(++++) JUST A LITTLE LOTL

Axolotl-Ella: A Sort-of Cinderella Story. By Kate Messner. Illustrated by Lian Cho. Ten Speed Young Readers. $18.99. 

     It is hard to imagine a sillier concept than turning Cinderella into an axolotl. Axolotls are Mexican salamanders that are neotenic – that is, they normally retain their juvenile form throughout their lives instead of metamorphosing into adults. Axolotls have a very limited range in the wild and are critically endangered, but do rather well in the pet trade, where their strange appearance (tiny eyes, prominent feathery external gills, and what looks like a small perpetual smile) makes them exotically attractive. 

     Well, there have been Cinderella stories of all sorts, dating back to the exceedingly grim Grimm one, so why not one starring an axolotl? That seems to have been Kate Messner’s thought, and she has followed it through with verve and charm and the sort of approach that is mandatory in modern Cinderella versions, in which the protagonist is after something other than the chance to marry a prince and live happily ever after. Just what Axolotl-Ella is after, and why, is not particularly clear early in the book – a weakness in the tale-telling that matters very little, since the whole point of Axolotl-Ella is to have fun with the underlying notion of this transformation of the story. 

     So there is no fairy godmother or other magic-wielding character here – but for Axolotl-Ella there is the “water where she was born,” which her mother says “held special powers,” so Axolotl-Ella goes there to request “sparkles and light” to make herself stand out from all the other dun-colored, dull-looking axolotls at the King’s Festival, to which she wants to go because she has big but undisclosed and unclear plans for her life. 

     The magic works a bit too well, making her all sparkly and iridescent but providing her with silver shoes that she refuses to wear – the whole “shoes” thing being crucial to the original Cinderella story and inevitably present in some form in the many variants. But it is present here only to show that Axolotl-Ella refuses to be bound by tradition or convention when it comes to appearance. 

     Axolotl-Ella does get to dance with the prince (also an axolotl, of course: Lian Cho’s illustrations of the various axolotl courtiers, guests and hangers-on are among her best in the book). But she does not get to ask him the question she wants answered, because he spends the evening talking about himself, so she eventually goes home (no unfortunate midnight transfiguration here) and plans to return the next night. Which she does – this time refusing to wear golden shoes – but again she is not able to get a word in edgewise with the self-involved prince. The third night, the lake water brings her glass slippers – the traditional Cinderella footwear, here yet again going unworn – and she tries yet again to ask some sort of question of which readers know nothing. And yet again she fails. 

     When she decides to give up and head home, though, the prince is still holding her hand tightly – and her arm comes off. This is the funniest (not most gruesome) moment in the book, one that is extended as the prince weeps over the arm and pledges to find its owner (another high point of Cho’s illustrative talent). And this scene gives Messner the chance to explain that axolotls “can regrow missing body parts,” so there is really no harm done – and indeed, this is true, and is the reason axolotls are of considerable interest to scientists investigating regeneration. 

     At this point the book becomes unreservedly silly, with would-be princesses yanking off their arms to try to attract the prince, who “knew better” than to be taken in by the ruse. And lo and behold, when he finally locates Axolotl-Ella, bringing her arm back, he discovers that she does not need it, having grown a new one. And now she finally has his attention and can ask her question, which turns out to be: “Who is the wonderful axolotl who leads the royal orchestra?” It seems that Axolotl-Ella wants to open a dance hall and is looking for a suitable music director. This previously unhinted-at denouement is something of a letdown, and adults reading the book with kids should be prepared to be asked, “Why didn’t she just go up to the orchestra guy and talk to him while she was at the festival for three days?” This is a good question that has no apt answer within the confines of the book. 

     Well, the supposed climax may be disappointing, but the rest of Axolotl-Ella has enough amusement to make up for it. For example, when the prince realizes that Axolotl-Ella is not romantically interested in him after all, he says that his heart is broken, and she makes the blasé comment, “You could grow a new one.” Now that’s a line you won’t find in any other version of the Cinderella story.

(++++) SYMPHONIES CONSIDERED, RECONSIDERED

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1-7. Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Ondine. $34.99 (3 CDs). 

Mahler: Symphony No. 6—arrangement for piano four hands by Alexander Zemlinsky. Inna Faliks and Daniel Schlosberg, piano four hands. Sono Luminus. $16.99. 

     Jukka-Pekka Saraste has had more than three decades to hone his interpretations of Sibelius’ symphonies – although on the evidence of his three recordings of the cycle, his readings were very strong from the start. Still, there are certainly differences that have emerged since Saraste (born 1956) has aged and, musically speaking, matured. His first cycle, recorded 1988-1992 with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, was disciplined and rather cool, played well and revealing the works’ differing structures to good effect. His second series, with the same orchestra in 1993, featured live recordings and captured a more-spontaneous, less-studied atmosphere than the earlier sequence. And now Ondine has released Saraste’s third Sibelius cycle, consisting of six live recordings from 2024-2025 coupled, a bit oddly, with a 2026 studio reading of Symphony No. 1. What this release shows without a doubt is how thoroughly Saraste understands Sibelius: balance and tempos (some incorporating information that Saraste received from Sibelius’ son-in-law, conductor Jussi Jalas [1908-1985]) seem self-evidently correct, there is both heft and delicacy in the playing of every orchestral section, and the attentiveness to the transitional sections in which the music abounds is handled with an ease and grace that the earlier cycles never quite attained. The finale of No. 3, the two sections of the first movement of No. 5, and the varying interconnected elements of No. 7 are among the aspects that especially benefit from the precision with which transitions and connections are handled. The sheer consistency and beauty of the orchestral playing benefits all the symphonies equally, and if there are a few occasions on which Saraste seems to hold back instead of unleashing maximum passion, that is a characteristic that has changed little in his style over the decades: he prefers control and a natural unfolding of the music to anything with even a whiff of the overwrought. Balance is the order of the day in No. 1, which holds back a bit in the finale but is shaped with considerable care throughout. No. 2 is one of several symphonies here taken at quicker tempos than before – likely the Jalas influence – and the result is a work whose momentum never flags, although the emotional impact of the finale becomes somewhat muted. Post-performance applause is included for this symphony and No. 5, for some reason, but not for the four other live recordings. No. 3 is another reading that is quick by clock time, but it never feels rushed, and its warmth and wealth of inner detail are exceptional. No. 4, long a particular specialty for Saraste, offers more of an inner tragic landscape than a universal one, lacking a sense of desperation but with Saraste handling the symphony as a personal statement of inward turmoil – a convincing if rather unusual approach to the pervasive bleakness of this work. No. 5 is a touch lacking in emotional intensity, but the nobility of the majestic “swan” theme in the finale is outstanding even if the work’s overall excitement is held somewhat in check. No. 6 is exceptionally well done, nuanced, light, clear and quick, but never feeling too fast and never lacking expressivity. And No. 7 is noble as well, focused on all the detail in the work’s construction and allowing it a greater measure of optimism than other conductors tend to find in it. Every single symphony is handled with thoughtfulness, understanding, a strong sense of commitment to the music, and orchestral playing that ranges from the top-notch to the simply gorgeous. Saraste has thoroughly understood this music for more than 30 years. This latest cycle shows a further expansion of his understanding and an even greater ability to communicate what he has found in the symphonies – by allowing them to speak for themselves without any sense of imposition, much less arrogance or untoward insistence, from the podium. 

     It is worth remembering that when Sibelius wrote his symphonies (1899-1924), opportunities to hear them, much less hear them repeatedly, were extremely limited. Recorded sound was nonexistent or in its infancy, and unless an orchestra happened to be performing a work that one happened to want to hear at a location to which one could go without substantial difficulty, symphonies in their original scoring were largely inaccessible. But they were not wholly inaccessible, thanks to the proliferation of pianos that by this time had reached their modern design and were capable of becoming an “orchestra in miniature” – certainly since Liszt used them that way. Pianos in one’s home were the gateway to orchestral music for many years, and this in turn led to a proliferation of arrangements of grand-scale symphonic music for the piano. For example, Schoenberg’s famous Society for Private Musical Performances, which he started in 1918, was a notable venue for arrangements for piano or small ensemble of grand-scale music. And even before that society began, piano arrangements were popular as the primary method of disseminating complex new music. Schoenberg’s group may even have been inspired by Schoenberg hearing Mahler and Alexander Zemlinsky perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in Zemlinsky’s arrangement for piano four hands. It is this arrangement that Sono Luminus has now released in a thoroughly convincing if ultimately disappointing performance by Inna Faliks and Daniel Schlosberg. The disappointment is not in the playing, which is sensitive and skillful. Nor is it in the overall presentation, although that does have some shortcomings. The issue is the arrangement itself: in the 21^st century, with Mahler now in the standard orchestral repertoire and with technology making multiple versions of his symphonies readily available, it is impossible not to hear how inadequate the piano, “orchestra in miniature” or not, is for transmitting the flavor and complexity of this music. Mahler’s brilliant orchestration, his chamber-music-like use of members of a large orchestra, cannot be reproduced here, any more than can the effect of the hammer blows in the symphony’s finale. Again and again a modern listener is going to hear this piano reduction and find it a diminution, which was not at all Zemlinsky’s intent; again, he and Mahler played this arrangement together, and Schoenberg listened to them do so. By the standards of today, this work for piano four hands is woefully inadequate; indeed, it was pale by the standards of the time in which Mahler wrote it (1903-1906). But Mahler and Zemlinsky both knew that this piano version gave the symphony its best chance of being heard by a widespread audience; in fact, its only real chance. Faliks and Schlosberg are to be commended for undertaking to perform the symphony this way and allow today’s audiences to hear how listeners in the distant past were able to experience the music. And in truth, the piano score has some advantages of its own: Zemlinsky, himself a composer of some skill, knew when middle voices were important, when rhythmic contrasts needed to be brought to the fore, when shifts between delicacy and full-bodied strength were called for; and he did an expert job of focusing the music on precisely the areas where Mahler wanted it focused. Certainly the version for piano four hands lacks the orchestral music’s grandeur, depth and subtlety, but it is sensitively made and offers not only a good basic guidepost to the symphony for those unfamiliar with it, but also a kind of bare-bones display of the skeletal framework on which Mahler built the imposing edifice that is the work for full orchestra. That said, the actual presentation of this CD is a bit peculiar. For one thing, Faliks and Schlosberg incomprehensibly omit the exposition repeat in the first movement, throwing off the symphony’s scale and balance to a degree not inherent in Zemlinsky’s arrangement. For another thing, the program notes with the recording do not discuss what piano is used: Faliks is a Yamaha artist and Schlosberg a Steinway artist (for the record, they use a Steinway model D). For a third thing, the CD package gives the symphony’s total time (just 69:20 with that repeat omitted) but gives no timings for the individual movements (16:39, 11:50, 11:39 and 29:12 for those who are interested). That smacks of laziness or lack of genuine interest in the production – which is hard to reconcile with the verve that the pianists bring to their interpretation. All in all, this Mahler/Zemlinsky CD is, for modern ears, a curiosity and a portal to a much earlier time both musically and technologically. It is not a disc to which listeners are likely to return frequently. But as a chance to explore Mahler in a way no longer generally available, much less central to the modern listening experience, it is very much worthwhile for audiences already familiar with Symphony No. 6 in the form in which Mahler intended it to be heard.

(+++) MIXED-MEDIA MUSIC

Adam Groh: hawthorn; Emma O’Halloran: how sweet the thought of you as infinite; Alex Dowling: ∞; Ian Dicke: Eight Oh Eight; Ethan Frederick Greene: Lissajous. Adam Groh, percussion. Ophelia Music Press. $10. 

Sid Robinovitch: Adieu Babylon; Noam Lemish: Pursue Peace; James Rolfe: O Greenest Branch. Amy Hillis and Noa Sand, violins; Katherine Dowling, piano; Catherine Gray, viola; Mark Chambers, cello; Eric Abramovitz, clarinet; Sara Schabas, Jane Fingler, and Vania Chan, sopranos; Veronika Muggeridge and Rebecca Clayton, altos; Mark Duggan, percussion; Clark Schaufele, organ; David Fallis, conductor. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     The question of just what forces to use to express musical ideas is one that composers have wrestled with pretty much forever – at least when they have had options. And there are plenty of options today, not only for acoustic instruments but also for electronics – and also for voices, whether used traditionally or in vocalises or as nonverbal instruments themselves. Percussionist Adam Groh, not surprisingly, focuses on the communicative powers of percussion on a new recording from Ophelia Music Press that opens with a work of his own, hawthorn (titled without a capital letter, an affectation for some contemporary composers). The music has a pleasantly continuous, rather monotonous beat that is coupled with field recordings from Missouri (hawthorn is the state flower); it progresses at a mostly steady tempo, the rhythmic variation carrying it forward. Although not especially expressive, and certainly not florally evocative, it continues pleasantly enough until eventually and rather inevitably fading to nothing. In Emma O’Halloran’s how sweet the thought of you as infinite (again, no capital letters in the title), the percussive elements are more emotive and the volume range wider, with elements that seem to drift coupled with more-driven ones that, however, go nowhere in particular. Alex Dowling’s ∞ has a title apparently designed to befuddle old-fashioned typesetters, who (fortunately for the piece’s identification) no longer exist. The very deep sounds with which the work opens contrast significantly with the audio landscape of the Groh and O’Halloran works, and Dowling soon progresses into Ligeti-like “space music” material that continually sounds as if it is growing and growling into something portentous, although it never actually gets to any such place. The constant background sense of slow-breathing swells and diminutions plays out against a more-varied foreground that is repetitiously insistent almost throughout. Ian Dicke’s Eight Oh Eight has an aural focus on electronic enhancement of a drum set and is an intellectually interesting study of musical development almost wholly utilizing untuned percussion – a rhythmically intriguing endeavor that will likely be of considerable interest to Groh’s fellow percussionists, although it gives everyday listeners little to latch onto except for the chime sounds first heard midway through and recurring toward the end. It actually ends emphatically, not with a fadeout – a pleasant differentiation from what has come before on the disc. Ethan Frederick Greene’s Lissajous is one of those works whose genesis needs to be understood for it to have its full effect: it is based on Lissajous curves, geometric patterns created by plotting two notes or sound waves against each other on X and Y axes. Heard strictly as music rather than a geometry-class requirement, the work is more aurally varied than most of the others on this CD, with exclamatory intervals bursting occasionally from its evenness of tempo and with electronic sounds more overtly produced and more prominent than in the other pieces here. It is the longest piece on the CD, at 15½ minutes, and does not really sustain throughout its length; and its vibraphone focus wears thin after a while despite the sonic variations produced by the electronics. Nevertheless, it – like all the other pieces here – gets a strongly committed performance from Groh, who has clearly lived with all this music long enough to absorb the composers’ varying approaches and to differentiate the pieces to the greatest possible extent. Certainly not a disc for everyone, this CD will intrigue percussionists and, at least in small doses, be of interest to audiences hungry for music generated neither solely acoustically nor entirely electronically, but through a percussion-focused melding of both sources. 

     The musical forces are more conventional but at least equally varied on a New Focus Recordings release whose three works are united strictly by extramusical factors: all are by Canadian Jewish composers. One of them, Noam Lemish (born 1983), is the prime mover behind a York University project intended to showcase these and other contemporary works, and himself contributes one of the pieces heard here. Whatever Lemish’s motivation may be, the fact remains that for these and the many other pieces written on behalf of one cause or another, the music must succeed on its own terms, not within a narrow historical or sociopolitical context, if it is to have any hope of reaching out to anyone beyond a tiny niche audience. Lemish’s Pursue Peace (2015) for clarinet and string quintet is so permeated by a “cause” mentality that its musicality seems a distinctly subsidiary element of its existence. It was written for a group called the Israeli-Iranian Musical Initiative, its title is a reference to Psalm 34, and its movement titles are insistently geopolitical, especially the first, What’s the Distance Between Tel Aviv and Tehran? The work also draws on music by two Israeli composers, Baruch Chait and Sasha Argov. And what is in store for potential listeners unaware of the very substantial gloss required for full understanding of the purpose of this music? The second movement, Two Plus Two, is especially arresting in its contrast between a melody that flows gently and intense passages that contrast with and interrupt it, while the concluding movement – called Pursue Peace, replicating the title of the entire work – reaches no particular conclusion but seems to suggest, especially in the strings, that pursuing peace and finding it are far from the same thing. Lemish’s work is preceded on the disc by Adieu Babylon (1991) by Sid Robinovitch (born 1942). This single-movement work is scored simply, for violin and piano, and although written during the Persian Gulf War, communicates in more-general terms through its mixture of mournfulness, nostalgia, intensity, vigor and Middle Eastern coloration, often pushing both instruments into their high registers before it eventually comes back to the opening material. It effectively takes listeners on a journey that sounds less like an adieu and more like a circling back to the past. Robinovitch’s spare scoring contrasts with the approach of James Rolfe (born 1961) in O Greenest Branch (2019), the final work on the CD. Written for soprano, vocal ensemble, percussion and organ, this six-movement piece mixes texts by Hildegard von Bingen with two Jewish laments, one medieval and one written in the 20^th century. It is easier to admire this work’s skillful construction than to enjoy it, and enjoyment is not its primary purpose: it is essentially dark, using voices, both solo and grouped, to lament centuries of Jewish persecution. The intellectual/emotional edifice is the work’s reason for being, but its most musically attractive elements are not the mainly dark vocal ones but the well-chosen and sometimes genuinely engaging touches in the accompaniment. The organ tends to underline the vocalizing while the percussion more often comments on what is being put forth. As a whole, this is an interesting work that tries very hard indeed to be meaningful – especially in the intensity of the solo-soprano parts – but that comes across as musically rather monochromatic despite the number of performers Rolfe uses. The CD as a whole is self-limited by its topic and orientation, and it is hard to escape the notion that the composers, and Lemish as curator, are basically fine with that. They would like to reach out to an audience wider than the obvious one, but if not, so be it – they will be satisfied to communicate among themselves.

(++++) WHERE THE HEART IS

Hometown. By Shaun Tan. Levine Querido. $24.99. 

     The acceptance of apparent weirdness as entirely normal lies at the heart of Shaun Tan’s strange and strangely moving, gorgeously odd books, and no more so than in his latest, Hometown. Tan’s art is immediately recognizable through its shading, coloration, and design of figures that, appearing to be almost but not quite the stuff of nightmares, turn out to be more normal, even sweet, than human-looking characters. The dreamscapes Tan creates call into question the disparity between appearance and behavior, the divergence of what things seem to be from what they are – and if that seems to put too much psychological freight on his lavishly weird creations, it is certainly possible (if less rewarding) simply to read his books as explorations of fantastic creatures in bizarre settings that have at most a momentary frisson of danger. 

     The key in Hometown is the sheer normality of the life of the teenage girl protagonist, who lives who-knows-where-and-why (“I’ve never lived anywhere else”) amid loving family members, supportive friends, and a plethora of everyday activities. All of which are, by the standards of everyday readers in our own world, monstrous. Tan carefully writes about the ordinariness of everything while showing scenes that are distinctly outré. Thus, “I go to work, do chores. Visit friends, hang out” shows the girl at the window or porthole of a very toothy conveyance creature that is exhaling steam or smoke from an organ atop what seems to be its head, and whose other passengers, both inside and on top, have the characteristics of snails, slugs, squids, and ancient denizens of Earth’s earliest ages. And “I even love going to school” shows the girl on her knees in the process of bowing down toward something-or-other, with her fellow students in a similar position as they raise their paws, claws, tentacles and other appendages (and in many cases not just two of them) to start their obeisances (if that is what they are). 

     There would be no story here – merely a display of the strange – unless something happened to disturb the girl’s comfortable existence in this mundane-to-her world, so of course something does. A thing of some sort appears from a hole in the sky and lands near the girl and her friends. It looks to readers of our own planet like a space-suited astronaut, and Tan spends some pages playing with perspective: the space thing is absolutely huge if and only if the girl and her friends are more or less Earth-human-sized. Or are the girl and other beings tiny and the space thing the size of an Earth human? That particular puzzle is eventually solved when the space thing, which has been “making a huge mess” by exploring here and there, is literally swallowed by “something big” that the girl knew “would come to set things right.” The toothed creature then disgorges the space thing, which in turn pops open, and out comes a smaller version of itself that now definitely appears to be a space-suited Earth human the same size as the girl protagonist. It tries to communicate, unsuccessfully of course, and the girl takes pity on it and brings it home to her family, which tastes and probes it courteously: “Nobody mentioned how weird it looked. We’re all super polite that way.” 

     The point of all the mundane writing is to contrast the girl’s perceptions of her family and hometown with the presumed perceptions of the space traveler: “Things were going pretty good,” according to the girl, but Tan’s picture shows the space thing recoiling in horror from the monstrosities all around. The thing eventually manages to communicate by using its equipment, explaining that it comes from a far, far distant place full of what the girl says it describes as “creatures that looked just like me.” And then, finally, it removes “its head and hand parts” and turns out to be a space-suited young man, clearly of the same species as the girl. 

     The rest of the book works out what happens after the boy tells her, “This is not your real home. Those are not your people.” And then he tries to “rescue” her and take her with him to space. Whether or not he succeeds, whether or not she wants him to succeed, is the point of the latter part of Hometown, in which the girl’s family reveals that she is indeed from elsewhere (how and why is never explained, nor is explanation needed) and leaves it up to her to decide whether to stay or go with the boy of her own kind. Tan, in his usual clever and faithful-to-dreams way, manages to let the girl and the boy have it both ways, but only after pulling readers again and again into a world where normalcy is defined not by physical appearance but by quotidian existence and, ultimately, by who loves you and whom you love. It is extremely hard to use mere words to describe what Tan does here and in his other books, because the whole point of his work is the art, in which grotesqueries of all sorts – some of them objectively quite scary-looking by Earth-normal standards – are simply going about their everyday lives, within which ordinary-looking characters (again by Earth standards) function without the slightest sense of the surreality pervading their reality. 

     The many wordless pages of Hometown are especially affecting, ranging from two-page spreads divided into 12 or 18 panels that collectively show elements of what the girl is doing and thinking to an amazing foldout, the equivalent of four book pages, showing most of the denizens of the girl’s hometown in all their indescribably weird glory and dark, rich color blends. This is ultimately an art book more than a storybook, a tale of a journey not quite to space nor exactly to one’s inmost being, but into and through a kind of thought experiment that allows, even requires readers (perhaps better designated as viewers or, even better, experiencers) to consider what home is, what home means, and when they can know that they really are where they really belong.