(++++) TODDLER TECH TALK

How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up. By Ruth Spiro. Illustrated by Teresa Martínez. Charlesbridge. $17.99. 

Baby Loves Robotics! By Ruth Spiro. Illustrated by Kat Uno. Charlesbridge. $8.99. 

     Ruth Spiro is on to something: the wonders of everyday life in the 21^st century are heavily technological. And in a technology-driven age, surrounded as they are by devices of complexity that was unimaginable just a few years ago and is now taken for granted, doesn’t it make sense for children to find out the way things work so they can better understand the world around them and, not coincidentally, satisfy their curiosity? 

     The notion of explaining technology in simplified fashion, but without “talking down” to people, is scarcely new: David Macauley’s mammoth-infused The Way Things Work dates back almost 40 years and is still unsurpassed for its combination of clear technical explanations (courtesy of Neil Ardley) with the amusement of an extinct pachyderm as explanatory guide. Spiro, however, takes things further by specifically creating tech-infused books for very young children, including early readers and even pre-readers – the two latest examples being How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up and Baby Loves Robotics! 

     The How to Explain series has a particularly clever foundational premise: it assumes that kids already know about scientific and technical topics and have to figure out how to explain the material in words simple enough for adults to understand them. This gets neatly around the “talking down” risk by, in effect, “talking up,” and lets young readers feel as if they are experts – even as they themselves are learning. Didactic the books may be, but by using role reversal as their basis, they help kids feel knowledgeable even as they become knowledgeable. It is a neat trick. 

     Thus, How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up starts with the girl narrator showing her parent a bird and explaining how birds fly by using their wings to generate lift that helps overcome gravity. This allows a mention of air pressure differences between the above-wing and below-wing areas, leading into a discussion of how airplanes are able to have lift without flapping their wings (although, as the book notes, they do have wing flaps). Thrust and drag, lift and gravity appear in simplified form that expands and enhances the initial discussion about birds, with the carefully designed illustrations by Teresa Martínez, which are well-integrated with the text, making the parallels clear. Spiro then extends the notion of powered flight from aeronautics to aerospace (two of the words explicitly defined in a short back-of-the-book glossary). Pointing out that spaceflight differs from near-Earth flight because there is no oxygen in space, Spiro shows – that is, allows her narrator to show – the basics of how liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets work. Then, bringing matters back to Earth, Spiro and Martínez present a quotidian scene of the girl narrator and her mom visiting the girl’s grandmother, whose ordinary-appearing home is full of items originally designed for and first used in space, from memory-foam cushions to cordless tools and ear thermometers. The connection of the potentially abstruse elements of aerospace engineering with familiar scenes of daily life helps How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up connect with young readers in ways that go beyond mere curiosity (not that curiosity is ever “mere”). The absence of a source list or suggestions for further reading is a bit disappointing, since the book may well encourage both kids and adults to want to find out more about its topic, and some guidance from Spiro would have been useful. Still, as a super-basic introduction to a super-complex topic, How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up delivers on the promise underlying its title and lets kids learn while they teach, or at least feel as if they are teaching. 

     Spiro takes things in a somewhat different direction in the Baby Loves Science series. These are board books, which means they target the very youngest readers and, realistically, pre-readers. And they do a remarkably good job of presenting very basic information on scientific topics ranging from thermodynamics to paleontology to, believe it or not, quantum physics. The basic formula is the same as in the How to Explain series: Spiro connects complex topics with everyday items that seem simple because of their familiarity. But for Baby Loves Science, the underlying complexity has to be communicated in the simplest language possible and with illustrations that will interest very young children. Kat Uno, who has done a modest amount of illustrative work for this series in the past, is responsible for the entirety of Baby Loves Robotics! Her rounded, big-eyed figures and pleasantly colored settings produce just the right comfort level for Spiro’s explanations of robot basics. And those explanations are cleverly tied to the notion of a baby with a brand-new robotic toy: a suitably cute robot puppy. “A robot is a machine that can work on its own,” explains Spiro in the sort of vast-but-basically-accurate oversimplification that she brings both to Baby Loves Science and to How to Explain. Spiro writes a little bit about code, a little bit about parallels between some robots and humans (the puppy “hears” and “sees,” and Spiro puts both words in quotation marks), and a little bit about robots that are not solely for fun but “help people do work.” There are even examples of robots that look like animals other than dogs, including ones that can slither like snakes and fly like birds. Nothing here is overly complex or overly challenging to understand, and that is just as things should be in a board book: Spiro does a fine job of showing what is special about the technology underpinning daily life for the families at whom she aims the Baby Loves Science series. The sequence is self-described as “little books about big ideas,” and that is a well-turned phrase that applies equally to the How to Explain books for slightly-more-advanced readers – and their grown-ups.

(++++) NINES, COMPLETE AND COMPLETED

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9, with reconstructed Finale, updated version. London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gerd Schaller. Profil. $20.99. 

Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 8 (“Unfinished”) and 9 (“Great”). Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $20.99. 

     Gerd Schaller is taking himself and Bruckner aficionados worldwide on a remarkable journey with regard to the composer’s final, not-quite-completed symphony. And therein lies an oddity: the journey is so remarkable in connection with the work’s finale that it is all too easy to overlook the excellence of Schaller’s handling of the first three movements. There are now no fewer than four Schaller recordings of the four-movement Ninth: two with Philharmonie Festiva (2016 and 2018), one with Schaller performing his own organ transcription of his own completion (2020, amazing on many levels), and now one with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Schaller thinks and rethinks his conceptualization of the Ninth’s finale in all four cases, resulting, for one thing, in differing performance lengths (24½, 25, 24 and now 22 minutes), and for another, in subtle but clearly audible tweaks here and there in the finale’s notes as added by Schaller and in the movement’s instrumentation, balance and dynamics. Schaller’s completions, plural, are remarkably careful, attentive and knowledgeable in and of themselves, and although others have also tried their hand at finishing the unfinished Bruckner Ninth, Schaller’s well-polished conclusions are and will likely remain the standard for a considerable time, along the lines of Deryck Cooke’s piecing-together of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 – now half a century old and as impressive as ever. Schaller is actually quite modest about his Bruckner Ninth completion, which is why he keeps tweaking it; and modesty is called for, not only because of the inherent hubris of the project but also because what Schaller has done is definitely not what Bruckner would have done. Indeed, if Bruckner had finished the fourth movement and then followed his usual pattern, he would have returned to and modified the first three movements after completing the last one, and the whole symphony would differ from what we have today. And that brings us back to those first three movements: Schaller’s handling of them is balanced, knowing, well-paced, emotionally convincing and altogether excellent in all his recordings, with a veneer of even greater connectivity among the movements in the new Profil release than was evident before. Schaller’s understanding of Bruckner’s Ninth runs very deep indeed – a reason all his completions work so well and then, in their turn, reinforce and modify his handling of the first three movements. Nothing here fails to deepen the mystery of this symphony, which Bruckner had ample time to finish – he worked on it for nine years and, although he was an inveterate reviser, was not in the habit of failing to hammer a work into completed form before revising and revisiting it later. We will never know just why Bruckner was so dilatory where his Ninth was concerned, and will never know how he wanted the finale – or the likely-to-have-been-revised first three movements – to sound. But Schaller’s exceptionally well-thought-through, well-conducted and well-performed recordings – with the London players sounding remarkably warm, full and engaged on the newest release – are the standard against which all other performances of the “completed” Ninth need to be measured, including any future ones in which Schaller himself continues to contemplate, dissect, assemble and reassemble this ever-remarkable symphonic capstone. 

     Bruckner’s debt to Schubert remains an under-explored element of his music, although it has at least been acknowledged and somewhat discussed in recent years. Schubert’s Ninth shows Bruckner’s affinity for the earlier composer’s musical thinking particularly clearly, although Bruckner’s Ninth is not one of his more “Schubertian” symphonies. Schubert’s “Great” (so called to distinguish it from the “Little” No. 6 in the same key of C) is a towering achievement in its own way, although Schubert never heard it and its influence on later symphonic development was minimal. It is not Schubert’s Ninth but his Eighth that is labeled “Unfinished,” although Schubert, very much unlike Bruckner, was an inveterate non-completer and left multiple symphonies and other works in partial or truncated form. Schubert’s Eighth and Ninth are often released together, a custom that works on a single CD only when the Ninth is rendered less than it can be through omission of many of the repeats for which Schubert called. However, the pairing does at least give listeners a sense of the two most forward-looking of Schubert’s symphonic works; and when they are played with care and paced well, as on a new Recursive Classics release featuring the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony under David Bernard, the result is deeply engaging and emotionally convincing. The “Unfinished” is the more-compelling performance here. In the first movement, the first few notes are not as warm and deep as they could be, but the speedier ones that follow move with a pleasant sense of forward motion, and the gorgeous main theme comes through in all its beauty. The overall tempo is well-chosen; the horns are precise, if not particularly warm; and the lower strings are especially good. Bernard keeps the momentum going – in some performances it can flag and the movement, which is far more expansive than earlier Schubert opening symphonic movements, can become episodic. The two finished movements of the Eighth move at essentially the same speed, their differences subtly indicated by their tempo indications of Allegro moderato and Andante con moto. Interestingly, the second movement follows the first immediately on this CD, making it seem even more a continuation or (in its first portion) an additional episode of the multifaceted first. Here, though, the songfulness is of a different character from that in the first movement, with a somewhat greater tinge of melancholy, to which Bernard pays close attention. The orchestra handles the chordal passages well, insistently but not overwhelmingly, and the quieter and more-delicate sections are especially engaging. There is a sense of subsidence, of resignation, toward the end – which is really no more of a satisfactory conclusion than the end of the third movement of Bruckner's Ninth. 

     As for Schubert’s “Great” C major, this performance is more of a mixed bag than that of the “Unfinished.” Omitting most repeats does the music no favors, although it does reduce the sheer physicality required of the musicians. In Bernard’s reading, a fuller and rounder horn sound at the beginning would have been better, but the pacing is good – a true Andante – and then there is a nicely handled transition to the main theme. The movement’s dotted rhythms are kept clear, and everything percolates along nicely. The strings and winds are more impressive than the brass, which lacks some richness and roundness of tone. It is difficult to give this movement cohesiveness: it tends to sprawl and meander. But the coda has the right level of joviality, stopping short of celebratory joy. The second movement is also nicely paced, a true Andante with appreciation of the modifier con moto. The winds have a pleasant touch of piquancy, and there is good solid rhythm throughout. But then matters peter out at the very end, in a too-great slowdown that is ultimately not convincing. The third movement has a bright and quick start and a jaunty feeling throughout. The gentle lilt of the trio is winning – a fine contrast. The fourth movement is very quick indeed at the start: it actually feels almost too fast for the orchestra to keep up, but for the most part they manage well. There is some smearing of the sectional sound, notably in the brass, for instance just before the entry of the second theme, which is less songful and lyrical here than ideal. The ebullience of the material is perhaps somewhat forced: what emerges here is a more-driven movement that, somewhat surprisingly, is rather Haydnesque at this tempo. But it is almost frantic at times, closer to Presto than to its Allegro vivace tempo indication. It is undeniably exciting, but there is little chance for the music to breathe, and the brass is at its limit by the time the coda arrives. There is much to enjoy in the performance of each individual movement in this interpretation, but it seems to lack an overview, an overall vision for the symphony: yes, the movements are quite different, but here they seem more disconnected from each other than usual. The fine sense of style and strong musical commitment, however, are apparent throughout, and just as Bruckner’s Ninth represents in many ways a summing-up of his symphonic oeuvre, so does Schubert’s Ninth of his works in the form – with both cases standing as posthumous tributes to the composers, the Bruckner first performed (three movements only) more than six years after the composer’s death, the Schubert 11 years after the demise of its creator.

(+++) VOCAL SOUNDS AND OTHERS

Music for Clarinet, Voice & Percussion. Sputter Box (Kathryn Vetter, clarinets; Alina Tamborini, voice; Peter White, percussion). New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

Tomás Gueglio: Ciclo Lamarque, Part 1—Songs & Madrigals. Quince Ensemble; Ensemble Dal Niente; Ekmeles. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     The human voice is among the many traditional elements of music that some contemporary composers are determined to push to their limits and beyond, as two recent New Focus Recordings releases show clearly. The various composers employ the voice differently, sometimes as an instrument within an ensemble (essentially a vocalise, although not in the sense in which that terms has been used since the 18^th century), sometimes in a more-traditional singing mode, and sometimes to produce extended sounds that parallel, in their own way, the expanded techniques that avant-garde music creators like to bring to acoustic instruments. The clarinet-voice-percussion trio Sputter Box presents six works for its unusual sonic combination on a CD that, although short (40 minutes), pulls vocal contributions through a wide variety of styles and sounds. Martha Callison Horst’s Exchanges explores the vocalise environment, but not in any sense of vocal training (the original use of vocalise): there are syllables and breaths and individual vowel and consonant sounds combining, rather uneasily, with the clarinet and percussion elements. Allison McIntosh’s Snapshot of the Red Eclipse is closer to a song, using words by Anna Goodson, but the instruments do not so much accompany the voice as surround it with sounds, especially percussive ones. Filippo Scaramucci’s Vita vana, using words by Tito Balestra, mostly repeats its title nearly ad infinitum, sometimes with clarity and sometimes with intensity and sometimes with a sarcastic edge. Daijana Wallace’s Stillness to..... (titled/punctuated that way) is the audio portion of a multimedia work; it consists of a number of disconnected and irrelevant-to-each-other phrases (all intended to connect in some way to the ellipsis of the title), ranging from countdowns to words expressing emotion, with a touch of an instrument here and there. Bethany Younge’s Doublespeak uses techniques similar to Horst’s but carries them further with indrawn breaths, bits of chants, and other fragments of sound coming into the forefront – and complementing similarly fragmentary instrumental elements. And Brendan Sweeney’s Séance Serenade is one of those works with no meaning unless you know its genesis: it is supposed to reflect a soprano being possessed by composers of the past during a séance – but what it sounds like is a combination of shrieks and screams and vocal exclamations of all sorts intermingled with snippets of instrumental punctuation points. The whole CD wears its “experimental” bone fides on its sleeve and, if it does make an impression on an audience interested in how vocalizing fits into contemporary music trends, is unlikely to be a disc that bears repeated listening. 

     Much the same is true of a slightly longer (48-minute) disc of music by Argentine composer Tomás Gueglio. The CD offers five multi-short-movement works (containing two to four movements of two to four-and-a-half minutes) performed by three modern-music ensembles. Some contemporary composers absolutely require listeners to know the extramusical inspirations of their creations in order to follow the music, and that is certainly the case for Gueglio: everything on this disc involves music from a 1940s Argentine movie called Cita en la frontera, in which one of the composer’s grandmothers appeared. Without knowing the personal connection, the movie connection, the time period of the film, or Argentine filmmaking in general, a listener will have no touchpoints for understanding the music or even knowing what is going on. Gueglio does try to give the movie-sourced texts of his works a level of greater generality by rearranging them rather than giving them in the movie’s sequence, but by no stretch of the imagination does this material reach out to any but the most rarefied possible audience – one whose cultural heritage and understanding of film are thoroughly in synch with Gueglio’s own. The scoring of the four works on the CD does vary: for example, Madrigales del Rio is for female vocal quartet, while Triste y madrigal is for soprano, flute, French horn, harp, electric guitar, and violin. But the differing sonic environments do little to reach out to different potential audiences – and reaching out of any sort seems largely beside the point here, with Gueglio primarily interested in telling a story of his own to his own inner circle (family included). Lamarque Songs, Soap Madrigals, Canciones que el río murmura – the titles of these little vocal groupings tie only to personal referents; and most individual movements are simply numbered rather than named, so those not already in the know get no guidance toward meaning beyond what they bring to the material themselves. Some of the vocal writing is actually handled interestingly, and the supplements to the voices – including electronics – help enlarge the aural canvas. But Gueglio, like many avant-garde composers, seems little concerned with any sort of communicative canvas, preferring a kind of navel-gazing music whose very narrowness shuts out those not already in the know and not already fully committed to sharing the highly specific, thoroughly personalized thoughts and feelings that the composer explores in his own way and for reasons of his own.

(+++) 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.