(++++) AGAIN AND YET AGAIN

The Best 392 Colleges, 2027. By Robert Franek, David Soto, Stephen Koch, Aaron Riccio, Laura Rose, and the staff of The Princeton Review. Princeton Review/Penguin Random House. $26.99. 

     Consistency seems an increasingly rare commodity these days, which makes it all the more valuable when it is present. That reality alone speaks to the importance of The Princeton Review’s almost-900-page annual guide to the “best” colleges. Whatever “best” means – the word itself is inconsistently applied. That, however, is a good thing where this guidebook is concerned, since the imprecision of the definition is precisely what families need when considering what colleges a soon-to-be-attendee should consider. Whatever your definition of “best” may be where college is concerned, you can use it to narrow down the available choices presented with so much data in this hefty volume. 

     Narrowing down is crucial. The first decision families need to make is whether a high-school graduate should continue into college at all. A few years ago, when this series was younger (it has now been around for 35 years), that was less likely to be a question, since college education was considered the gateway to future success in career and life. Not so now. Increasingly, teenagers growing up in an interconnected world, in which artificial intelligence and other factors have thoroughly scrambled the employment landscape, are opting for hands-on training – trade schools, apprenticeships, etc. – rather than academe. Whether that particular trend will continue is an open question, but the fact that it exists at all puts The Best 392 Colleges, 2027 in a light different from that shone on its predecessors. 

     The consistency of the book itself, however, remains. Its section called “Great Schools for 22 of the Most Popular Undergraduate Majors” is an excellent place to start for students who do want to attend college and think they know where they want to focus. That is a somewhat rarefied group, to be sure, especially as professional landscapes shift, but those who expect to major in accounting, business, computer science, education, history, political science and more will find alphabetical lists here that they can use to help pinpoint where they want to go in the specific listings and discussions given to colleges within the main portion of the book. There is nothing judgmental about the lists: journalism, a fading profession, gets its due, with 50 listed colleges, and artificial intelligence, a rapidly growing area of concentration, gets its as well, with 32 listings. None of the lists is exhaustive, of course, and the colleges within them are not exclusive to a single list: University of Georgia and University of Southern California, for example, appear for both AI and journalism. But the “focus” lists are a fine starting point for a search that can then be narrowed in many ways – for instance, by using the book’s separate rankings of schools that students rate as tops in categories including quality of life, campus life, social scene and other elements of higher education (and yes, including academics as one category). 

     The ratings by students are key here. The Princeton Review  compiles its lists through surveys, with this year’s book assembled from the responses of 172,000 students. Some of the comments culled from those responses appear on the two pages devoted to every school in the main section of the book: each such section opens with a “Students Say” subhead and also includes “The Princeton Review Says” and “The School Says” (this last being an opportunity for some school-generated public relations, whose orientation and quality may give families pause: how many times can you stand to read about schools’ avowed “holistic approach,” expectation of “curiosity,” networking opportunities, “challenging and innovative” environment, and other PR-speak?). The schools are presented alphabetically in the main portion of the book, for ease of reference after families start to narrow down their search, but a back-of-the-book section on geographical location may be worth using before going to the book’s main section if the potential student prefers to study in a specific state or region. Thanks to this book’s layout, a student who can pre-identify both an area of focus and a preferred region in which to study is well ahead of the game. 

     In fact, it is the front-of-book and back-of-book lists and focuses that have in recent times proven to be consistently the most valuable elements of these yearly guides. It is all well and good to go to the two-page spread for a particular college for statistics on its student body, academics, mental-health services, selectivity and financial requirements and expectations – but deciding which two-page spreads to visit is what really matters. And that requires sorting the overwhelming data set according to a student’s or family’s specific interests, concerns and needs – something the book itself of course cannot do. So if the cost of attendance, for example, is going to be a significant factor because it will be paid out of pocket without financial aid, then turning to “Index of Schools by Tuition” is a smart move for narrowing down the possible choices. The Best 392 Colleges, 2027 even offers a list that goes beyond its own pages: “2027 Best Regional Colleges” gives a location-based listing of 238 “schools that we consider academically outstanding and well worth consideration” even though details on them are not provided. So there is yet another sorting-and-focusing opportunity among the many available here. 

     Interestingly, this ongoing series shows its consistency in one amusing way as well as many serious ones: its numbering keeps going up by one. This year we have The Best 392 Colleges, 2027, after having 391 colleges in the 2026 edition, 390 in 2025, and in fact increasing by one every year since the number stood at 385 in 2020. It is all a bit silly, really, but does seem to indicate an inexorable march toward 400, which at this rate will be reached in the 2035 edition. The Princeton Review apparently anticipates continuing consistency for quite some time – which, on the evidence of this book and its predecessors, it is indeed likely to deliver.

(++++) MORE OR LESS SERIOUS

Moritz Moszkowski: Orchestral Music, Volume Four—Symphony in D minor; Laurin: Six Excerpts from the Ballet. Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Ian Hobson. Toccata Classics. $20.99. 

Johann Strauss Jr.: Perpetuum mobile (two versions); Nordseebilder Waltz; Revolutions-Marsch; Ritter Pásmán—Csárdás; Tausend und eine Nacht—Intermezzo; Der Zigeunerbaron Overture; Vom Donaustrande; Carnevalsbilder Waltz; Klänge aus der Raimundzeit. Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Patrick Hahn. BR Klassik. $19.99. 

     Among the many polarizing elements of music in the Romantic era was the distinction drawn between works of serious intent and mien, on the one hand, and those written primarily or purely for entertainment. It was not quite as simple as the concert hall vs. the dance floor, although there was some of that; but there was certainly music judged as much by its reason for being as by its sound – with locales such as the ballet stage blurring matters, and popularly oriented extracts and arrangements of avowedly serious music such as operas blurring them further. Still, composers tended to set their sights on one compositional orientation or the other – and then to cross over the imagined line of demarcation when it suited them. The case of Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) is typical. Certainly considering himself to be a serious composer, Moszkowski gained fame as a pianist (including in two-piano performances with Liszt) as well as a teacher, composer and conductor. Just how seriously he took composition is clear from his sole symphony, written when he was 19 and given a stirring performance by Sinfonia Varsovia under Ian Hobson on the fourth Toccata Classics release of Moszkowski’s orchestral music. From its substantial first movement, through a bustling Vivo and quietly tender Larghetto, to an effectively designed and orchestrated if somewhat derivative finale, the work shows considerable skill in construction even if it does not display a great deal of thematic or harmonic originality. It is, however, packed with indications of tempo changes and expressive requirements throughout each movement, showing just how careful Moszkowski already was with the effects he was trying to convey. Hobson leads the symphony with strength and close attention to its moods and structural design, giving it an effective performance that establishes the direction in which Moszkowski could have gone if he had decided to pursue further symphonies. But he did not, since in 1873, the year of the symphony, he began a meteoric pianistic career that was eventually cut short in the 1880s by a neurological problem – which in turn led him to focus elsewhere, and with equal intensity. His compositions then brought him considerable fame and a number of commissions, including one in 1892 for a now-lost ballet called Laurin. Fortunately, six episodes from the ballet had been separately published, and Hobson offers them in sturdy, attentive readings that present the music effectively while showcasing Moszkowski’s ability to write in both dramatic and more-congenial (if not exactly “light”) ways for the stage. The ballet’s story, drawn from an 11^th-century epic, involves a struggle between humans and dwarfs over an enchanted garden. What remains of Moszkowski’s music does a good job of characterizing the setting and the opposing forces, with dances portraying the dwarfs and the “rose elves” being especially effective, and the concluding Bacchanale offering suitable dramatic intensity. In both the symphony and the remaining Laurin material, Moszkowski shows himself skilled in refining traditional forms and communicating through large and well-employed orchestral forces. His underlying seriousness of purpose is apparent throughout. 

     Other composers for the stage proved themselves effective even when their stage works themselves did not. Johann Strauss Jr.’s operettas were by and large cursed with libretti ranging from the forgettable to the incoherent, and the tunefulness of Strauss’ music could do little to make the works successful with audiences – which in fact, with just a few notable exceptions, they were not. However, music was very much a family business for Strauss, and he recycled and repackaged the material created for the stage into waltzes, quadrilles, galops and other pieces that almost invariably proved more appealing than the operettas from which they drew their content. It is all a bit ironic, since Strauss got into stage production largely in a search for better earnings potential than was available through his dance music and orchestral tours. That never quite worked out as planned, but happily for listeners from Strauss’ own time to today, the recycled stage music did not disappear; and it did at least enhance the Strauss family’s earnings when repurposed for lighter locations than an operatic venue. Just how well Strauss’ works hold up – even the many less-known ones – is clear from an ebulliently conducted BR Klassik release featuring the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Patrick Hahn. The selections here range from the well-known to the infrequently performed. The overture to Der Zigeunerbaron, one of Strauss’ best operettas and one of his few out-and-out successes, is often heard, and the Csárdás from his one and only full-scale opera, a notable failure called Ritter Pásmán, is played frequently as a concert piece. The Perpetuum mobile is super-common as well, although it is hard to see why Hahn chooses to offer it twice – with the music followed, the second time, by some insignificant and rather crass dialect lines, spoken by Johannes Silberschneider, having to do with 21^st-century family road trips and the need for bathroom breaks. The spoken material goes beyond “light” music into a light, which is to say nonexistent, thought process, perhaps intended to reach out somehow to someone with no interest in music whatsoever, for some indiscernible reason. In any case, the CD as a whole is thankfully much better than this misfiring – even though Hahn does tend to push the music too hard on a few occasions, as if wanting to get it over with (and why, given the manifest delights of Strauss’ tunes, would one want to do that?). In any case, Hahn’s presentation of some less commonly heard works makes the disc as a whole delightful. The Intermezzo from Strauss’ first operetta, Indigo and the 40 Thieves (1871), makes the otherwise forgotten stage work worth remembering, and the Carnevalsbilder Waltz does the same for Der Carneval in Rom (1873). The other pieces here, whatever their points of origin, are uniformly well-made and played with panache; the orchestra is first-rate. Of special interest is the unusual composite quodlibet Klänge aus der Raimundzeit, a work Strauss assembled in 1898 for a tribute to dramatist Ferdinand Raimund (1790-1836). It bears Strauss’ very last opus number (479) and is made up of pieces by his father and Joseph Lanner, the elder Strauss’ onetime compatriot and later competitor. Certainly Strauss’ music falls on the “light” side of the spectrum of Romantic-era compositions, but its appealing melodies, sure-footed harmonies and elegant construction have kept it enjoyable and evocative ever since Strauss’ own era – while many of the works of composers with a more-serious orientation have long since fallen into complete obscurity.

(+++) PERSONALIZING THE VOICE

John Rutter: Dancing Tree; Charles Villiers Stanford: The Blue Bird; Charles Forsberg: Buttercup Days; Debussy: Trois Chansons; Britten: Hymn to St. Cecilia; Jake Runestad: Cello Songs. St. Charles Singers conducted by Jeff Hunt. Navona. $18. 

Ástor Piazzolla: Arrangements for Mezzo-Soprano. Daniela Mack, mezzo-soprano; JP Jofre Quintet (Eric Silberger, violin; Amy Kang, cello; Pablo Cafici, piano; Chris Johnson, double bass; JP Jofre, bandoneón). Pentatone. $20.99. 

     Voices are as identifiable in their own way as fingerprints are in theirs. And modern vocal music often comes across as being as much “by” the performers as it is “by” the composers. Thus, the three works on a new Navona CD that were commissioned by the St. Charles Singers and are performed by them emerge as collaborative compositions: the chorus is not so much realizing each composer’s aural vision as participating in that vision and becoming a part of it. The works receiving this treatment are Dancing Tree by John Rutter (born 1945), Buttercup Days by Charles Forsberg (born 1942), and Cello Songs by Jake Runestad (born 1986). Rutter’s work sets eight poems by Charles Causley (1917-2003) for chorus and harp (Erin Freund). Moderately paced, warmly harmonious and gently expressive, the poems give the chorus plenty of chances to show how capable it is in conveying emotion while paying close attention to rhythm and pacing. Forsberg’s piece is the opening movement of a six-piece set for choir, piano (Stephen Uhl) and double bass (Joe Policastro), originally intended to be sung by a soprano. The words are by A.A. Milne from his Winnie-the-Pooh works. The single movement heard here is pleasant enough but is quite short and never fully establishes a mood or sense of place. Runestad’s work, with words by Todd Boss (born 1968), has four seasonal movements – starting with summer and ending with spring – and is for chorus, cello (Jean Hatmaker), and piano (Uhl). It includes some effective instrumental tone-painting that is often more engaging than the vocal material, which gets rather short shrift except in the longest movement, which is devoted to winter – but even there the emotive quality of the instruments exceeds that of the singers. These contemporary works are intermingled on the CD with three earlier ones. Stanford’s The Blue Bird sets a poem by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge in near-worshipful tones even though the titular topic is entirely secular. Debussy’s Trois Chansons, to texts by Charles d’Orléans, are quite short (each less than two minutes) and on three different topics: love, springtime and winter. Impressionism and extended harmonic development are the notable characteristics here, and the chorus and soloists manage the sometimes challenging rhythmic elements skillfully while delivering the texts with suitable expressiveness. And Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, with words by W.H. Auden, gets its due as a paean to the patron saint of music and a personal expression by the composer, who was born on St. Cecilia’s Day. This is the most challenging work for singers on the CD, and the chorus under Jeff Hunt handles it with considerable skill, with the third and last, lyrical section coming across with particular warmth and a sense of personal involvement. Vocal music, particularly modern vocal music, is not to all tastes, and with classical music in general now considered a “niche,” vocal works like the ones here are a kind of niche-within-a-niche. And in truth, the specific pieces do not all fit well together (the Stanford and Debussy do not mix very well with the commissioned works, although the Britten is worth hearing anytime); also, more of the Forsberg would have been better. It is the high quality of the singing that is most attractive here, and the way the chorus audibly participates in the creation of the soundworlds of Rutter, Forsberg and Runestad. This is a disc for singers as much as for listeners – indeed, perhaps more so. 

     The focus is both collaborative and Argentinian on a Pentatone CD featuring mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack and arranger JP Jofre, both of whom deeply respect as well as enjoy the tango-focused artistry of Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992). Drawing on the geographical as well as musical roots they share with Piazzolla, Mack and Jofre produce focused, very personal, highly idiomatic performances of Piazzolla works with words by a variety of lyricists, most notably Piazzolla’s frequent collaborator, Horacio Ferrer. All the elements of nuevo tango are much in evidence here, along with a sultry underpinning in Mack’s voice that connects the music more directly than usual with its dance-hall origins. Jofre’s arrangements are respectful of both the jazz and classical elements with which Piazzolla imbued the tango form, and the bandoneón-focused quintet that Jofre leads accompanies Mack with consistent skill and stylish flair, but without taking the spotlight off her voice. The cabaret style of Yo Soy María, from Piazzolla’s tango opera María de Buenos Aires, is a high point here, contrasting effectively with the plaintive Poema Valseado. The more-extended instrumental introductions to some numbers, such as Chiquilin de Bachin, extend the interpersonal elements of the recital, as does the inclusion at the end of a work by Jofre himself: Dulces Sueños, a sweet and tender lullaby sung by Mack with delicacy and, sometimes, in a near-whisper. Although everything here is handled with considerable sensitivity and understanding, some of it innate, this is a CD for a very, very limited audience – a kind of niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche. It is Argentinian through and through, and Piazzolla-focused almost from start to finish (Jofre’s work takes up five of the disc’s 49 minutes). There is a great deal here to attract audiences predisposed to enjoy the material – just listening to Mack’s super-quick spoken material at the start of Balada Para un Loco is a treat, the sensuality of Las Paraguas de Buenos Aires stands out, and the sensitivity of Jacinto Chiclana, the milonga written by Jorge Luis Borges, is pervaded by a sense of quiet dignity both vocally and in the spare accompaniment. Audiences interested in a deep dive into the world of Piazzolla and the Argentine experience and national character will find Mack and Jofre to be exemplary guides. Yes, the reach of the CD is limited through its very strong, narrow focus; but those to whom it speaks meaningfully, those whom it guides to a specific geographical location and specific composer, will find it an auditory journey that is very much worth taking.

(++++) OPERA RE-UPPED

Ferdinand Hiller: Operette ohne Text, Op. 108; Ignaz Moscheles: Grande Sonate Symphonique No. 2, Op. 112. Stephanie McCallum and Erin Helyard, piano four hands. Toccata Next. $20.99. 

Michael R. Jackson and Justin Vivian Bond: Complications in Sue. Opera Philadelphia conducted by Caren Levine. BCM+D Records. $25 (2 CDs). 

     Opera is all about singing. Yes, there are different schools of thought and composition when it comes to the relationship between vocal and instrumental elements of the form: in simplified terms, the Italian focusing more on the voice, the German more on the orchestra, the French tending to balance the two. But without some vocal material, opera is not opera; it is something else. And then we have Operette ohne Text by Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885), which really is something else. When Hiller created this fascinating curiosity in the early 1860s, the world of the piano was largely the province of hyper-virtuosic performers whose stock-in-trade was, to a great extent, opera. It is impossible for today’s audiences, accustomed to thinking of opera as a rarefied if not moribund form, attractive to the cognoscenti rather than the masses of music lovers, to understand and feel how compelling opera was at a time long before recordings, before electronics, even before widespread use of electricity. It was everywhere: even small tabletop music boxes were designed around opera tunes. And the great pianists of the day made much of their reputation by writing or improvising opera pastiches, fantasies and variations – Liszt being a dominating force but scarcely the only exemplar (think Thalberg, Alkan, Kalkbrenner, Pixis, Tausig, Anton Rubinstein, and others). In this world, in this context, Hiller came up with something genuinely unusual and remarkably engaging: an opera (or operetta, if you prefer) without voices, without text, without plot, but with all the elements that audiences in the 1860s would expect, recognize and enjoy. Operette ohne Text has it all – and has none of it, if by “it” we mean the outstanding characteristics of opera, which are plot and singing. Written for piano four hands, Operette ohne Text has never been recorded before, making the Toccata Next offering featuring Stephanie McCallum and Erin Helyard a genuine find. McCallum and Helyard, a highly skilled pianistic duo, throw themselves with relish (and near-abandon) into every operatic element that Hiller thinks up, from the extended Ouverture to the maidens’ chorus, the Jägerchor (the hunting chorus that would be expected in a world familiar with Weber’s Der Freischütz), the Trinklied (complete with the aftereffects of over-consumption), right down to the concluding dance and inevitable Schlussgesang to which the nonexistent singers exit the nonexistent stage. The work is great fun to hear, perhaps doubly so for today’s audiences, whose lack of familiarity with opera is irrelevant when there is music that invites all listeners to decide for themselves what may be going on as the music unfolds. A work like this would not occur to composers in the Italian or French schools of the time, given the comparatively subservient nature of the orchestra in their stage works – but for Hiller, the creation of an opera without words fit neatly into a compositional school in which orchestral material was prominent. To be sure, the “opera without words” notion exists today, but with a different meaning – it is a way for orchestras to present, in the concert hall, the music underlying existing operas. Hiller, however, produced in Operette ohne Text a piece that would work on stage only if someone chose to create a book for it – which the music invites all listeners to do on the stage of their own minds. To complement Hiller’s piece, McCallum and Helyard give a rousing performance – the first ever on a period piano, specifically an excellent 1853 Érard – of Grande Sonate Symphonique No. 2 by Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870). There is no Grande Sonate Symphonique No. 1 – the numbering refers to Moscheles’ second work in this sort of style rather than one with exactly the same title – and here too we have a work that looks askance at specific formal boundaries, in this case those of the piano sonata and orchestral symphony. Moscheles was certainly not the first to create a piece giving symphonic scope to the piano, but what makes his Grande Sonate Symphonique No. 2 interesting is the emphasis on getting the piano to produce orchestral effects. The piece’s thematic choices, developments and interconnections are symphonic, and Moscheles – whom Beethoven chose to create the piano arrangement of Fidelio – produces a series of orchestra-like effects from the very start, when listeners can practically hear brass and tremolando strings, to a concluding chorale-like movement that evokes not only traditional orchestral forces but also the organ. Taken together, these Hiller and Moscheles works constitute a fascinating aural journey not only to the composers’ time period but also to musical forms that, although they were clear in that era and remain in use today, are here shown to have boundaries that can be skillfully bent, if not broken, to produce fascinating musical blends. 

     Speaking of where the focus of opera lies, operatic works are almost always identified by their composers. Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas are the exception that proves the rule, and the close three-opera collaboration between Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte strains it – although few audiences know that Da Ponte produced libretti for 10 other composers, and no one actually refers to “Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni” outside academia. Opera Philadelphia, however, bursts through this longstanding tradition with a work whose composers (plural) are secondary to librettist Michael R. Jackson and principal cast member Justin Vivian Bond (credited with giving Jackson the idea for the whole production). The piece is called Complications in Sue, its rather strained pun on “complications ensue” being indicative of its entire approach, which involves music by no fewer than 10 composers: Andy Akiho, Alistair Coleman, Nathalie Joachim, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Rene Orth, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Kamala Sankaram, Dan Schlosberg, and Errollyn Wallen. Complications in Sue is a work that is exceptionally clever and utterly heartless, in the sense of lacking any emotional center. The idea is to progress through the life of one woman, with 10 short scenes from her 99-year lifespan created by the composers and sung by soprano Kiera Duffy, mezzo-soprano Imara Miles, tenor Nicky Spence, and bass-baritone Nicholas Newton. Given the many composers involved, there is of course no consistency of style and no sense of through composition at all: each scene is independent of all others, tied together by Bond, as Sue, progressing from birth to childhood to education to and through everyday life until eventually arriving at death. Insistent that it is meaningful, the work offers a “Sue’s Childhood” section that is called Christmas Time, Somebody Kill Me, and there is a later scene called “Susan’s Imagination” with exclamatory prosaic expressions of mundane feelings such as disgust interrupting the sung material. The work pushes all the “today” buttons it can, with words about erectile dysfunction, suicide attempts and various concerns of the moment, some set to music and some delivered in prose (and prosaically). The singers do their best with what is given to them, and much of the music is in fact quite listenable – although some material is self-consciously modernistic. The audience heard in this live recording is clearly appreciative of everything happening on stage, and very much in tune (so to speak) with the formulaic progress of the story (the unkindness in “Sue’s Old Age Home” would be politically incorrect if applied to so-called “protected” groups, which aging people clearly are not as far as Bond and Jackson are concerned). In a visual presentation – say, as a DVD – Complications in Sue would likely be more effective than it is on an audio-only basis. It certainly merits a (+++) rating and an A for effort, specifically its effort to find new ways to reach out to audiences in a more-or-less operatic manner. And for the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University, it is certainly an intriguing experiment and a worthwhile project. As a piece of theater shorn of its visual trappings, however, it is not especially convincing and not likely to be a work to which listeners uninvolved in its creation are likely to return. There is no there there, as Gertrude Stein commented in a very different context – although her libretto for Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts possesses insouciance and verbal attractiveness to which nothing in Complications in Sue ever comes close.