(++++) NOTHING BUT WARMTH

Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine. By Ms. Rachel (Rachel Anne Accurso) and Mr. Aron (Aron Accurso). Illustrated by Monique Dong. Random House. $19.99. 

     The unassuming educational books built around “Ms. Rachel,” a YouTube personality and educator best known for creating the charmingly titled “Songs for Littles” – a kids’ music series intended to foster language development among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers – continue to come across as enjoyable, engaging and only moderately cloying. They are designed as teaching aids for adults, not only kids, and that purpose is quite explicit in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine. The book’s subtitle, or subhead, appears on the cover and title page as “Encouraging a Calm and Comforting Good Night,” and that proves to be the entire purpose of this pleasantly straightforward presentation of gentle nighttime encouragements demonstrated by the cartoon version of Ms. Rachel along with the utterly adorable Bean, a teddy-bear-like plush-toy character used online primarily for potty-training material but here employed for a full range of pre-sleep activities. 

     The entire book is instructional, from its step-by-step presentation of going-to-bed ideas to its back-of-the-book “Sleep Tips for Toddlers” (written directly for adults in a collaboration between Ms. Rachel and Karyn Marciniak, Ph.D.) to its real-time bedtime-routine tear-out chart that duplicates the one shown within the story. It is this melding of the real world with the fantasy one of Ms. Rachel, which is very adeptly given visual life by Monique Dong, that helps adults and kids alike connect the underlying enjoyment of the relationship between Ms. Rachel and Bean with the not-always-smooth quotidian experiences of parents trying to find better ways to manage sometimes-frustrating elements of daily life with children – such as bedtime. 

     There is narrative here but no “story” per se, and that is exactly the point. The only thing that happens in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine is that Ms. Rachel invites readers to help her get Bean ready for bed, and then the pre-bed activities commence and are followed step-by-step until at last Bean is safe and happy in bed and Ms. Rachel thanks readers and reminds them to manage their own bedtime as well as they have helped her manage Bean’s. 

     The teaching techniques in Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine are straightforwardly age-appropriate. A comment about picking up and putting away toys uses the words “pick them up” (and variations) no fewer than five times. A reference to taking a bath, including putting special bath toys in the tub, says “put them in” four times. Songs are ever-present on the pages, as Ms. Rachel and Bean follow the “bedtime routine chart” whose real-world version is eventually offered to readers. Giving Bean a sense of participation and control is crucial to this routine – although those big words appear nowhere in the book. For instance, Ms. Rachel gives Bean a choice of pajamas and, later, a chance to choose which book she will read to him after he gets into bed. Everywhere there is a pervasive sense of upbeat positivity – for instance, the book Bean is said to choose is called I’m Grateful, and the “reading” uses those two words more than a dozen times. Then, after this in-book “book time,” Ms. Rachel gives Bean a choice of songs to sing and then the option of a hug (which, unsurprisingly, he wants). Again, everything is participatory and is designed to model Bean’s bedtime as a cooperative venture, not something imposed by an adult on a child. 

     Of course Bean falls asleep easily, and in-book Ms. Rachel talks about the wonderful dreams he is having – but this is where the real world and the world of Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine part ways. As the “Sleep Tips for Toddlers” pages make clear, this book is about toddler bedtime – not that of infants or older children. And of course everything is simplified: Bean, for example, has had a wonderful, active day, which helps him fall asleep easily; but not all kids’ days are upbeat, bright, conflict-and-frustration-free and pleasant, and the day can and will affect the night. So a slavish attempt to follow the well-intentioned routine outlined in this book will soon prove inadequate to each child’s real-life circumstances. There are a few suggestions here about what to do when that happens, but the main point of the book is to try to ensure that it does not happen and that a carefully structured bedtime routine goes smoothly every night. That is patently unrealistic – but adults who use Ms. Rachel and Bean and the Bedtime Routine as a jumping-off point for their own, suitably modified bedtime-for-toddlers arrangement will find the book a very useful, very pleasantly presented set of ideas for an idealized world that it is at least worth trying to emulate in the much more confusing and complex world in which kids and adults actually live.

(+++) PAST AND PRESENT

Wagner: Music conducted by Siegfried Wagner. Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Berlin State Opera Orchestra, and London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Siegfried Wagner. Ariadne. $29.98 (2 CDs). 

Henriette Renié: Retrospective—Historical Harp Recordings, 1927-1955. Henriette Renié, harp. MSR Classics. $19.95 (2 CDs). 

     Remasterings of very old recordings, however skillfully and lovingly done, will always be niche products, of interest primarily to audiences with a special interest in one element or another of musical-performance history. Every once in a while, though, along comes an item that – despite its inherently limited appeal – is enough to send shivers up a listener’s spine. That is the case with the recording in which Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930) leads the London Symphony Orchestra in the Siegfried Idyll, which Siegfried’s father explicitly wrote for Siegfried’s birth and originally intended to keep private forever. Hearing this near-century-old recording (from 1927) performed under the direction of the person for whom the music was created provides a bridge to some of the most famous music of the Romantic era – and the exceptional lyricism and beauty of the performance turn it into a glowing tribute as well as, perhaps, an assertion of individuality and accomplishment that was generally beyond Siegfried Wagner during his storm-tossed lifetime. The exceptional quality of Lani Spahr’s restorations of this performance and the others on a new two-CD Ariadne release can do nothing about the inherent hollowness and sound compression of 1920s recordings: there is just no way to “restore” rich brass, emphatic percussion and elegant woodwinds when the original recordings were incapable of rendering them with any significant degree of accuracy. But to the extent that modern techniques can again make it possible to hear Siegfried Wagner’s performances as they sounded when originally released to the public, Spahr provides a truly exceptional bridge between recording eras as distant from each other as the 19^th century is from the 21^st. In fact, the very quiet backgrounds and total absence of tape hiss show just how much better these restorations are than were the originals. It remains true that no one is going to consider this release to be any more than a curiosity and a historically informed (and important) element of the Richard Wagner discography. But it is nevertheless a superb accomplishment. The first CD includes the gods’ entry into Valhalla from Das Rheingold, the Valkyries’ ride and Wotan’s farewell (with the magic fire music) from Die Walküre, the Act III Prelude from Parsifal, and two versions of that opera’s Good Friday spell – one orchestral, the other featuring Fritz Wolff as Parsifal and a remarkably full-voiced Alexander Kipnis as Gurnemanz. What quickly becomes clear from this disc is that Siegfried Wagner gravitated to the warmer, more-expressive elements of his father’s music to a greater extent than the highly dramatic (and frequently more-familiar) ones. There is nothing special or even particularly exciting here in the Valkyries’ ride, but the Parsifal excerpts and the faster-yet-more-expressive-than-usual Siegfried Idyll showcase a conductor with a finely honed sense of the gorgeous but sometimes overshadowed expressiveness of so much of Richard Wagner’s music. The second CD in this set includes, in addition to the Siegfried Idyll, the less-than-memorable Huldigungsmarsch, the guests’ entry from Tannhäuser, an exceptionally lovely Act I Prelude to Lohengrin, and the Act I Prelude and Liebestod (orchestral version) from Tristan und Isolde. This exceptionally interesting release then concludes with Siegfried Wagner’s sole surviving commercial recording of one of his own works: the overture to the first of his 12 operas, Der Bärenhäuter – music that turns out to be both attractive and highly forgettable, affirming that, as with other children of great composers (F.X. Mozart and Eduard Strauss’ son, Johann III, for example), the musical contributions of the later generation were modest at best. And yet the chance to hear an excellently remastered set of Siegfried Wagner’s performances of works by his father is an undeniably fascinating one. 

     The potential audience for an MSR Classics remastering of performances by Henriette Renié (1875-1956) is likely to be even more modest. Here too the audio restoration, some of which involves performances as old as those by Siegfried Wagner, is first-rate: David v.R. Bowles and Richard Price not only make these harp recordings as clean and clear as possible but even succeed to a considerable extent in pitch correction. Renié herself, and harp music in general, are not as widely followed as are Richard Wagner’s works, but for harpists (many of whom continue to train using Renié’s method) and listeners fond of the harp in general – and of Renié’s own compositions and performances in particular – this recording will be treasurable. Thirteen of the 14 tracks on the first disc offer Renié’s own works, intriguingly presented chronologically based on their publication dates – so listeners enamored of Renié and her compositional as well as pedagogical contributions can hear in what ways and to what extent her style developed over time. Included here are pieces ranging from her very earliest, Andante religioso, through the Concerto in C minor of 1901 (a breakthrough work for her as both composer and performer), Légende (1903), Pièce symphonique (1907), Danse des lutins of 1911 (whose recording won her a Prix du Disque), and more. The final track on the first CD, a 70-second encore of sorts, is La Commère by Couperin; and the second disc offers another short Couperin work along with pieces by Liszt (four), D. Scarlatti (two), Debussy, Respighi, Rameau, Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, and Prokofiev (one each). Renié also is heard in pieces by almost entirely unknown composers: two by Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) and one each by Félix Godefroid (1818-1897), Albert Zabel (1834-1910), and Henri Büsser (1872-1973). Speaking of hearing, audiences get to listen to Renié’s voice as well as her harp – in spoken introductions (in French, of course) that help give this fascinating release a true sense of camaraderie among listeners and the feeling of a pleasant salon-recital-plus-masterclass delivered in both spoken and performed manner by one of the great harpists and harp pedagogues of the 20^th century. Limited in appeal this recording will certainly be, but it will be of inestimable value to harpists today and immensely pleasurable simply for listening purposes for audiences that will appreciate not only Renié’s skill but also the exceptional ability that top-notch technicians now have to remaster genuinely important recordings of earlier times.

(++++) YOU BE YOU

Turkey in Disguise. By Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Mike Moran. Silver Dolphin Books. $12.99. 

     The idea that every child is absolutely perfect just as he or she is, that everyone will accept everyone else unquestioningly without any need to pretend to be something that one is not, is so foundational to children’s books that it is somewhat amazing to find the trope still going strong. But it is, and Turkey in Disguise is the umpteenth (maybe umpty-umpteenth) version of the redoubtable lesson that you never have to pretend to be anything or anyone but yourself. 

     Shakespeare figured it out (“this above all, to thine own self be true”), and one can imagine Elizabethan parents using those words or similar ones to encourage their kids to be themselves at all times. On a much lower level of poetry, Adam Wallace reiterates the longstanding lesson in Turkey in Disguise – and benefits from some hilariously apt renditions by Mike Moran of the various disguises referenced in the book’s title (Hamlet would probably not have been improved by an illustrator). 

     The plot here is absolutely typical for a “be yourself” book for kids up to age eight: Turkey, with her solid coat of dull brown feathers, just knows she won’t be accepted at the upcoming November Ball and will have a miserable time unless she makes herself more attractive and intriguing. But how to do that? Enlisting the help of her friends – Duck, Pig and Sheep – Turkey embarks on a beyond-the-ridiculous foray into dress-up and disguise. It starts simply enough – paint some spots on her feathers, put on a robe and crown, that sort of thing. But her friends vote no. So things get weirder: Turkey squishes an ice-cream cone on her head to look like a unicorn – but leaves the ice cream in the cone, with predictably messy results. A later attempt to be a clown, complete with pies to push into her friends’ faces, is no tastier. 

     The weirdness expands. Turkey dresses like a ninja and her friends suddenly cannot see her. She walks like a zombie and scares them out of the house. And so it goes: “She ate a croissant so she seemed to be FRENCH./ Then somehow disguised herself as a PARK BENCH.” We are now fully into bizarretown: Moran draws the bench simply as what it is – a bench. No sign of Turkey anywhere. How did the transformation happen? Neither Wallace nor Moran bothers to explain: they are too busy moving onward into areas of increasing weirdness, such as Turkey dressing up as the sun and giving her friends an actual sunburn – then turning herself into “a STINKY BIG TOE.” 

     Kids will have a wonderful time laughing at the ever-mounting absurdity of Turkey’s disguises (at one point she transforms into a box of popcorn) – and young readers will figure out where the book is going well before it actually gets there: fed up with all the nonsense, Turkey’s friends eventually yell a very loud and emphatic “STOP!” They then deliver the lesson that is always at the heart of books like this: “…you’re beautiful as you are./ You don’t need a DISGUISE.” And Turkey, relieved to be free of the pressure that comes with figuring out near-infinite variations on being something else, decides to go to the November Ball exactly as she is, as herself. And of course she has a wonderful time – lesson learned, lesson delivered to young readers, and lesson presumably kept in Wallace’s and Moran’s mental arsenal (or that of other writer/artist teams) for the umpty-umpty-umpteenth variation on the identical theme. 

     As a bonus, there is a perforated page at the back of the book that kids can tear out (gently: adults may need to help), maybe copy so there are several identical ones, and then try their hand at creating silly disguises for Turkey (or maybe just drawing her in cute colors). The one fly-in-the-ointment element worth noting about Turkey in Disguise is that it is a good thing the book is aimed at ages up to eight and not beyond – because as every preteen and teenager knows (and every adult knows even better), there comes a time when we do don disguises before heading out into the world, deciding just who we want or need to be on any given day, in any given set of circumstances. But that’s a gobble for an entirely different sort of book.

(++++) TOURS OF TIMES LONG GONE

Michel Corrette: Les Délices de la Solitude—Sonatas, Op. 20. Michelle Kesler and Miranda Wilson, cellos. MSR Classics. $14.95. 

Bach: Toccatas, BWV 910-916. Francesco Tristano, piano. Naïve. $16.99. 

D. Scarlatti: Sonatas K1, 9, 27, 32, 34, 96, 141, 149, 159, 175, 208, 209, 291, 322, 377, 380, 430, 466, 491, 513, and 531; A. Scarlatti: Sonata in D minor, “Arioso.” James Brawn, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95. 

Steven Ricks: Medusa in Fragments; Baucis and Philemon. New Focus Recordings. $18.99. 

     Michel Corrette (1707-1795) managed to straddle two very different musical eras while remaining firmly committed to the earlier of them. Although he died four years later than Mozart, Corrette was firmly and always a Baroque composer, allowing new musical trends and approaches to sweep by largely unheeded. While this has landed him in a sort of purgatorial ignominy from a creativity standpoint, it is worth encountering his music from time to time if only to be reminded how very well-made and refreshing his thoughts and approaches were – even if they were more-or-less outdated by the end of his lifetime. A new MSR Classics release features six thoroughly charming and engaging Corrette sonatas for two cellos, which were written when Bach was still alive (1739) and fit quite neatly indeed into the Baroque worldview. The six pieces, bearing the charming overall title Les Délices de la Solitude (“The Delights of Solitude”), are essentially three-or-four-movement Baroque suites, featuring the expected dances (Allemande, Sarabande, Corrente, Giga) and the musical forms associated with Bach’s time (Fuga, Preludio, Aria). Michelle Kesler and Miranda Wilson play the music with verve and style, allowing the richness of tone inherent in a pair of cellos to complement the enjoyably upbeat pacing of many of the movements, notably those designated Presto. There is nothing substantial in this music – the sonatas are all seven to nine minutes long, and there is little differentiation between the three-movement ones and the two in four movements (Nos. 4 and 5). There is some well-managed tonal richness in the sole minor-key sonata (No. 2 in D minor), but nowhere is there any mining of emotional depth – that would be out of place in this era and certainly in Corrette’s output. Kesler and Wilson are especially well aware of the importance of rhythmic clarity in the dance-derived movements, which as a result have a certain degree of very pleasant “swing” to them. This is quite a short CD – 48 minutes – but it encapsulates quite a lot about Corrette’s music and his never-faltering commitment to a musical time period in which he continued to dwell for more than half a century after composing these small gems. 

     It is interesting to juxtapose Corrette’s musical thinking with that of Bach, who was already expanding the notion of a freer compositional method and less-restrained use of instrumental capabilities decades before Les Délices de la Solitude. Back around 1710, Bach created seven toccatas for keyboard that are already imbued with forward thinking and rhythmic sensitivity that Corrette, all those years later, never really attained (or, to be fair, aspired to attain). Intriguingly, Bach wrote five of the seven toccatas in minor keys – by no means a typical approach for studies like these – and included in them a number of formal elements (fugues are prominent) but no dance movements, thus differentiating them from suite structure. Dance rhythms do creep in here and there, though, as in the third movement of BWV 912, which is as bright a Fuga as one could possibly expect. The exact reasons for creation of the toccatas are unknown, but they sound rather like teaching exercises, sometimes quite overtly (as in the first movement of BWV 911) and at other times more subtly (the Adagio of BWV 913). Bach’s toccatas are about the same length as Corrette’s sonatas, but since there are seven by Bach and only six by Corrette, the new Naïve disc featuring Francesco Tristano is longer – about 58 minutes. The music also comes across as considerably more varied and, even several decades before the Corrette and even as possible training works, less stodgy. It is, unfortunately, a bit difficult to recommend Tristano’s CD wholeheartedly, for the very clear and obvious reason that he plays the toccatas on a modern piano (a Yamaha). This is a constant underlying frustration where Tristano’s Bach is concerned: this is his third Bach recording (following the Partitas and English Suites), and while it is played with just as much sensitivity and skill as the earlier releases – including some notable pointillism in some of the faster movements – the fact remains that the sound of a piano just does not meld very well with the sensibilities underlying this music. Of course, this is an ongoing and never-to-be-resolved issue: pianists have long since claimed Bach’s keyboard works as their own, as well they should, but in some of Bach’s keyboard material, the piano is more ill-fitting (compared with the harpsichord or clavichord) than in other works. The toccatas do not work very well as piano pieces, which means that this is a (+++) CD for listeners interested in the actual sound of these Bach offerings. But it has to be said that within the self-imposed limitations of using a modern keyboard instrument, Tristano delivers sensitive, well-balanced and frequently charming performances. 

     The issue of instrumental appropriateness also results in a (+++) rating for a very well-played and generous (77-minute) MSR Classics recording of a nice selection of Domenico Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas – styled “keyboard sonatas,” of course, when played on the piano, as they are by James Brawn. A very short encore by Domenico’s father, Alessandro, is a nice touch at the conclusion of the CD, but the real meat of the matter is Brawn’s choices among the 555 sonatas and his handling of their various moods, pacing, and technical complexities. Part of the joy inherent in listening to the Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas involves discovering how performers overcome their manifest difficulties, which in some cases make them into very complex undertakings for any harpsichordist. Those difficulties are less apparent in performances on piano, but they are there nevertheless, and none of them seems to concern Brawn to any degree. Indeed, there is a fluidity to his playing that makes a good case for some of these works as piano pieces – the delicate “Aria,” K32, for example, which has a charming if somewhat inappropriate-for-its-era delicacy that turns it into something of a proto-salon piece. The faster and brighter pieces come across as studies of a sort: for example, “La Caccia,” K96, is all about rhythmic contrast and a kind of crescendo/decrescendo approach that is foreign to the harpsichord but that is effective from a pianistic standpoint. Brawn clearly relishes the emotionalism that he finds lurking in sonatas such as “Cantabile,” K208, and he does not hesitate to use the piano’s emotive capabilities to bring the emotive elements to the fore. And Brawn has fun with the quick pace of sonatas such as “Tarantella,” K531 – although here as elsewhere he is a touch too fond of crescendo/decrescendo tactics. In some ways it is probably best to think of this recording not as a foray into Scarlatti but as Brawn’s highly personal extraction for 21^st-century listeners of rhythms, harmonies and emotions that the pianist has discovered within old manuscripts and is eager to bring into the present day using the capabilities of a contemporary instrument. The disc is a lot of fun when considered from that standpoint – but for what Scarlatti was really all about, well-considered harpsichord performances are even more important than is the case when it comes to the keyboard music of Bach. 

     Of course, contemporary musicians do not revisit the past solely by means of instrumental choices. Composers, in particular, often journey back by choosing the concepts of their works and then clothing tales in olden style in very modern dress indeed. That is the approach of Steven Ricks (born 1969) in two works on a New Focus Recordings CD. Ricks works in the electroacoustic medium, which scarcely lends itself to representational approaches to the past but which certainly offers interpretative leeway when it comes to a “past” that never really existed – the mythological. Both works on this disc juxtapose ancient tales with hyper-modern aural aesthetics – a combination that will certainly not be to all tastes but that Ricks, within his chosen medium, uses skillfully. Thus, the monodrama Medusa in Fragments is a non-linear retelling of the story, or part of the story, of Medusa: a sense of alienation pervades the material (electronics are especially good at conveying that), and although a soprano voice figures prominently in the work, it is pre-recorded, making it part and parcel of the electronic fabric within which the music unfolds. As tends to be the case with much electroacoustic material, Medusa in Fragments has more of the intellectual than the emotive about it, and while its overall intensity is clear enough, it reiterates its material rather too insistently and seems to go on longer than the content fully justifies. The other work on this (+++) CD, however, is even more extended and extensive: Baucis and Philemon is a full-fledged chamber opera, and here Ricks uses techniques that go beyond the strictly electronic. There is straight narrative, clearly pronounced declamatory singing, a representation of a thunderstorm, and an interesting intertwining of some acoustic instruments with electronic sounds that expand upon or contrast with the aural environment. Because Baucis and Philemon is broken down into a dozen sections, it does not feel as extended (or overextended) as Medusa in Fragments. Furthermore, the very simplicity of some of the sounds in Baucis and Philemon – birdsong and water, for example – gives the chamber opera an accessibility that the monodrama lacks. The use of such touches as a solo cello and piquant piccolo gives the material aural variety beyond that of most electroacoustic music, although the actual words spoken and sung spend rather too much time insisting that they are profoundly meaningful when in fact they are more-or-less commonplace. It is tempting to think of Baucis and Philemon as an intermittently successful experiment in operatic (or at least staged) form, although in reality there have been many modern pieces created with analogous if not identical components. Nevertheless, listeners who may wonder whether contemporary sound can be used to illustrate (if perhaps not illuminate) thoughts and ideas of the past will find a number of elements in Baucis and Philemon that are worth thinking about, even if the totality does not ultimately coalesce into anything particularly profound or revelatory.