timbral expressiveness of the saxophone: whatever “lights” may be referenced in Steinke’s title are not as important for audience connection as are the flow of the saxophone lines and their interplay with the keyboard. Somewhat less appealing than the Chang and Steinke works is Sonata for Soprano Saxophone and Piano (2024) by Mark Engebretson (born 1964). Although written for Fancher and played by her as expressively as anyone could wish, this work falls into the trap of overly elevated audience expectations in its attempt to reflect and reflect on three poems by Brian Lampkin: Wind in Pocket, The Wind, and The Directions. The third movement’s title is the same as the poem’s, but the first two movements’ differ, being called In the Pocket and I look out on the day. What the differentiation reflects in the composer’s thinking may not be clear, but the issue here is the expectation of audience familiarity with some scarcely-well-known poetry for the music to have its intended impact. The bursts of speed, sense of anxiety, openness of sound, and eventual serious and rather dour conclusion do come through clearly, but the work is insistently referential to material that potential listeners are simply not likely to know. Whether or not they choose to study Lampkin so they can better appreciate Engebretson is, of course, a matter of personal choice, but it is because the Chang and Steinke works do not expect such pre-reading as a matter of course that they come through as music to better effect. 

     The more intricately a composer works nonmusical inspirational material into a piece of music, the greater the need for audiences to understand where the music comes from and what it is supposed to put on display – and the less effective the music as music tends to be. A New Focus Recordings release featuring three string quartets by Richard Festinger (born 1948) is a case in point. The longest and most elaborate of the three works, No. 4 – almost as lengthy as the other two quartets put together – is called “Icarus in Flight,” although it has nothing apparent to do with Icarus or flying. The Telegraph Quartet, which gave the 2018 work its world première performance, plays it with strength and dedication, but the piece goes on and on and on without any real sense of where it is going musically or any particular feeling of arrival when it gets there (eventually, after nearly half an hour, it simply stops). Its effectiveness, or lack thereof, ties directly to its status as a “cause” piece, with the “cause” elements even more pervasive than usual in such works: data on the Earth’s climate underpin everything, with 200 years of such data being used to determine everything from pitch range to string techniques to melody and rhythm. The intellectual cleverness of the design, and the skill with which Festinger fulfilled his commission (from a group called “ClimateMusic Project”), do not obscure the reality that heard simply as a string quartet, the piece is lacking emotionally, structurally and in terms of engagement. It can certainly be admired for what it is, but what it is not is music that will capture an audience through its sound and emotive nature – which, one would think, would be the objective of the commissioning organization if it were trying to attract converts to its cause instead of apparently attempting to preach to the proverbial choir. Festinger’s shorter and earlier String Quartet No. 2 (2005) comes across to better effect, although the relationship between the music and its title, “From the Beginning,” is less than obvious. This work, written in two connected movements, clearly shows Festinger’s abilities at string-quartet writing, and is moderately effective at creating a sense of motion and destination: it begins with a sense of spare and uneasy quiet and eventually works its way toward liveliness, if not quite exhilaration. The Verona Quartet does a fine job both with the broad spectrum of the work and with its nuances, and if the themes and their working-out are not especially memorable, the piece does underline Festinger’s skill in chamber-music composition. So does String Quartet No. 5 (2021), which proves to be the most attractive work on this (+++) release. The Jasper String Quartet goes after this piece’s material with real commitment and enthusiasm, and there is quite a bit to be enthusiastic about: a recurring first-movement theme that provides a sense of structure as well as scale, a second movement that actually takes the time and space to breathe with something approaching lyricism, and a concluding movement that is both upbeat and highly virtuosic – giving the performers plenty of chances to show their skill in ensemble playing. The three movements proceed without pause, so the overall effect is of an arc of experience that is not tied to any specific program or set of requirements or impositions on the audience: indeed, this is the only work here that has no title. The story this quartet tells is thus an entirely personal one upon which all listeners can decide for themselves. Festinger surely had his own reasons for writing the piece this way, but those who hear it need not know those reasons in order to absorb and experience the quartet’s effects and appreciate them on their own purely auditory terms.

(+++) SINGLY EXPRESSIVE

Liszt: Marches for Piano. Christopher Williams, piano. Naxos. $19.99. 

Music for Solo Guitar by Chopin, Agustin Pío Barrios Mangoré, Sérgio Assad, John Field, and Johann Kaspar Mertz. Laura Lootens, guitar. Naïve. $16.99. 

James Díaz: Music for Solo Cello. John Popham, cello. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     Some instruments lend themselves to solo performances and are often heard on that basis – the piano and guitar being two examples. Frequently deemed an orchestra in miniature since reaching an approximation of its modern form in the middle of the 19^th  century, the piano was exploited – if “exploited” is the right term – to an extent never reached before or, arguably, since, by Franz Liszt and the other great virtuoso player/composers of his time. Liszt remains preeminent among them by reputation even today, not only because of the scope and complexity of his piano music but also because he created music within a philosophy of expressiveness that he himself developed by significantly extending the thinking of others. Liszt was a consummate showman, yes, but he was not just a showman, and in that way set himself apart from virtually all the highly skilled performers who, like him, chose the solo piano to communicate with audiences. Liszt’s piano output is so vast that Naxos, which set out to record his complete piano music more than a quarter of a century ago, is still not done with it: a new CD of marches is the 70^th release in the long-running sequence. Inevitably in so extended a project, some items will be more worthwhile than others; and with someone who wrote as much music as Liszt did, some pieces will be far more effective and some less so. The marches heard here fall on the “less so” side of the spectrum despite the strength and firmness with which Christopher Williams plays them. There are 14 in all, some of them occasional pieces and some written in specific formats or orientations. Because Liszt was an inveterate rearranger and updater of his works, they come from many times in his life. And because he sometimes re-created a piece years after first writing it, some are designated as different versions of the same music. As if that were not confusing enough – and it is confusing – the arrangement of the works on the CD is completely incoherent, increasing the feeling of hodgepodge instead of making any attempt to bring order to an admittedly disorderly state of affairs. Thus, a substantial march from 1849/1857/1872 – that is, the third of three versions of a “second version” of that specific piece – is followed by a short piece written in 1827 (when Liszt was 16 years old), then a medium-length 1842/1876 work (also a “second version”), and then a 56-second fragment from 1844, and so on. There is no rhyme or reason to the order of works on the disc; the fact that it opens and closes with marches relating to Goethe is about the only attempt at a modicum of coherence. What is present in the mishmash is a sense of Liszt’s dedication to producing everything from patriotic parade-ground-style marches to works with a distinctly Hungarian sound and focus, plus the occasional oddity: the latest piece of all here (1883) is intended as a tribute to Hans von Bülow, although unfortunately the music itself is rather bland. Williams does the best he can with all these works, from the foursquare to the expressive, and certainly listeners interested in some of the less-known nooks and crannies of Liszt’s piano music will find the disc instructive even if it is not, taken as a whole, particularly pleasurable. 

     The milder, expressive sound of the solo guitar is the whole point of a new Naïve CD featuring Laura Lootens: the instrument actually matters more here than the music Lootens performs. The whole point of this multifaceted recital is personal feeling – the disc bears the title “Shape of My Heart” – and the recording appears designed for audiences more interested in being carried away by fine guitar playing of generally warm and welcoming music than in exploring any sort of carefully arranged musical presentation. The whole CD has more the feeling of a pop-music artist’s focus than of a traditional classical-style production; indeed, the disc concludes with three pieces associated with, respectively, Édith Piaf, Jacques Brel, and Sting (the final track, which gives the release its overall title). Since the guitar sound and Lootens’ emotive performances are the main point here, there seems to be little concern for finding audiences that might focus on the specifics being performed. There is also no particular reason for the pieces being offered in the order in which they appear. The first five tracks are arrangements of works by Chopin: two waltzes, two preludes and a nocturne, four arranged by Jerzy Koenig (born 1956) and one by Tariq Harb (born 1981). The delicacy of the “Raindrop” prelude, Op. 28, No. 15, comes through particularly well on the guitar. The Chopin works are followed by three pieces by Paraguayan guitarist/composer Agustin Pío Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944): a mazurka and two nicely contrasted waltzes (D minor and G major). Then there are a 90-second Preludio Chopiniano by Brazilian guitarist/composer Sérgio Assad (born 1952) and a three-minute Notturno by John Field (1782-1837) that Assad arranged for guitar. After those, Lootens plays the one fairly substantial work on the disc: Élégie in A minor by Austrian guitarist/composer Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856). Reaching for heights that nothing else here seeks or attains, this piece is substantive and convincing as well as virtuosic, standing out from everything else on the CD through its treatment of the guitar as more than a vehicle for personal emotional expression. The three pop-music offerings are placed after the Mertz, returning the disc to its primary focus, but it is pleasant – and, in this context, somewhat surprising – to have been taken for a while to a realm of guitar music that Lootens otherwise leaves unexplored in her determination to make the disc as personal and personalized as possible. 

     The cello is heard much less often than the piano and guitar as a solo instrument, Bach’s six suites for cello notwithstanding. There are significant 20^th-century solo-cello works by Kodály and Ligeti, and 21^st-century pieces by Philip Glass, but by and large, cello solos are heard more often within larger musical canvases (from concertos to Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals) than in complete works of their own. However, Colombian composer James Díaz (born 1990) has recently created a number of solo-cello pieces, nine of which are played by John Popham on a New Focus Recordings release. Díaz is strongly committed to modernistic techniques, from extended performance practices to minimalism, so his cello music in some ways undercuts the instrument’s natural affinity for warmth and lyrical expressiveness. Aural texture matters a great deal here. Espacio absoluto opens the CD with discontinuity and fragmentation, while Espacio tiempo closes it with a typical minimalist aural world that sounds like clouds floating in space. Three brief pieces designated Interludio separate the somewhat longer works on the disc (although at 49 minutes the CD is scarcely of extended length). The first Interludio is somewhat propulsive and highly dissonant, the second is all about spiccato, and the third is focused on the cello’s lower register – although it appears to keep trying to break away from it. More-extended works make up the rest of the recording. Desiertos verdes creates a sense of space mostly through lengthy silences after fragments of sound. From Pink to Orange moves from the cello’s higher registers toward its lower ones, presumably reflecting the work’s title. Grand Oasis is another long-silences work, its intervallic note fragments sometimes slow, sometimes quick. And A Warm Place without Memory sounds as if it will become melodic but never quite does, leaving its decorative trills with nowhere in particular to go. There is no concerted attempt here to connect emotionally with an audience or to plumb the considerable expressive power of the cello: Díaz is more interested in forming soundscapes that sometimes exploit the instrument’s capabilities and sometimes deliberately work against its inherent warmth. Cellists interested in contemporary works that they may wish to explore will find more of interest here than will listeners for whom the cello is an emotive solo instrument with a sound pervaded by depth and warmth.

(++++) NEIGHBORLY NIBBLES

Lunch from Home / Comida de Casa. By Joshua David Stein. Art by Jing Li. With contributions from Niki Russ Federman, Ray Garcia, Preeti Mistry, and Mina Park. Translation by Ariela Rudy Zaltzman. Rise x Penguin Workshop. $18.99. 

     This book carries a lot of emotional freight: food as connection, recalled childhood experiences, multiculturalism, low-grade bullying, inclusiveness, the balance between fitting in and being oneself, family and ethnic traditions – all in a dual-language presentation that expands the reaching-out of the lessons while underlining them. That is a great deal to pack into 40 pages, eight of which are two-page wordless illustrations focusing on the everyday environments of the four diverse children on whom the book is centered. Originally published in 2022 and now available with side-by-side English and Spanish text, Lunch from Home / Comida de Casa retains a simplicity of presentation and forthright approach to learning about others’ culinary cultures that keeps the rather preachy underlying story enjoyable as well as instructive. 

     That story itself is at the service of its message and is therefore, understandably, thin. Kids eat lunch together at school, but four students – one per day – are shown having food that differs significantly from the sandwiches that most of their classmates bring from home. First a girl whose family is from India (a fact never stated directly) is shown bringing dhokla cake with spices; then a girl from Korea has gimbap – rice and vegetables rolled in seaweed; next, a Jewish girl is shown with a bagel layered with lox, cream cheese, capers and tomato; and then a Hispanic boy has a tortilla filled with a chopped-up hot dog plus scrambled egg and cheese. In each case, a classmate eating at the same table as a protagonist comments negatively on the differentness of the non-sandwich food, and in each case the child who brought it feels uncomfortable and tells his family just to pack a sandwich for the next day. The feeling of not fitting in is stronger, at first, than the desire to eat an enjoyable culturally determined meal. 

     Eventually all four “different” kids have sandwiches for lunch – and quickly realize that they do not enjoy them as much as their families’ usual fare. So they go back to bringing what they did before, and now when other kids comment on the non-sandwich foods, the girls and boy acknowledge what they have brought for lunch, explain a little about the food, and simply say that they enjoy it. And their classmates listen, absorb the lesson, and as the book says at the end, “Todos comieron juntos / And they ate their lunches together.” 

     Simplistic the presentation may be, but it gets the point across effectively and, thanks to a back-of-the-book biographical page about Niki Russ Federman, Ray Garcia, Preeti Mistry, and Mina Park, provides a real-world connection for the fictionalized (but not at all far from reality) story. Joshua David Stein is careful to minimize any sense of embarrassment so as to present the lesson of tolerance in as gentle a tone as possible. And Jing Li’s art is equally sensitive: she is at pains to portray the kids in the classroom with different skin tones and other elements of appearance, underlining the book’s overall message of tolerant acceptance of the “other” while also showing that exclusion (which is here very mild, but is still hurtful) can come from any peer, of any appearance. Adult involvement is noticeably absent throughout the story: except in those two-page wordless illustrations showing the kids’ out-of-school environment, grown-ups are not a factor at all here, leaving the kids to interact in their own way and ultimately solve their own problems by asserting their own sense of self and transforming the group dynamic in a small way. 

     Small ways, small steps, eventually lead to much bigger forms of acceptance on the life journey that the four adults whose experiences underlie this book have already undertaken – on which their four fictionalized counterparts are just embarking. That is the “meta” message here: school lunchtime involving the differentness of foods, leading to mild conflict and child-led understanding and reconciliation, provides a road map for resolving the much larger issues that kids will encounter over time as they grow and interact with many others, on many different levels. That is an even heavier weight for this slight story to bear, but it is a worthy one for it to communicate – doubly so when the tale and its lessons are simultaneously presented in two languages.