(++++) CUDDLEMONSTERS

Why I Love Dinosaurs. Illustrated by Daniel Howarth. HarperCollins. $11.99.

     There is perhaps no greater bifurcation between adult science and childhood fantasy than kids’ continuing adoration of dinosaurs. No matter how many discoveries are made about dinosaur size and habits, no matter how many terrifying (in human terms) revelations are made about their behavior and appearance, no matter how many times they are used in grown-up-focused movies as creatures of fright, they always retain a constant underlying kid-oriented drumbeat of adorableness. That sets the stage for young children to explain, in their own words, just why they are so fond of dinosaurs – the imaginary fantasy ones, that is. And that sets the stage for Why I Love Dinosaurs, in which kids’ own words are combined with always-pleasant Daniel Howarth illustrations that produce a thoroughly unrealistic, unceasingly cute view of imaginary dino delights.

     The book’s cover neatly encapsulates its whole approach, showing anthropomorphic, child-proportioned versions of a smiling Tyrannosaur, Triceratops, Apatosaurus and others, dressed in human-child-appropriate outfits, gamboling about. Howarth’s illustrations smooth and curve all elements of the dinos’ bodies, ignoring pesky scientific findings about dinosaurs having rough scales and feathers, and modifying anatomy that could otherwise be upsetting: these childlike meat-eaters not only play happily with herbivores but also have small, rounded teeth rather than long, sharp, serrated ones, and the protective horns of some of their real-world prey become short, rounded decorations. This is entirely typical of the way dinos are usually adapted to reflect human children’s imagination and enjoyment.

     The adaptation is especially pleasurable when it lightly (very lightly) reflects real-dinosaur behavior, as on the two-page spread with the words, “I love dinosaurs because…they ROAR!” This one has the childlike Tyrannosaur chasing several childlike plant-eaters – with all the dinos smiling and clearly participating in “tag” or similar chase-and-catch play, and with any sense of threat entirely absent. All the double pages of this pleasantly colored oversize board book start with “I love dinosaurs because…” (including the ellipsis) and then give a few words that kids really use to explain their enjoyment, such as “they are strong” or “they stomp their feet” (hard enough to break through rock, in Howarth’s illustration).

     Real-world dinosaurs existed in an amazing array of sizes and shapes, and a toned-down version of that reality prevails here as well, notably with the words “there are so many different kinds” – that illustration shows childlike dinos of many types playing on playground equipment that looks as if it came out of The Flintstones. Amusing touches of that sort are everywhere here: the “they hatch from eggs” illustration features one egg, through which two legs have broken, running around; “some can swim” includes a dinosaur lifeguard stand and diving board; “they have big teeth” features everyone enthusiastically using toothbrushes and foamy toothpaste; and “some can fly” shows pterosaurs (which are not actually dinosaurs, scientifically speaking, but certainly are in kidspeak) soaring above a shoreline and carrying backpacks roped to their backs (best not to ask who would have tied them on, and how).

     The final two-page spread of the book is the only one that does not start with “I love dinosaurs,” because it makes the point universal: “Everyone loves dinosaurs,” it says, and then adds, “especially…ME!” And the illustration shows modern-day kids dressing up in dinosaur costumes – except that these “kids” are actually modern anthropomorphic mammals (rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, bear and more) enjoying themselves at a party featuring a dinosaur piñata and pin-the-tail-on-the-dino game. So the book ends with childlike non-human animals dressing up as other childlike non-human animals – which seems like just the right way to wrap up an amusing, easy-to-read, pleasantly illustrated perusal of all the things that dinosaurs were not, as if that matters in the slightest to contemporary kids’ continued enjoyment of dino-focused make-believe.

(++++) RIPE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH?

Charles Koechlin: Symphony No. 1; Au loin; 3 Mélodies. Patricia Petibon, soprano; Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen conducted by Ariane Matiakh. Capriccio. $21.99.

Charles Koechlin: The Seven Stars Symphony; Vers la voûte étoilee. Sinfonieorchester Basel conducted by Ariane Matiakh. Capriccio. $21.99.

     Sometimes, what a composer needs to become part of the standard repertoire, or at least to be featured with some frequency in concerts and on recordings, is the strong and persistent advocacy of a skilled conductor with a firm understanding of the composer’s work and a commitment to programming it even if others rarely do so. That was, for example, famously the case with Mahler, for whom Bruno Walter was a tireless advocate for many years – after which Walter passed the torch to Leonard Bernstein, who proved an even more effective Mahler conductor and was largely responsible for the surge in Mahler’s popularity that persists to this day and shows no signs of abating. If there is ever to be a similar upswell of interest in the music of Charles Koechlin (1867-1950), it may well be because of the tireless advocacy of French conductor Ariane Matiakh, who clearly finds her countryman’s music highly appealing and worthy of being far better known and far more frequently performed.

     Koechlin and his music are strange in many ways. Koechlin is devilishly difficult to pigeonhole, having an accretive and eclectic style that partakes of many elements of late Romanticism and 20^th-century approaches and techniques, all overlaid with his own sensibilities and his propensity for mixing elements of popular culture with those more usually found in the concert hall. The confusions and contradictions inherent in Koechlin are quite evident in his symphonic production: he created four symphonies after abandoning one very early attempt, but the works’ origins and sequencing are decidedly odd. No. 1 (1926) is actually a lightly modified and orchestrated version of his 1916 String Quartet No. 2. Next in compositional order – but bearing no number – is The Seven Stars Symphony (1933), which is in no way celestial but is a contemplation of seven film stars of the silent era and early “talkies.” The third symphonic work, also bearing no number, is Symphonie d’Hymnes (1936), which is a collection and connection of previously composed independent movements. And then finally, in 1943-1944, there is a work actually designated Symphony No. 2.

     Matiakh has recorded the first two of these symphonic works for Capriccio in what is hopefully the first half of a complete Koechlin cycle – which has never been produced to date. Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of the sequencing peculiarities of the symphonies, The Seven Stars Symphony was released prior to its predecessor, which has never before been recorded at all. Symphony No. 1 is largely in a late Romantic vein, with hints of dissonance rather than full incorporation of it. But it is quite a personal use of the idiom. The first movement’s sound is a bit reminiscent of early Charles Ives in his “hymnal” mode, albeit without quotes from actual hymns: the movement is peaceful and gentle throughout and sets a tone for the entire work. The second movement, although labeled Scherzo, is most memorable for a middle section that returns to the first movement’s mood, as if the gentle sway of that movement cannot help but inexorably pervade the entire symphony. The third movement is a brief Andante that is, once again, calm and reserved, but now with a sense of yearning until it eventually subsides into quiescence. The finale is the longest movement and the only comparatively upbeat one, starting with delicate woodwind touches that seem to set a positive mood until, after about four minutes, this movement too devolves into slow quietude. The music does not so much struggle for speed as demonstrate that there is no rush to express what it has to say, until it more or less evaporates at the end, leaving behind a difficult-to-quantify-or-qualify feeling – which Koechlin’s music produces again and again.

     The CD also includes two works that predate the symphony. Au loin, described as a poème symphonique, dates to 1900 and is more in the nature of a nocturne than a symphonic poem. Atmospheric and somewhat Impressionistic, it features gently swaying lyricism and is rather minimalist in sound, as if its sensibilities lie somewhere between those of Debussy and Philip Glass. Also here is a vocal work called 3 Mélodies (1895-1900), offering evocative orchestration of three songs featuring rather dour fin de siècle poetry by Leconte de Lisle and José-Maria de Heredia. The scenes evoked are essentially mythic, with the Heredia work, placed second, being the prayer of the corpse of a murder victim – a very dark subject indeed, despite the nice instrumental touches that slightly elevate the mood. Patricia Petibon sings 3 Mélodies with the sort of passionate engagement that Koechlin’s music needs in order to come across effectively – and that Matiakh brings to all the pieces heard here.

     The Seven Stars Symphony might be expected to be altogether lighter fare than the prior symphonic work, but not so. The movements portray Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene (here spelled Merlène) Dietrich, Emil Jannings, and Charles Chaplin, and Koechlin uses many traditional forms of concert-hall music to provide impressions of each star. The Dietrich and Chaplin movements, for example, are themes-and-variations, while the Harvey movement is designated menuet fugue. Modern listeners unfamiliar with these early movie stars will nevertheless be able to pick up some of their characteristics (or at least the characteristics of their screen personas) through Koechlin’s music – the aloof quality of Garbo and the sweetness of Bow, for example. But Koechlin, here as elsewhere, is far from straightforward: instead of the swashbuckling character of Fairbanks, he presents a gentle and rather sweet portrayal drawn, in this case, directly from a Fairbanks film, The Thief of Baghdad, in which a princess’ exotic garden is seen. The Chaplin movement is the last of the symphony and more than twice as long as any of the others, and its variegated and ebullient, multifaceted style fits particularly well with Koechlin’s own ever-shifting musical approach.

     Filling out this CD is a work that does focus on stars in the heavenly rather than Hollywood sense. Vers la voûte étoilee, created during a lengthy time period (1923-1933) and revised in 1939 into the form heard here, features some especially lovely, lyrical horn elements. It is very much a nocturne despite some acerbity in the harmony. Its gradual swell to grand expressiveness is reminiscent of another celestial-body-focused work, Nielsen’s Helios Overture (1903). The sensibilities are similar although Koechlin’s tonal language differs considerably from Nielsen’s. Indeed, Koechlin’s sound differs from that of just about all other composers of his time: he picks and chooses elements of compositional structure and aural approach, feeling no compunction about changing the form or sonic realm of a piece as it progresses, sometimes doing so multiple times. Consistency is not Koechlin’s hallmark, and his unwillingness to adhere to any particular “school” makes his music difficult to grasp on first hearing and sometimes confusing to try to absorb. But of course the same could be said, in a different way and on a different level, about Mahler. It will be fascinating to see whether Matiakh’s strong conducting and commitment to extracting meaning and engagement from Koechlin’s music will be enough to captivate a wider audience than has to date been aware of this still-obscure composer’s unusual communicative approach.

(+++) HA HA HA…HMMM

The Blunders. By David Walliams. Illustrated by Adam Stower. HarperCollins. $9.99.

     It is rarely relevant to know that a U.S. edition of a book was first published elsewhere, but it is important in the case of The Blunders, enjoyment of which will largely depend on which side of the pond one inhabits. “The pond” is the Atlantic Ocean, and anyone unaware of that rather basic geographical/expressive fact should avoid David Walliams’ book if he or she lives on the western side of the pond. Those to its east should be fine and will be tickled, sometimes to outrageous gales of laughter, by all the moronic escapades and nonsensical antics chronicled by Walliams in this extended series of stories about “classic upper-class twits.”

     That particular expression is easy enough for pretty much anyone to understand, as are numerous other Britishisms whose context makes their meaning apparent even if one does not happen to use them oneself. “Oiks,” for example, is pretty clearly something or someone negative – indeed, most everyone in The Blunders is an oik to one degree or another – and one need not know the formal definition (“an uncouth or obnoxious person”) to get the point. Similarly, “doobry,” as used in The Blunders, pretty clearly refers to what Americans tend to call “number two” when speaking of bathroom matters, even though the word in British slang is actually a lot less specific than that (referring to pretty much any unnamed or unnamable object) – this is a case where Walliams, who is very fond of bathroom-related material of the “constant breaking of wind” variety, massages a slang term in a way that makes it understandable enough on both sides of the pond.

     Other elements of Walliams’ vocabulary, however, will be so unfamiliar in North America as to confuse young readers rather than enlighten them (to the very, very tiny extent that anything in The Blunders is enlightening). For example, one entire story in the book is “The Scandal of the Giant Marrow,” and anyone unfortunate enough to think that “marrow” here refers to a component of bones, human or otherwise, is going to have an extremely difficult and disappointing time trying to understand how an errant airship can be changed into “the most marvellous [sic] marrow the world had EVER SEEN!” The transformation is important because the Blunders’ actual marrow is more like “a baby courgette.”

     See the problem? And that is only part of it, since the whole marrow incident comes to a climax at a village gathering that includes “tombola” and “coconut shy.” All of this is perfectly understandable in the wilds of Great Britain, and even the not-so-wilds, but relocate The Blunders – the book, not the family – a few thousand miles westward and unintended confusion reigns.

     Actually, intended confusion, not to mention ridiculousness, reigns throughout the book, and a great deal of the slapstick will be hilarious to young readers in any English-speaking location. The Blunders are, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of idiots, not in a pejorative sense but in the way idiots are portrayed in such venues as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, where they are a normal part of everyday village existence and add color (or colour) to ordinary people’s otherwise drab lives. The overriding plot of The Blunders has to do with Lord Bertie Blunder, the father figure in the family, mortgaging the Blunders’ ruined, wrecked, falling-down, leaky, barely standing home to the bank for money to develop one of his harebrained inventions, which immediately fails, so the family home will shortly be lost to the bank, so the Blunders need to figure out how to save it from an officious twit of a banker (not to be confused with unofficious twits such as the Blunders themselves) – who intends to turn the house into a borstal (and there goes that vocabulary issue again). There are lots and lots of ridiculous misadventures that mostly make messes mount higher and higher and that make sense only if one does not apply even the slightest smidgen of logic to them – for instance, the entire home is completely flooded, all the way up to the attic, at one point, but once the Blunders’ pet ostrich saves the day and sweeps away “the man from the bank and his brutish bailiffs,” the next page starts in a different season of the year and there is not the slightest word about anything having needed to dry out, much less any remarks regarding mold and mildew. (Why the banker wants to transform rather than disintegrate the Blunders’ home is yet another of those questions that it is best not to ask.)

     About that ostrich: as often in books of this sort, it is saner (and, for that matter, more intelligent) than the central human characters. The only person with an ounce of sense, or maybe half an ounce, is the family’s 99-year-old butler, Butler (that name is a ha-ha, or wants to be). Lord Bertie’s wife, Lady Betsy, is certifiably insane, or would be on the western side of the pond, because she spends all her time riding on, feeding, communicating with and cleaning up after her horse, Pegasus – which does not exist. Old Lady Blunder, Bertie’s mother, is in her 80s and spends her time shooting things – yes, this is played entirely for laughs in the Looney Tunes vein, and of course she does not use a pistol or rifle but a blunderbuss (another intended ha-ha). The inevitable two kids are 12-year-old Bunny, who believes she is an artistic genius even though she has never tried to do anything artistic except, at one point, to screech what she imagines opera probably sounds like; and 10-year-old Brutus, who spends all his time being filthy (hiding in toilets, eating worms that he digs up, that sort of thing). Bunny and Brutus spend most of their time “being beastly” to each other, although at one point they do work together on something and briefly, “for the first time in yonks, the grown-ups didn’t hear a peep out of the pair.”

     The opportunities for lowbrow comedy among these barmy numpties are endless, and Walliams spins out the stories about them pretty much endlessly, pausing occasionally to wink at or with readers, as in, “I don’t need to go on and on explaining, or this book would become unspeakably long and boring.” And: “No one could have predicted what happened next. Not even me, and I am making all this up.” It is all patently absurd, indeed beyond patently absurd, and it is all tosh, drivel and bunkum, none of which words happens to appear in The Blunders even though the meaning of all three of them will be substantially clearer to non-British readers than the meaning of a number of the words that do show up in the book.

(++++) DEEP VOICES, DEEP FEELINGS

Schubert: Winterreise. Jakob Bloch Jespersen, bass-baritone; Sharon Prushansky, fortepiano. OUR Recordings. $17.99.

Elena Ruehr: Songs—Five Men; Lied; Travel Songs; Wonderful Bears; Lullabies & Spring Songs. Stephen Salters, baritone; Donald Berman and David Zobel, piano. AVIE. $19.99.

     Schubert wrote Winterreise for tenor, just as he wrote the earlier Die schöne Müllerin for that vocal range – but he himself started the tradition of transposing the cycles for other voices, partnering with baritone Johann Michael Vogl on tours through Austria. The tenor voice, in both cycles, emphasizes the youthfulness of the protagonist; but given the deeper darkness of Winterreise, a lower voice is more effective at enhancing the gloom of the monodrama – to the extent that Schubert’s music needs any enhancement. The key to an effective Winterreise for lower voice is the singer’s ability to express the underlying naïveté of the spurned lover’s thinking while projecting a greater aura of mature sorrow that stops just short of complete despair. The protagonist of Die schöne Müllerin is more boyish; the one of Winterreise, although still young, suffers emotionally in what can be considered a more mature and complex way. Jakob Bloch Jespersen does an absolutely first-rate job of traversing this emotional landscape in his new Winterreise from OUR Recordings. The resonance of his voice, which fully plumbs bass-baritone depths in some songs but sits comfortably in the baritone range most of the time, brings depth as well as aural beauty to the grief expressed in Wilhelm Müller’s comparatively simple and naïve poetry – which is included in German but, unfortunately for English speakers, not translated. Key to Jespersen’s interpretation is the slow emergence, as Winterreise progresses, of a general sense of sorrow, beyond that occasioned by lost love, and eventually a sense of existential despair that persists right through the puzzling and ambiguous final Der Leiermann. A fine singer carries the audience through the hour-plus of Winterreise in ways that slowly but surely deepen the anguish – which is never, however, unmixed with beauty in the music. There is a silky smoothness to Jespersen’s rendition that makes the sense of ever-deepening sorrow increasingly clear, with Der Lindenbaum, the fifth song, having something closest to a sense of peacefulness until the singer turns his back on the tree and starts (or continues) on a road leading ever downward emotionally. The headlong Rückblick and almost static Irrlicht that follows it are but one example of the musical contrast and duality that Jespersen explores to fine effect. And here as throughout the cycle, the playing of Sharon Prushansky immeasurably enhances the overall listening experience. This is because Prushansky plays a fortepiano – a replica of one built in the 1810s – rather than a modern concert grand. Again and again the exceptional value of this instrumental choice comes through – Frühlingstraum and Das Wirtshaus are two especially fine examples among many. The lighter and slightly harsh sounds of the fortepiano, the skillful way Prushansky utilizes the instrument’s pedals to vary the aural palette, the lesser key travel (compared to a modern piano’s) that produces a more-intimate feeling and leads to a very different balance between voice and piano from that experienced when Winterreise is performed by a tenor backed up by a modern instrument – all these elements, plus a recording that very skillfully balances vocal and instrumental sounds, result in a reading of depth, sensitivity, and emotional coherence, flowing from beauty to beauty as the cycle wends its way through the chill of the outer and inner landscapes in which it takes place.

     There is nothing matching this depth of feeling in the vocal music of Elena Ruehr (born 1963) on a new AVIE recording, but there is plenty of emotional heft and vocal beauty in the performances by baritone Stephen Salters, for whom Ruehr wrote the works recorded here. Indeed, the CD bears the title “Songs for Stephen,” a title that hints at the specificity that somewhat limits the attractiveness of this (+++) disc. Because Schubert’s song cycles start from the specific and reach out toward the general, as Winterreise certainly does in its transformation from a tale of love lost to one of world-weariness and the questioning of existence, the time-bound elements and superficialities of some of Müller’s poetry are entirely forgivable. Ruehr, however, writes songs that are determinedly about specific circumstances and that, as a result, are limited in their appeal to audiences not within their constrained purview – no matter how well Salters sings the words. This is especially apparent in Five Men, which is just one of composers’ innumerable attempts to proclaim the African-American experience – this one using words by Elizabeth Alexander that sweep from the slave ship Amistad to the presidency of Barack Obama. The most-effective element of Ruehr’s setting is at the very beginning, a wordless hum that captures audience attention and suggests a level of depth and universality that the actual verbiage assiduously avoids. Much more intriguing – and actually tied directly to Schubert – is Lied, sung in German, with words by Rainer Maria Rilke. Here the heft of Salters’ voice comes through with clarity and effectiveness, and the expressive four-minute song does not overstay its welcome. The three Travel Songs, with words by Richard Blanco, try somewhat too hard to turn the mundane elements of Paris and Venice into experiential life tokens, while the music tries, also a bit too earnestly, to mix and match elements of Salters’ voice, from the lower ranges to falsetto. In particular, the slow, quiet and long (seven-minute-plus) central song exists in a kind of stasis that Salters manages gamely but that tries too hard to be earnest. Wonderful Bears, with words by Adrienne Rich, is more interesting both in text – which revisits nighttime childhood fears with an overlay of nostalgia – and musically, giving pianist Donald Berman a more-substantive role than in any of the other works he accompanies. The wistfulness of the last portion of the song does not fit Salters' delivery particularly well, but he handles it with admirable sensitivity. The final item on this CD features pianist David Zobel and uses words by Langston Hughes. Lullabies & Spring Songs turns out to be the most-engaging work on the disc, precisely because it does not constantly try to proclaim its importance, relevance, what-have-you. These are songs for children, their occasional reminders of skin color (“sweep of stars over Harlem streets”) subsumed within a celebration of the upbeat and pleasant, even when (as in Sandman) there are hints that all is not well all the time for all children (“a horrid dream of a horrid rat” and “a bad, bad dream of a raging bull” for kids who deserve them). In these songs, Salters’ voice, which tends to tighten when he is trying hardest to be earnest, flows naturally and with appealing expressiveness. As a whole, the CD certainly works as a collaborative production that is simultaneously a tribute of Ruehr to Salters. But most of these songs insist too strongly that they mean something and that listeners should find them significant – with the result that they never rise above a kind of disordered advocacy of this or that. The settings are fine, the singing well done, but the overall effect of the CD is of a highly personal joint effort that only rarely and imperfectly reaches out beyond the participants.