(++++) THE FRUITS OF CURIOSITY

The Next Scientist: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of the World’s Great Scientists. By Kate Messner. Illustrated by Julia Kuo. Chronicle Books. $19.99.

     Weightier and more detailed than one would expect a 56-page picture book to be, Kate Messner’s The Next Scientist is one of those works intended to encourage today’s young readers to become whatever they wish to be as adults by exploring and delving deeply into their childhood passions. Messner cites an unusually large number of exemplars to make the point that pretty much anyone from pretty much anywhere can aspire to work in science – and can be successful at it. To emphasize the point, she uses a sort of diversity-equity-and-inclusion approach to science and scientists, one in which “the world’s great scientists” include, in juxtaposition and therefore apparent equivalence, Isaac Newton, Lonnie Johnson and Valerie Thomas; Johannes Kepler, Maria Mitchell and Adriana Ocampo; Jane Goodall, Farouk El-Baz, David de Santana and Karletta Chief; and so on. That is, she scatters a very few names of scientists who are generally recognized as towering figures among a plethora of names of scientists, most of them still living, who come from all sorts of places and backgrounds and are likely to be entirely unknown to the vast majority of adults who encounter The Next Scientist.

     Adults are not the target audience here, however. Messner does not include or mention Albert Einstein, or Niels Bohr, or Antony van Leeuwenhoek (despite sourcing her book in part to a book about him), or Marie Curie, or Galileo, or many others who might be expected to make at least a brief appearance here. She does fit Charles Darwin in, but her real interest is in telling young readers who do not already know of the great scientific thinkers of the past that there is important science being done now and that they can do scientific work in the future if they are so inclined. The result is a narrative sequence that, for example, first mentions NASA’s Adriana Ocampo (born 1955); then turns to Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), “the first female astronomer in the United States”; and then notes rather blandly that “Johannes Kepler also grew up to be an astronomer.”

     This sort of equivalence of accomplishments and rewriting of history – or re-evaluating it, if you prefer – will matter more to knowledgeable adults than to the young readers at whom The Next Scientist is aimed. The point of Messner’s writing – and of the illustrations by Julia Kuo, which homogenize the scientists and their eras so as to make everyone in the book closely resemble its target contemporary readership – is to find ways to connect today’s young people with “great scientists” who look and behave just like them. So Messner and Kuo present Ayah Bdeir (born 1982), a Lebanese girl who became a computer engineer; zoologist Joan Procter (1897-1931), shown in a wheelchair with a reference to her “chronic ill-health”; animal behaviorist Temple Grandin (born 1947), “who is autistic”; Japan’s Hiroshi Amano (born 1960), who helped develop LEDs; Ellen Ochoa (born 1958), “the first Hispanic woman in space”; and so forth. The clear if unstated message is that people from anywhere and everywhere, with any childhood interests, of any race and color and national origin, can and have become “great scientists,” especially in the modern era.

     This is an admirably upbeat message for young people driven by an intense interest in the world around them – the one thing that all the people mentioned in this book share. If the equivalences and evaluations-of-importance in The Next Scientist are oversimplified and not entirely accurate, that is a function of the book’s intent to showcase the potential of a career in science for any child with an inclination toward it. And there is an unusual bonus on the book’s inside back cover, not long after an imaginary scene showing scientists of many places and time periods reading in a modern library: Messner provides a list of some of the favorite books of some scientists she has mentioned. Unlike traditional “further reading” suggestions (Messner offers some of those as well), the list of scientists’ own favorites really might encourage young readers who are interested in pursuing specific fields to do some additional reading. Biologist Rosemary Grant (born 1936), for example, likes Adventures with Rosalind by Charlotte Austen, while roboticist Vijay Kumar (born 1962) favors the Hercule Poirot series by Agatha Christie. If nothing else in this book serves to connect its youthful readers with the scientists briefly profiled within its pages, a similar taste in literature just might do it.

(++++) BACK TO BASICS

Handel: Messiah, 1741 original version. Kara McBain, soprano; Dianna Grabowski, alto; Dann Coakwell, tenor; David Grogan, bass; Dallas Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra conducted by James Richman. Onyx. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Beethoven: The Early String Quartets—Op. 18, Nos. 1-6. Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violins; Jeremy Barry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello). Signum Classics. $37.99 (3 CDs).

     There is only one Messiah in Christian theology, but there are many Messiahs. Indeed, Handel himself is known to have performed 10 different versions after the work’s première in Dublin in 1742. Oddly enough, none of those versions was the one that Handel initially created: after setting down the overall structure of the work, its sequences and vocal assignments and pacing and (to some extent) instrumentation, the composer – as was his consistent practice – modified the music, especially the vocal elements, according to each performance venue and the availability and varying skill levels of different singers and instrumental ensembles. After Baron Gottfried van Swieten commissioned Mozart to update four Handel oratorios, including Messiah, to later tastes, the première of the Mozart-modified version in 1789 led to a further proliferation of versions that has continued to the present day – which brings us to the very first Messiah of all, which Handel never performed or heard. James Richman and the Dallas Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra deliver a surpassingly beautiful and wonderfully proportioned performance of this carefully rediscovered/re-created Messiah, including four highly sensitive and fine-sounding soloists plus, where appropriate (and in conformity with Handel’s own practice), contributions by a boy soprano, 13-year-old Hayden Smith. Nothing on this two-CD Onyx release will shock or even very much surprise listeners familiar with any of the innumerable other authentic (in one way or another) recordings of Messiah. The chorus numbers 25, as does the orchestra – which tunes to Baroque standards and includes both harpsichord (played by Richman) and organ, as well as violone and theorbo. The use of repeats and ornamentation is in accord with the practice of Handel’s time and the composer’s usual approach to opera: Messiah is an oratorio that partakes of a great deal of Handel’s operatic expertise, which is one reason it is so effective. Unsurprisingly, many of the details that differ in this version from those in other forms of Messiah are mostly of scholarly interest, but even casual listeners will likely notice some matters that differ here from what is heard elsewhere, including the use of soprano rather than chorus in How beautiful are the feet, the full repeat in The Trumpet shall sound, and the lengthened alto-tenor O Death, where is thy Sting? More accurately, this last duet is not lengthened here but shortened in later versions of Messiah – and that is really the point, or one of the points, of this splendid recording: every Messiah with which listeners are already acquainted is derived from this 1741 template, including the many modified versions made by Handel himself, the Mozart modification that became the basis for so much that came forth in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and the other versions intended to recapture the flavor of Handel’s masterpiece and present it to contemporary audiences using the instruments, tuning and vocal techniques of the composer’s time. If it is truer of Messiah than of much other great music that there is no “best” version available, it is also true that now, thanks to Richman and his uniformly excellent singers and instrumentalists, there is at last a way to hear the fount from which many, many renditions of Messiah flowed over the centuries, so that a listener’s cup runneth over with beauty and meaning.

     The time reversal of Beethoven’s string quartets by the Calidore Quartet involves not the discovery or rediscovery of original versions but the ensemble’s decision to present the music in reverse order: the group’s first Signum Classics release was of the late quartets, after which the middle quartets were presented, and now at last there is a three-CD set of the six early quartets, published in 1801 as Beethoven’s Op. 18. There is no particular reason for the Calidore players to have released their sequence this way, but it is certainly interesting to hear – after becoming familiar with the ensemble’s meticulous playing and convincing (if sometimes unusual) tempo choices in the late and middle works – how the players handle the comparative simplicity and frequent delicacy of the Mozart-and-Haydn-influenced Op. 18 works. These quartets were composed in the sequence 3, 1, 2, 5, 4 and 6, and it can be intriguing – in a tribute of sorts to the order of presentation of the Calidore Quartet’s Beethoven cycle – to listen to the group’s performances that way. No. 3 in D is gentle and lyrical throughout, with the performers keeping the interplay of themes and instrumental focus effective. No. 1 in F contains themes closely resembling ones used in a Haydn quartet and Mozart violin sonata, and here the players rightly focus on the emotional centrality of the slow movement (Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato, actually a revision by Beethoven of the original Adagio molto). No. 2 in G is the most Haydnesque of these quartets, and the Calidore Quartet plays it with all the grace and slight tinge of formality appropriate to a work that fairly closely resembles one by Beethoven’s teacher – although here too the Adagio cantabile slow movement (which, as with No. 1, is actually Beethoven’s replacement of an earlier version) has extra weight and is actually the work’s longest component. No. 5 in A is the strongest Mozart tribute in Beethoven’s Op. 18, being actually modeled on Mozart’s A major quartet, K. 464. Here too the Calidore players are sensitive to the longest movement, a theme-and-variations that stands in for the slow movement and is marked Andante cantabile. In the C minor No. 4, Beethoven is even less concerned with creating a strongly emotive slow movement, marking the second movement Andante scherzoso quasi Allegretto and giving it a fugal structure. This quartet is monothematic, a fact that puts extra pressure on performers to highlight resemblances among movements as well as to differentiate the forms in which the basic theme reappears. The C minor key (as in Symphony No. 5 and the Pathétique piano sonata, No. 8) also invites intensity and urgency in performance, which are appropriate in due measure but can easily be overdone – and sometimes are. To the credit of the Calidore players, they recognize that this quartet remains within the overall boundaries of Haydn and Mozart, albeit intensified, and they avoid the temptation to overplay or over-emotionalize the music even though they allow its frequently stormy character to come through clearly – resulting, ultimately, in a genuinely thrilling prestissimo coda in the finale. No. 6 in B-flat has important minor-key elements as well, despite its official home key; and it is in some ways the opposite of the quartets that downplay slow-movement emotionalism, containing not only an Adagio non troppo slow movement but also an Adagio introduction to the La Malinconia finale – a movement that Beethoven insisted be played “with the greatest delicacy.” The Calidore Quartet rises to this particular challenge as well as it rises to most of the challenges and complexities of the Beethoven quartets, producing a finale whose considerable contrasts of mood (melancholy elements, yes, but also a quick and light dancelike section) come through with both clarity and style. Whatever the merits of producing a Beethoven quartet cycle in reverse order may be – and whatever the rationale may have been for doing so – this conclusion of the Calidore Quartet’s sequence proves every bit as intelligently conceived and stylishly executed as the group’s handling of the middle and late quartets. The performances do not really show the early quartets as foundational to the later ones: the six of Op. 18 stand on their own more than they look forward to Beethoven’s later works in this form. These readings do, however, do a fine job of exploring the ways in which the Op. 18 quartets draw on earlier compositional models while nudging the quartet concept itself in new directions. The result is an impressive final entry in the Calidore Quartet’s Beethoven sequence, which takes its place among the most-thoughtful and best-played versions of this music available.