(+++) THE ROAD TO PURPOSE

Let’s Change the World: How to Work within International Development Organizations to Make a Difference. By Emiliana Vegas, Ed.D. Rowman & Littlefield. $28.

     The drive to make things better, to improve the planet we all share, may be no more urgent today than in the past – but in our technology-driven world, it certainly seems more urgent, as we are exposed to so much more detail about everything that is bad or wrong, everything that falls short of some sort of ideal (with the various ideals often being culturally determined – an issue in itself). In the past, the urge to improve things tended to be locally focused, if only because knowledge of distant places was less and speed of communication much less than is the case today. Now, though, young people have instant access to just about anywhere, and to information regarding just about anything, and they can and do focus on events everywhere in the world – with greater understanding than young people had in the past of just how interconnected disparate countries, cultures and concerns really are.

     How to navigate this? Harvard professor Emiliana Vegas, whose own improve-the-world credentials come from her work at the World Bank, Inter-American Bank and Brookings Institution, gives her personal answer in Let’s Change the World, a book aimed at “talented individuals who want to improve the lives of the most vulnerable populations in the poorest parts of the world.” The formulation says nothing about being an “influencer,” nothing about TikTok and Snapchat videos, and, tellingly, nothing about insisting on an ideal of work-life balance – although Vegas does have something to say on that topic: “As a rule of thumb, when a specific job brings me a sense of purpose and excitement (and thus satisfaction) for at least 70 percent of the time, I stay. Once that share falls, it is time to move on.” Young readers can take this to heart – but as an ideal, not an automatic occurrence or must-have.

     The field of international development organizations – however defined – is, after all, vast. Vegas’ book opens, even before the Introduction, with four single-spaced pages of acronyms and abbreviations, a veritable alphabet soup of assistance. Readers looking for another point of entry to the topic can simply visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_agencies to get an idea of how big this field is, how many component parts it has, and how complex it can be to navigate one’s way through it.

     First, though, one must navigate one’s way into it, and that is actually where Vegas’ book is most helpful. After listing what she regards as the five types of international development organizations (IDOs), Vegas explains what would-be world changers will need in order to become a member. Education, education, education is the basis, she says, including, in college, taking “as many social science courses as you are able, for example, economics, public policy analysis, and sociology.” Then add math, statistics, data analysis and econometrics “so that you may qualify for entry-level research assistant positions or consulting jobs within IDOs.” And be sure to become fluent in a second or third language.

     If this sounds like a daunting prospect, IDO-based world changing may not be a good fit: even graduate students, she writes, must take “courses that are challenging” as they focus on “investing in a professional network that you can later tap into during the course of your career.” Indeed, networking is an absolutely crucial requirement: Vegas says she “can’t emphasize this latter point enough.” Furthermore, if you are not of college age and just starting on the road to IDOs but are mid-career and hoping to switch to a field you believe will be more satisfying, you must “be prepared to accept a lower position to begin with.” None of this is easy, or intended to be. A few social-media postings here and there will not get you from here to there.

     How did Vegas herself manage her own career progress? She explains some of the basics in chapters called “Standing Out from the Crowd” and “The Paths Worth Taking,” emphasizing (indeed, italicizing) the necessities of technical skills and the ability to work effectively with diverse people and the capacity to deliver quality products that comply with the allocated budgets and timelines. Yet again: anyone without sufficient drive, determination and intensity need not pursue this approach to world-changing.

     Having set the scene for readers who want to work within IDOs, Vegas moves on to book sections called “How You Thrive” and “How to Make a Real Difference,” using herself as an example and getting significantly more deeply into everyday operational issues involving IDOs. This means the book becomes increasingly acronym-heavy: a single, typical two-page spread includes IDO, IDB, ESW, LMICs, WB, SIEF, CN, and RCT. It also means that many of the recommendations and suggestions would apply to ongoing career work in any business environment: “Moving Up the Corporate Ladder” (one chapter title) is scarcely an IDO-only topic. And the illustrative material Vegas offers may be more than a little overwhelming, as when she creates a full-page table called “How Various Technical and Managerial Positions (Using HD and Education as Examples) Fit within the WB’s Matrix.” Similarly, her commentaries on toxic supervisors and “The Power of a People Person” (another chapter title) are applicable to many, many workplaces.

     Vegas is scarcely naïve about the field of IDOs, saying that she knows there are people in IDOs who really care about their organizations’ missions and the people that the IDOs are supposed to help, even though “these institutions can be riddled with limitations and inefficiencies” and “sometimes their staff are more interested in pursuing individual agendas than the institutional mission.” So her enthusiasm about her chosen career is tempered by a sense of reality. And although Vegas is in her 50s, she clearly believes that Let’s Change the World will reach out effectively to readers 30+ years younger: “I hope this book will encourage those interested in pursuing careers in development to really go for it,” she writes with emphasis. What she does not do, likely because she is too close to her field to have the sort of overview that young readers will bring to it, is to explain in detail exactly how her personal work – and, by implication, theirs – would “make a difference.” Vegas’ contributions to what she considers world-changing are in the form of books such as Incentives to Improve Teaching: Lessons from Latin America and articles such as School choice, stratification, and information on school performance: Lessons from Chile, and When education expenditure matters: An empirical analysis of recent international data. Will fired-up college students see the creation of material such as this as sufficiently world-changing to make them willing to dedicate the time and effort required to break into IDOs and rise through the groups’ ranks? Will those who want things to be improved immediately, if not sooner, find Vegas’ recommendations a satisfactory road map for their personal and professional lives? Perhaps – or perhaps Vegas’ book will serve to show even the most-well-meaning readers that when one talks about changing the world, one is really talking about changing a very small piece of it over a very long time period while working one’s way through a very large number of difficulties and obstacles. Those unwilling to accept that reality, those hoping instantly to Photoshop wide-ranging, lasting improvements while proclaiming themselves “influencers,” will take scarcely any useful lessons, much less world-changing ones, from Let’s Change the World.

(+++) LARGER SCALE AND SMALLER

Carlos Simon: The Block; Tales—A Folklore Symphony; Songs of Separation; Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra. J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano; National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. NSO. $20.98 (SACD).

Music for Clarinet, Cello and Piano by Kinan Azmeh, Pierre Jalbert, Todd Cochran, Libby Larsen, David Ludwig, and Lowell Liebermann. Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet; Dmitri Atapine, cello; Hyeyeon Park, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Music for Violin and Piano by Gabriella Smith, Paul Wiancko, Cristina Spinei, Timo Andres, Leilehua Lanzilotti, and Christopher Cerrone. Rachel Lee Priday, violin; David Kaplan, piano. Orchid Classics. $16.99.

     Composers have always varied widely in the scope of their musical thinking and in their beliefs about the best instrument or set of instruments through which to convey their musical thoughts. The especially fortunate ones had ready access to larger or smaller ensembles, or highly talented individual performers, as they wished – these were typically the court composers of the Classical era and earlier. Nowadays the closest a composer can come to “court” is to be designated composer-in-residence for a symphony orchestra – and that is what has given Carlos Simon (born 1986) the enviable opportunity to create large-scale symphonic works for the National Symphony Orchestra. Recordings of live performances of four of his works, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, are now available on the NSO’s in-house label. The first piece on the disc dates to before Simon became composer-in-residence in 2021: he created The Block in 2018. It is one of those works whose genesis the audience needs to know in order to appreciate it fully: Simon was inspired by Romare Bearden’s cut-paper art about the Harlem area of New York City. Those unfamiliar with the art or the milieu it depicts will at least hear some interesting contrasts between the full orchestra and a small number of instruments, notably piano and drum kit. More interesting is Tales—A Folklore Symphony (2021), which effectively melds multiple styles while paying tribute (likely consciously) to Simon’s personal background as the son of a preacher. Certainly spirituals and works with spiritual qualities pervade the music, to especially good effect in the third and longest movement, Go Down Moses (Let My People Go). Here the underlying music is pushed, pulled, expanded and arranged in multiple ways, and the resonance of the Biblical tale of the oppression of the Jews with the more-contemporary concerns of African-Americans is made clear without becoming overbearing. And then the fourth movement, based on the folk song about John Henry the steel-drivin’ man, provides an effective conclusion that raises some intriguing questions in an age of artificial intelligence: John Henry defeats mechanization but dies in the attempt, and the song celebrates his life – but that life is over. Simon’s use of brass and percussion to hammer home (almost literally) the elements of the song is particularly well-thought-through. Tales is the most-effective work on the SACD, whose first-rate sound helps bring out the details of a particularly well-scored piece that Noseda and the orchestra handle with as much attentiveness and respect as they give to the rest of Simon’s music. After Tales, the two remaining pieces on the disc, both from 2023, are somewhat lesser offerings – not disappointments, certainly, but lacking the scope, scale and emotional intensity of Tales. Simon truly wants them to make emotional connections, notably using a mezzo-soprano for Songs of Separation, which is interestingly based on 13^th-century Persian poetry and which gives J’Nai Bridges plenty of opportunities to emote – but which seems to be trying a bit too hard to assert its foundational attempt to connect audiences of today with ancient but still-relevant feelings of loss. And Wake Up! Concerto for Orchestra, although it gives the various sections and some individual instruments plenty of chances to shine, is nowhere near the level of analogous pieces by Bartók and Kodály. Simon’s work is a showpiece, in particular for brass and percussion, but its glitter is largely surface-level and might have worked better in shorter, encore-length form than it does at its 20-minute extent. Taken as a whole, this recording shows Simon to be a skilled orchestrator and a worthy user of the excellent performance forces to which his appointment has given him entry. But it is hard to imagine these works, with the possible exception of Tales, becoming part of other orchestras’ regular offerings.

     Contemporary composers without ongoing access to large instrumental groups – that would be most of them – tend to channel their creativity into chamber-music forms, not only to make performances more likely but also because there are significant advantages in clarity and communicative potential when writing for a small, intimate ensemble. The six world première recordings on a clarinet-focused MSR Classics release address that potential in varying ways. One work, A Scattered Sketchbook (2012) by Kinan Azmeh (born 1976), is for clarinet and cello; the other five also include piano. Azmeh’s set of six short “sketches” meanders pleasantly here and there, with some gentle clarinet-led rocking (No. 2), a few bits of expressive cello pizzicato (Nos. 3 and 4), a touch of argumentative instrumental dialogue (No. 6), and more. Ultraviolet (2013) by Pierre Jalbert (born 1967) emerges from sonic depths into brighter spheres. Soul-Bird (2022) by Todd Cochran (born 1951) focuses more on disconnections among the instruments than on their complementarity. Trio Noir (2022) by Libby Larsen (born 1950) is not especially dark, but its insistent dissonances and widely separated intervals give it an emotionally distanced feeling. Flowers in the Desert (2009/2022) by David Ludwig (born 1974) consists of five short pieces that start by making the clarinet sound like a flute and continue by undermining any sense of all the instruments’ warmth and expressive potential – a reflection, perhaps, of a bleak landscape, and in any case a mostly bleak musical one except in the third piece, Mille regrets de vous abandonner (Des Prez). The final work on the CD, Trio (2015/2022) by Lowell Liebermann (born 1961), is also the longest, nearly twice the length of any of the other pieces here. Its three movements show Liebermann’s typical attentiveness to individual instruments’ timbres and capabilities. Dissonances are pronounced, but they are employed as part of the overall sound world rather than for surface-level effect, and Liebermann does not hesitate to include some rather old-fashioned lyricism in the central Largo before building the concluding Allegro into an effective interplay of instruments. This is the most-successful work on the CD, although all the pieces feature intriguing elements that show their composers’ abilities to work in small-ensemble forms. Romie de Guise-Langlois, Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park perform quite well together, with sensitivity to the nuances of the music and to the requirements of small-group interplay.

     The seven world premières, by six composers, on a new Orchid Classics release featuring Rachel Lee Priday and David Kaplan, similarly explore sonorities and the intricacies of instrumental relationships – here using only two performers, violinist and pianist, in a combination somewhat more typical for chamber music than that of clarinet, cello and piano. The underlying concept of the Priday/Kaplan disc, however, is anything but typical: titled Fluid Dynamics, it is supposed to represent the composers’ thoughts about the physical phenomena of the flow of liquids and, through those thoughts, to communicate something about the oceanography studies of Georgy Manucharyan. The title also indicates that the aural dynamics of the pieces on the disc are fluid – quite fluid, in fact. If all of that sounds hopelessly abstruse and highly unlikely to generate any feelings of connection for the vast majority of listeners – well, so be it. Yes, the project (which has a visual element that of course cannot be captured on an audio CD) operates in a very rarefied realm, but as always with such endeavors, it is worth considering whether the music as music has something to offer audiences that may have neither time nor inclination to explore the foundational underpinnings of the presentation. Unsurprisingly, the music is very much a mixed bag, and not entirely a fluid one. Entangled on a Rotating Planet by Gabriella Smith (born 1991) has the violin sounding like a sound wave rather than imitating a watery one. Waterworks by Paul Wiancko (born 1983) alternates chordal and single-line elements and produces an overall sound of old-fashioned fiddling. Convection Loops by Cristina Spinei (born 1984) weaves a surprising degree of lyricism above a wavelike undercurrent. Three Suns by Timo Andres (born 1985) proceeds chordally at a deliberate pace, then offers contrasting scalar material. Leilehua Lanzilotti (born 1983) is represented by two pieces, a single-movement five-minute one and a three-movement one that is just a bit longer. The single movement, ko’u inoa (no capital letters – a common title affectation of some modern composers), has a repetitive ostinato quality that pulls the violin into near-feedback-sounding territory. The first movement of to speak in a forgotten language (again no capital letters) further explores the same sonic phenomenon and throws in some intense squeals; the second is a gradual crescendo/decrescendo with percussive overtones; the third overtly offers repetitive, pointed electronic-sounding aural elements that are quite far from any traditional definition of music even if they elucidate physics in some specific way. The final and longest work on this short (48-and-a-half-minute) CD bears the most traditional title, Sonata for Violin and Piano, and is by Christopher Cerrone (born 1984). Listeners who have not read up on fluid dynamics can still get a strong hint of the intellectual underlayment of this project from the titles of Cerrone’s three movements: Fast and focused, with gradually increasing intensity; Still and spacious, but always moving forward; and Dramatic, violent, rhythmic, very precise. In strictly musical terms, however, Cerrone’s movements sound little different from other pieces proffered on this disc. The most-interesting of them is the second, which contrasts individual piano notes with violin harmonics that are apparently intended to be as screechy as possible. Ultimately, listeners can pretty well swap the names of composers and/or pieces on this CD without losing or gaining anything – there is little distinctiveness or distinction here. Visual elements would surely elucidate the project’s overall focus to better effect, although even with them, there would be a sense of sameness regarding the audio portions of the presentation. Priday and Kaplan work well together in this repertoire, but they really do not have very much to work with – like a complex mathematical formula or physics experiment, this disc is directed at an “in” group and contains little that will be attractive to those not already enamored of its underlying premise.

(++++) AROUND AND AROUND WE GO

Rodgers & Hammerstein: Carousel. Nathaniel Hackmann, Mikaela Bennett, Sierra Boggess, Julian Ovenden, Francesca Chiejina, David Seadon-Young, Matthew Seadon-Young, Naomi Wakszlak; “Carousel” Ensemble and Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson. Chandos. $43.99 (2 SACDs).

     Just when everybody, including Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II themselves, knew that the duo could not possibly produce another success on the level of their first musical collaboration, Oklahoma!, along came Carousel and knocked everybody’s thinking for a loop. Several loops, in fact. The vast expansion of the Broadway musical’s musical environment that Oklahoma! represented was tied to what was, objectively speaking, a rather thin story line with basically formulaic characters – redeemed by a whole passel of utterly charming tunes. Even the dramatically necessary darkness, the ending with a death and its rapid dismissal, had something of a tacked-on feeling – none of which diminished the tremendous reception of Oklahoma! or reduced its impact by one iota. Its Pulitzer Prize was richly deserved.

     But then what? Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated on the film musical State Fair in 1945, but what about a second stage musical? The answer turned out to be Carousel, a rather oddly named work whose title points to colorful gaiety and happy warm-weather family outings but whose plot is dark and is driven by complex and even unpleasant characters and their interactions. That makes it sound as if Carousel is an opera, and in fact it is the most operatic of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s nine stage musicals – and, oddly enough, the one whose music has been least familiar.

     Oklahoma! was the first musical to have an original-cast recording with the music in its original orchestrations – although not quite everything was included, as became clear when John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London produced the Chandos release of all the music in all the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations. But the gulf between what was thought of as “all the music” and what really is “all the music” is far greater for Carousel, whose original-cast recording runs 55 minutes but whose new Wilson-led two-SACD release lasts more than an hour and a half. That is indeed opera-length, and to say that this recording is revelatory is a vast understatement.

     Carousel is about life and the afterlife, death and what comes after for those left behind and (to some extent) those who have passed on. Even at full length, and as befits its themes, it has fewer intensely memorable, bright and bubbly songs than Oklahoma!, although June Is Bustin’ Out All Over and, in particular, You’ll Never Walk Alone are among the greatest of all Rodgers and Hammerstein creations. But what a complex and character-driven piece Carousel turns out to be – especially so with the excellently chosen lead singers in this recording, all of whom know how to use their lines (spoken as well as sung) to explore and delineate their characters and their sometimes muddled (and thus very human) motivations. Carousel is based on a 1909 play called Liliom by Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnár – the play’s title means “lily” and refers not only to the flower commonly associated with death and funerals but also, in Hungarian slang, means “tough guy” and thus applies to the play’s and musical’s antihero. Liliom is renamed Billy Bigelow for the musical, the action is moved from Budapest to Maine, and the play’s gloomy ending is given a hopeful tinge of uplift for the musical – a significant change that apparently even Molnár himself appreciated.

     The innovations that make Carousel so important in Broadway history, although largely taken for granted nearly 80 years later, have freshness and renewed power as shaped by Wilson and his cast of singer/actors. One of those is the lack of an overture – the opening scene, which visually introduces the characters, turns out to work very well even without visuals. Also crucial to the design of Carousel are an extended ballet that advances the stage action and, again, makes some fine dramatic points even as an audio-only presentation; and the remarkable eight-minute Soliloquy in which the largely unsympathetic Billy Bigelow is transformed into someone with depth and at least some minimal potential for good as he contemplates becoming a father. Even the less-known and heretofore virtually unknown material comes to life here, and the orchestrations – begun by Bennett but, because Bennett had other commitments, turned over to and almost fully handled by Don Walker – are highly effective, thanks in part to the decision to record this release in a theater rather than a concert hall so as to produce the auditory ambience that Carousel would have had for its initial audiences. It is worth pointing out that Carousel opened with an orchestra of 39 players – an exceptionally large complement (Oklahoma! had 28) and some three times the size of typical modern theater orchestras. Wilson’s use of the original-size orchestra, the full original score, and an assemblage of performers who thoroughly understand their roles and their characters’ place within the world of Carousel makes this recording an unequaled presentation of and tribute to the musical, its creative team, and the ability sometimes to move from an outstanding creation to one even more outstanding. It was the third Rodgers and Hammerstein stage collaboration, Allegro, that would turn out to be a letdown – but that is very definitely another story.

(++++) SOLOISTS AND OTHERS

Horatio Parker: Organ Concerto; Wayne Oquin: Resilience; Christopher Rouse: Organ Concerto; Ives: Variations on “America.” Paul Jacobs, organ; Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos. $19.99.

Michele Mangani: Music for Clarinet and String Orchestra, and for Clarinet and Piano. Seunghee Lee, clarinet; Manhattan Chamber Players; Steven Beck, piano. Musica Solis. $25.

     The use of organ with other instruments remains something of a rarity, despite the importance of the organ’s emphatic appearance in such symphonic works as Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3, Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 7, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8. Using an organ as concerto solo is even less common, and that makes a new Naxos CD featuring Paul Jacobs and the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero very welcome indeed. The opening and closing works on the disc are especially noteworthy (so to speak) – and are in a sense related. The CD starts with the 1902 Organ Concerto by Horatio Parker (1863-1919). This is a highly worthwhile discovery (or rediscovery): although Parker was among the American composers of his time who were looking for an “American” musical sound, he was thoroughly steeped in and devoted to European models, and this concerto shows just how firmly he grasped them. The organ’s contributions to this finely wrought concerto are thoroughly thought-through and well-developed. The first movement, which takes up half the work’s 21 minutes, is stately and elegant, the interplay between organ and orchestra well-balanced and intelligently managed. The short second movement provides an interval of surprising delicacy and refinement, while the finale is broad, wide-ranging and emphatic – and played by Jacobs with considerable flair and expressive panache. Parker was not really an innovator in practice, whatever his intentions might have been, but he was a fine musical craftsman whose sure-handed approach to this concerto nicely showcases his considerable ability. He was not, however, a particularly salutary instructor of his most-famous pupil, Charles Ives, who almost offhandedly “Americanized” music while showing himself much less a respecter of tradition than Parker was (Ives’ Symphony No. 1 was specifically created under Parker’s tutelage, and sounds it). This Naxos CD ends with the solo-organ variations on “America” that Ives created in 1891 (when he was 17) for the Fourth of July, 1892, and that other composers have found irresistible to edit or modify: the version here was done by famed organist E. Power Biggs in 1949, and the work is best-known in its rather flashy orchestration by William Schuman (1910-1992). Most of the Ives variations in their organ version are actually rather subtle, and there is notable use of bitonality. Jacobs does not overplay the work, but explores it with mostly serious engagement (albeit with appropriate lightness in the third variation and the “Polonaise” fourth) and a fine sense of its overall structure. The other works on this CD are much more recent and of somewhat lesser interest. The Organ Concerto by Christopher Rouse (1949-2019) is a late work (2014) that sounds as if the composer is trying a bit too hard to assert his contemporary bone fides through intense (and loud) dissonance in the first movement before producing a much gentler and more congenial second movement Lento and then a rather neatly balanced concluding Presto that, however, never quite decides where it wants to go. And Resilience (2015) by Wayne Oquin (born 1977), although certainly dramatic enough in its contrast between organ and orchestra, seems more gestural than genuinely heartfelt: it is well-made but does not ultimately seem to have very much to say. This disc as a whole is a worthwhile exploration of some little-known repertoire, and Jacobs and Guerrero do a fine job presenting the material as engagingly as possible – although the older items here stand out more forcefully than do the newer ones.

     If Horatio Parker’s works were in a sense determinedly old-fashioned, that was less of a criticism in his time than a similar comment would be about a composer today. Yet Michele Mangani (born 1966) manages to be both old-fashioned in sound and fascinating in instrumental intricacy – at least on the basis of the clarinet-focused material on a new Musica Solis disc featuring Seunghee Lee. Only a single one of these 14 tracks, Theme for Clarinet (for clarinet and piano), has been recorded before, making the disc an interesting exploration of world première recordings. The first seven items, including six originals and an arrangement, are for clarinet and string orchestra. Executive is immediately impressive in its balance of solo and ensemble, its rhythmic vitality, and its exploration of the clarinet’s chalumeau range, where Lee appears to be particularly comfortable. Although it lasts only five-and-a-half minutes, it is the longest work on the disc. Pagina d’Album is warm and moderately paced, with a kind of film-music ethos about it. Intermezzo has similar sensibilities at an even slower speed. Next on the CD is Mangani’s arrangement of Piazzolla’s Tango Étude No. 3, which has a brightness and acerbity lacking in the CD’s first three tracks and provides a welcome contrast with them. Everything else on the disc is a Mangani original. Love Theme is a yearning “song without words” that is more sweet than plaintive. Dancing Doll is a very slow dance indeed, more a swaying than anything involving actual dance steps. And Ave Maria, the last clarinet-and-strings piece here, is similarly emotive without expressing any particular religious fervor – although its familiar theme is nicely handled. The next three tracks are the Tre Danze Latine for clarinet and piano: Contredanza is not strongly accented but has a pleasant lilt, Vals Criollo has considerable rhythmic vitality, and Chorinho is deliciously fast-paced and allows Lee and pianist Steven Beck plenty of opportunities to collaborate while bouncing material around. The four remaining works are, like most of the pieces here, standalone miniatures. Dreaming returns in clarinet-and-piano mode to the quiet wistfulness of most of the clarinet-and-strings works. Theme for Clarinet is slow, lies low on the instrument, and would fit a warm fantasy or rose-colored romantic sequence in a movie particularly well. Andante Malinconico is not significantly more melancholic than many of the other pieces offered here: Mangani paints almost always in darker colors and produces mostly crepuscular effects. The CD ends with Souvenir, yet another sweet and mostly quiet piece whose foundational gentleness fits the clarinet very well but whose emotions have by this time been quite thoroughly explored in other works on the disc. This is pretty music rather than anything profound, and the similarity of length and emotional heft of most works on this CD make its 50 minutes of music seem longer – unless the disc becomes background music, which it seems to invite itself to be. Its emotionally monochromatic nature makes this a (+++) recording despite the undeniable attractiveness of Lee’s playing and the skill of her string-ensemble and piano accompanists. Although in many cases they are individually effective, the pieces here are less satisfying when heard as the consecutive totality in which they are presented for this recording.