(++++) 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.

(++++) THE POWERS OF THE VOICE

Bach: Mass in B minor. Rebecca Myers, soprano; Aryssa Leigh Burrs, mezzo-soprano; Emily Marvosh, contralto; Jacob Perry, tenor; Edward Vogel, baritone; Paul Max Tipton, bass-baritone; Apollo’s Singers and Apollo’s Fire conducted by Jeannette Sorrell. AVIE. $32.99 (2 CDs). 

Rozalie Hirs: come sempre; Alba Potes: TRINOS; Kaija Saariaho: From the Grammar of Dreams; Jeffrey Holmes: NauðaR Níu (The Nine Needs); Pascal Dusapin: Two Walking; Marti Epstein: Melisande. Susan Narucki, soprano; Kirsten Ashley Wiest, coloratura soprano. New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     An extraordinary fusion of historically informed performance with tremendously accessible, audience-focused presentation, the Apollo’s Fire presentation of Bach’s Mass in B minor is one of those rare recordings that is both intellectually impressive and emotionally compelling. It is certainly not necessary to be Catholic to become enraptured by this music – after all, Bach himself was a devoted Lutheran, and his creation of this Catholic Mass has always been slightly puzzling. Nor is familiarity with Latin necessary, so well does Bach set the words to music and so attractively do the soloists and chorus present them. The verbiage and music alike reach out directly to listeners, wherever they may be playing this AVIE release, just as they reach out across the two centuries since Bach assembled this Mass in its final form. Jeannette Sorrell is a remarkably thoughtful and remarkably perceptive conductor, highly sensitive to the many moods of this Mass and the differing orchestrations and styles through which Bach put it together. Solid scholarship and understanding underlie this recording – along with truly outstanding sound – but they remain wholly in the background where the audience is concerned, which is as it should be. Bach intended the words here to affirm and cement faith; Sorrell extends that mission of affirmation to apply to the music in and of itself. For example, the proclamations by trumpets and timpani at the start of the Gloria section, after the solemnity and structural regularity of the Renaissance-style conclusion of the Kyrie, immediately pull the listener into a bright and celebratory world – indeed, this Mass is more in D major, which dominates in the Gloria and elsewhere, then in its B minor first segment. The passion of the vocal delivery by soloists and chorus never flags in this performance, and if it does not reflect the Christian Passion to all contemporary listeners, that is of small account: the emotional arousal and multifaceted communicative powers of the music sweep the audience along through moods of uncertainty and sorrow to ones of glorification, hoped-for salvation (which one can define however one wishes), and eventually – and this is really Bach’s point as well as Sorrell’s – to peace. The fact that the traditional Mass ends with a plea for peace has always been one of its most salient features: after all the concerns and fears and familiar words of praise have been put forth, the eventual wish is not for a grand resurrection of believers or eternal punishment of nonbelievers, but simply for peace. Bach handles the Dona nobis pacem with exceptional sensitivity, to which Sorrell and Apollo’s Fire thoroughly resonate: the dynamics, whose careful balance is a highlight throughout this performance, beautifully reflect Bach’s conclusion with the celebratory melding of trumpets and drums, turning the ending of the Mass in B minor into a prayer whose fulfillment is assured, not one (as in many other composers’ settings) in which the finale calls for something desired but by no means certain. Sorrell’s vocal soloists are one and all focused on clarity of verbal delivery and production of emotional heft for the words: the wording is formulaic, but the delivery most assuredly is not. The two-dozen-strong period-instrument orchestra and 22-member chorus are balanced in much more than their size: these are the forces that Bach himself requested for this Mass, although he did not always get what he wanted. What matters here is that the grandeur of the work comes through far more clearly with these relatively modest performance numbers than with the much larger instrumental and vocal groupings often used for it (even in other period-instrument presentations). The balance is overtly to the vocal elements, as is abundantly clear again and again, as when the solo voices enter one at a time to build the start of the Credo. But the subtlety and elegance of the instrumentation also come through again and again – from the exceptional use of high-register natural horn in the Quoniam to the intimacy of solo tenor with flute and continuo in the Benedictus. Every element of the Mass is carefully considered and lovingly shaped in this memorable performance, which is one of those rare recordings that sound as if they simply flow together with natural, forthright elegance – a sure indicator of how much thought, analysis and rehearsal were needed to attain this level of apparent ease of flow and apparent simplicity of emotive display. 

     It goes without saying that nothing as resplendent as Bach’s Mass in B minor is being created by contemporary composers – indeed, it is arguable that the work is one of a kind and has never been matched by anyone. But composers before, during and after Bach’s time had their own ideas about communicating feelings, emotions and meanings through the human voice – and treating the voice sometimes as an instrument rather than, or in addition to, a deliverer of text. This last approach has become far more common in modern music and is taken to something of an extreme on a new (+++) release from New Focus Recordings, featuring Susan Narucki and Kirsten Ashley Wiest. The human voice is absolutely central here: five of the six works on the CD are written for two voices without instruments. This puts on the vocalists alone the requirement to deliver whatever meaning – or meaningless sounds – the composer wishes listeners to hear. Exactly what that is varies quite a bit from piece to piece, but it is safe to say that nothing here would ever be mistaken for anything by Bach – or anything partaking of his penchant for verbal clarity. The disc opens with Rozalie Hirs’ 2025 come sempre (spelled all in lowercase) – in which the words are clear enough for anyone who knows Italian, the language into which Hirs’ poem, originally in Dutch, is here translated. Next is Alba Potes’ 2024 TRINOS (spelled all in uppercase), a set of 12 under-a-minute verbal snippets that take the voices to extremes in an of embrace microtonal intervals. The work is gestural rather than word-focused in putting forth a variety of landscapes, ranging from the dramatic to the almost-lyrical. Kaija Saariaho’s From the Grammar of Dreams (1988) consists of five Sylvia Plath excerpts in which the text is subsumed within an environment of heavy breathing, vocalise, syllabification, trills, and occasional cooperative duality. Language is the basis here but scarcely the point: this is environment creation through vocal piling-on. Jeffrey Holmes’ 2025 NauðaR Níu (The Nine Needs) is indeed in nine segments, and differs from the works elsewhere on the CD in including percussion – which strikes periodically as if to underline the words or place them in a kind of ritual context defined by chimes and gongs. The texts may or may not be the point: as the work’s title indicates, they come from Old Norse and are scarcely likely to be comprehensible to any contemporary audience except as sound patterns – which put them in a “grammar of dreams” of their own. The relief of hearing something other than the two intertwined female voices does, however, make this work stand out from those surrounding it on the disc. Pascal Dusapin’s Two Walking (1994) is a five-item Gertrude Stein evocation, and Stein’s repetitive absurdist disconnected prose would seem to be quite strange enough to fit naturally into a recording such as this one. But Dusapin taffy-pulls the verbiage through extended vocal techniques, odd interminglings of syllables and rhythmic fragments, and a structure that imposes irreconcilable oddity on material that, truth be told, is quite odd enough on its own. The CD then concludes with Marti Epstein’s Melisande, a 2022 work that at 13 minutes is by far the most extended single track on the disc. It uses Maurice Maeterlinck texts from his Pelléas and Mélisande, but instead of accentuating or even exploring the ethereality of the stage work, much less its many portentous or mysterious silences, Epstein has the voices now laid over each other, now producing back-and-forth call-and-response passages, now simply offering sounds that complement or contrast between the vocalists. It is interesting that Dusapin and Epstein source their works to literary antecedents already well outside the mainstream – deconstructionist cubism for Stein, Symbolism for Maeterlinck – and seek to take matters into ever-more-abstruse realms. All the works on this CD actively assert their avant-garde bona fides and have very little in common with musical/vocal endeavors of the past in terms of clarity or desired non-superficial audience connection. What they do show, however, is that composers of every age have perceived the human voice as a significant communicative element that can be used to uplift, elucidate, explore, confuse or bewilder an audience in ways that instruments are not able to do on their own.

(++++) UNEXPECTED INSTRUMENTATION

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Complete Organ Works, Volume II—13 Prières, Op. 64; 12 Études pour les pieds seulement, Nos. 1-6; Benedictus, Op. 54. Joseph Nolan, organ. Signum Classics. $19.99. 

Schumann: Transcriptions by Andreas N. Tarkmann—Waldszenen for Chamber Orchestra; Concerto for Violin transcribed for Clarinet; Tarkmann: September—Intermezzo for Clarinet and String Orchestra. Roeland Hendrikx, clarinet; Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Vilmantas Kaliunas. Coviello Classics. $20.99. 

     The rediscovery of Alkan has understandably focused on his enormous pianistic talents, both as composer and as performer. But Alkan was in fact a keyboard virtuoso, not specifically wedded to the piano. Joseph Nolan is demonstrating that fact quite clearly in his ongoing cycle of Alkan’s music for organ, showing that Alkan – like Liszt – created  considerable music for both keyboard instruments. In Alkan’s case, in fact, make that all three keyboard instruments, for Alkan was also a noted virtuoso on the pedal piano, a now-nearly-obsolete instrument that organists could use for practice (since it did not require installation in a church or concert hall) and that performers, definitely including Alkan, could use to display compositions requiring more than the two hands available to piano soloists. In fact, Alkan’s works for pedal piano tend to be listed by him as being for piano three hands if the pedal piano itself is not available – or, failing all that, to be played on the organ. Nolan’s second volume of Alkan’s organ music actually includes a heaping helping of pedal-piano material played on the organ, and is all the more intriguing as a result. The 13 Prières, Op. 64, were designated as being for organ or pedal piano or piano three hands, and under Nolan’s two hands (plus two feet) they are quite impressive, filled with characteristic Alkan oddities and also with a firm sense of control and exploration that lifts them well past the realm of character pieces. Alkan’s skillful mood-setting is continually apparent. There is something spooky about No. 3; No. 6 features unexpected interjections; No. 8 has the fastest tempo marking of the set (Tempo giusto) and seems far too ebullient to be labeled a prayer – unless one remembers that some prayers are expressions of joy and are anything but plaintive. No. 10 is rather weirdly marchlike, and in No. 12, dissonance sneaks into an Allegretto that is otherwise light, bouncy, even jaunty. The set ends Largement et Majestueusement with a piece in which a theme of purity and clarity emerges to supplant the magisterial opening. This is an impressive set of short works – but not as unusual as the 12 Études pour les pieds seulement, the first six of which are heard here (the remainder will presumably follow in a later volume, although the information provided with this disc does not explicitly say so). The notion of composing works only for the pedals of the pedal piano would seem nearly inexplicable for anyone other than Alkan, whose exploratory urges were pretty much unbounded. Hearing Nolan negotiate the organ pedals in so exemplary a manner calls up visions of all sorts of twists and turns and bodily impossibility. The acrobatics required to play these pieces make it seem that the performer must be a contortionist to negotiate them – a very, very skilled contortionist. The third piece, Fughetta, and the fourth and fifth, both marked Moderato, all require levels of pacing and accuracy of execution that are prodigious indeed, and Nolan is all the more impressive for the striking evenness of his playing, which makes it seem as if these short pieces are trifles – which they most definitely are not. The longest work on the disc, lasting about nine minutes here, is Benedictus, Op. 54, and this is a tour de force in many ways – as well as an education in the differences between organ and pedal-piano performance. It is well worth searching for a pedal-piano version of this piece online and listening to it in juxtaposition with Nolan’s organ performance to get an idea of just how wide-ranging Alkan’s thinking and performance capabilities were. The two versions become a study in contrast: the power and dynamism of the organ, called forth so well by Nolan, contrast with the contrapuntal clarity and elegance of the pedal piano, which was Alkan’s first choice for this piece. Nolan’s excellent survey of Alkan’s organ music is becoming an invitation to a further rethinking of the many astonishments of this composer, for whom, it turns out, keyboards of all sorts were entry points to musical experiences unlike any others of his time. Or ours. 

     The clarinet is scarcely the oddity that the pedal piano is nowadays – certainly since Mozart’s time, it has been quite familiar and much-loved by composers, performers and audiences. But there is something different about its handling by Andreas N. Tarkmann (born 1956). Tarkmann listens to music composed one way and hears it as if it was composed in a different way. He has, for example, transcribed a number of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words for oboe and string orchestra, producing music that remains curiously true to the works’ underlying spirit even as it presents an aural palette unchosen by the composer. Tarkmann has now turned his attention to Schumann and to the clarinet, for which Schumann certainly knew how to write, witness the Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, for clarinet and piano, and the unusually scored and unusually warm Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132, for clarinet, viola and piano. What Schumann never did was to produce a clarinet concerto – so Tarkmann gives him one, courtesy of an arrangement of Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Dating to 1853 – the same year as Märchenerzählungen – the concerto has a complex history, was not performed until 1937, and has never garnered as much attention or interest as other important Schumann works. It is important, however, and the potential gain from hearing it played on an instrument other than the violin is at best arguable. Tarkmann nevertheless has re-created it as a clarinet concerto, and it has to be said that it is quite interesting, albeit somewhat quixotic, to hear it in this guise. The arrangement is a clever and skillful one that acknowledges the clarinet’s emotive capabilities while transferring the virtuoso requirements of the concerto, sometimes a bit uneasily, to the solo wind instrument. It is the lyricism of the concerto that is accentuated by Tarkmann, and Roeland Hendrikx presents it with considerable élan, the slow central movement being especially affecting. The finale does not lie as comfortably on the clarinet, although Hendrikx certainly plays it well, and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra under Vilmantas Kaliunas provides an attractive accompaniment. In this form, Schumann’s concerto is mostly a curiosity: there is no particular rethinking here, no special level of insight generated by use of the clarinet rather than the violin, although listeners familiar with the concerto may find it intriguing to contemplate it in this unexpected fashion. Much the same can be said of Tarkmann’s chamber-orchestra version of the very familiar Waldszenen, Op. 82. Being better-known than the violin concerto, Waldszenen may be somewhat riper for reconsideration, or consideration from a different angle. Certainly it is atmospheric in unexpected ways: Jäger auf der Lauer, for example, has greater implied menace here than on piano, while Verrufene Stelle is more overtly ominous than on keyboard. In fact, what Tarkmann has done here is to make the implications of Schumann’s piano suite into more-definite character pieces. This makes the music in some senses more accessible, although it has never really seemed inaccessible on piano. Kaliunas does as good a job here as in the concerto, but the whole question of “why?” remains unanswered for both arrangements. Of course, it is easy to respond with “why not?” – and listeners comfortable with that will find this a (++++) CD, although others may look at it more quizzically and rank it as a (+++) offering. For both groups, the three-minute encore written by Tarkmann himself, September, is a pleasant clarinet-and-piano trifle that has the sound of film music – think of a love scene in the countryside. The piece does not aim high, but it reaches its intended level without apparent difficulty, closing the disc with a pleasant mixture of calm and beauty.

(+++) HEE-HEE MAN

The Adventures of He-Man and Porter! Skeletor Ate My Homework. By Stephan Pastis. Art by Will Henry. Mattel Press. $14.99. 

     You know something is strictly a promotional piece when the page before the title page has a copyright notice listing no fewer than 16 characters with the ^TM superscript to indicate trademark registration. As a 192-page commercial, this awkwardly titled book is actually not bad, but it is a 192-page commercial, and any adult who happens upon it without knowing what it is and what it is for is likely to end up victimized by multiple demands for action figures and/or movie streaming and/or movie-related comics and/or all sorts of multimedia connections and figures and cartoons and other stuff dating back more than 40 years to the original Masters of the Universe^TM action figures from 1982. 

     Those unfamiliar with MOTU will find nothing of interest here, except that ©Mattel clearly hopes the book – with far more humor than MOTU has heretofore possessed, thanks to silly, immature, thoroughly juvenile joke-related writing by Pearls Before Swine and Timmy Failure creator Stephan Pastis – will bring new young victims…err, interested children…into the U of MOTU. 

     The irrelevant storyline, such as it is, draws on the usual tropes of fish-out-of-water travel-between-worlds fantasy, such as they are. Porter Avery of Earth, being raised by a single father (no explanation given), falls into a box in his home’s attic (rather than, say, walking into a wardrobe cabinet) and finds himself in Eternia^TM, which is where all the action is because that is where all the action figures are, in particular super good guy He-Man^TM and super bad-but-completely-ineffectual bad guy Skeletor^TM. Various characters, good and bad, try to figure out who or what Porter is and what, if anything, he has to do with the looming battle (battles always loom, don’t they?) between the forces of good and the forces of not-good. This involves a couple of trips back and forth between Earth and Eternia^TM, for reasons best described as “why not?” The one transporting Porter^{NOT YET TM} and Teela^TM onto a swing set so Teela^TM can have an adventure tripping over just about everything in Porter’s sleeping father’s bedroom while he does not so much as stir from dreamland is but one example of easy, meaningless, mildly amusing interworld transport. 

     “Mildly amusing” is the point here, to the extent that anything has a point, or is pointed, or pointy. Humor is one characteristic that is in short supply in MOTU, and Pastis knows how to supply some at and below the Timmy Failure level by, for example, having Skeletor^TM cast as an inept corporate executive who says “My anxiety is off the charts” and “I should really start checking references,” while his henchthings warn each other that “all of this is going in your end-of-the-year performance reviews.” There is also occasional (very occasional) self-directed humor, as when Prince Adam^TM transforms himself into He-Man^TM and one of the bad guys remarks, “Well, aren’t you a beefcake?” There isn’t too much of this sort of self-amused writing, though, since Pastis is not going to risk denigrating the corporate environment by potentially undermining the underlying sales pitch for everything MOTU-related. This fantasy is, after all, something to be taken seriously in boardrooms that bear at most a passing resemblance to the castle chambers where Skeletor^TM plots his plots. 

     Pastis and illustrator Will Henry (whose work is described as “art” on the cover and title page, which is pushing the definition a bit) keep their tongues firmly in their cheeks throughout this mild romp, with words and pictures complementing each other well – as with the illustration of Man-At-Arms^TM holding pillows to his ears, telling inept mage Orko^TM that he is doing it “so I don’t have to listen to your babbling” (after which Man-At-Arms^TM compellingly argues, “LA LA LA LA LA! … I CAN’T HEARRRRRR YOU”). 

     In the end – written as “The End(?)” at the end so as to leave open the possibility of a sequel if actuarial evidence indicates a profit boost sufficient to justify whatever ©Mattel paid Pastis and Henry for this – the bad guys on Eternia^TM lose to the good guys, Porter is back on Earth and getting along better with his beleaguered and probably perpetually exhausted father, and the MOTU franchise boldly goes where every other fantasy franchise has gone before: into continuing expansion. Or so ©Mattel most ardently hopes.