(++++) HARDY PERENNIALS

Olive Editions, 2026: Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank; Island by Aldous Huxley; The Princess Bride by William Goldman; Guard! Guards! By Terry Pratchett; Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin; Highfire by Eoin Colfer; The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker; The World Wasn’t Ready for You by Justin C. Key. Harper Perennial. $12 each. 

     The mass-market paperback may be dying – unit sales fell from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024 – and the original 1939 Pocket Books concept of manufacturing books in a smaller size, gluing the spines instead of stitching them, and selling them through nontraditional channels such as drugstores and supermarket racks has been subsumed within a digital culture that has people interested in less-pricey reading (when they read at all) using their phone screens or e-readers (or simply turning to audiobooks). But publishing creativity has not, thank goodness, disappeared, and if pocket-sized books are on the way out, the somewhat larger trade paperbacks (including many that are not graphic novels) remain a substantial force. And not just ones ghostwritten by the celebrity-of-the-day and intended for parasocial consumption. There are some genuine works of literature being offered in creatively packaged and marketed ways, a particularly good example being the long-running Olive Editions series from HarperCollins. 

     This grouping of releases has been around in various forms since 2008, and in its current form of eight books per year since 2014 (except for 2023). The books, re-releases all, are newly packaged with lookalike spines featuring multiple horizontal lines as a design element, newly produced covers (designed for 2026 by Milan Bozic and illustrated by Ibrahim Rayintakath) that are more-or-less parallel in appearance while maintaining some distinctive elements from volume to volume, an easy-to-read interior font, and a wraparound color scheme that gives each book a well-finished look. This has the interesting effect of uniting works that are very disparate indeed, differing in time period, topics, authorial familiarity and length (the 2026 books range from 238 to 518 pages). 

     The Olive Editions line seems to feel its way anew every year toward intriguing mixtures. One year, 2018, brought nothing but classics: Little Women, Frankenstein, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Gulliver’s Travels. Other years have brought works by authors with something in common – Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy in 2016. Some years have presented books that were subsequently repeated: Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon in 2015 and again this year. Some authors have appeared multiple times: Ursula K. Le Guin in 2015, 2022 and again this year, Helene Wecker in 2020 and again this year, Aldous Huxley in 2010, 2022, 2025 and now in 2026. Other creators are just showing up: Terry Pratchett among the 2026 books. There is probably both rhyme and reason to all this, but the overall feeling is one of pleasant experimentation, and if the mixture does not really necessitate buying all eight books in each year’s issuance (although HarperCollins would be delighted if you did so), it does invite readers to think about what, if anything, the books chosen in a particular year have in common that may have led to their being selected together. 

     In truth, the only commonality among the books may be that they exist in the HarperCollins backlist and someone thinks they have a shot at carving out an audience of new readers – or ones seeking to re-explore a book they used to know – if they are nicely packaged and priced at a reasonable-for-today $12 apiece (the days of 25¢ Pocket Books are long, long gone). The 2026 crop of releases is particularly well diversified by topics and original publication dates: Alas, Babylon dates to 1959, Island to 1962, The Princess Bride to 1973, Guards! Guards! to 1989, Changing Planes to 2003, Highfire to 2020, The Hidden Palace to 2021, and The World Wasn’t Ready for You to 2023. A predisposition to the fantastic unites the books, but their styles and methods of presentation (such as novel vs. story collection) differ, and so does their placement within authors’ sequences: The Hidden Palace is a sequel to The Golem and the Jinni, offered as one of the 2020 Olive Editions, and this year’s Pratchett book is actually the eighth in his Discworld series – a sequence that, as readers familiar with it know, is best read in consecutive order except when it is best read in a completely arbitrary arrangement. 

     Each of these Harper Perennial books includes a list of other works by the same author, a useful feature for anyone who may encounter a writer for the first time in one of the Olive Editions and become curious about what else the same person produced (the Pratchett list runs to two pages plus a footnote saying a complete list may be found online). There remains something distinct and distinctly enjoyable about engaging with the thoughts of someone you will never know (the original, pre-social-media version of being parasocial) using ink-and-paper mode rather than yet another screen to scroll. The Olive Editions consistently offer books that, whatever else they may do, induce the reader to think, to visit another world (or a variant on this one, which amounts to much the same thing) for a certain period of time, engaging one’s mind, thoughts and feelings in sometimes-unsurprising, sometimes-unexpected ways. Books remain remarkable gateways to what could be but is not, and the Olive Editions are, consistently and collectively, a gentle and understanding gatekeeper.

(++++) A QUIETER ELEGANCE

Handel: Solo Sonatas for Recorder, Violin, Transverse Flute, Oboe, and Viola da Gamba. Ganassi Consort (Cordula Breuer, transverse flute and recorder; Eberhard Zummach, Baroque oboe and recorder; Christina Kyprianides, viola da gamba and Baroque violoncello; Joachim Vogelsänger, harpsichord); Anne Röhrig, Baroque violin. MDG Preziosa. $49.99 (2 CDs). 

Vivaldi: Bassoon Concertos, Volume VI—RV 402, 466, 468/399, 478, 482/406, 487, and 501. Sergio Azzolini, bassoon and conducting L’Onda Armonica. Naïve. $16.99. 

     Although modern audiences know Handel almost entirely through his larger-scale creations, from Messiah to the Royal Fireworks Music, Water Music, and dozens of Italian operas and English-language choral works, a great deal of his musical production was for far more intimate forces – including several dozen works for solo instrument and continuo. The exact number of these sonatas is uncertain – some are undoubtedly lost, and because of Handel’s popularity, some works by others were printed under his name. The exact instrumentation is uncertain, too: Baroque composers were far less assiduous in specifying instrumentation, often letting the range of a work speak for itself to performers – a matter complicated by overlapping ranges, but allowing music to be played by whatever suitable instruments were available. Handel’s well-known (although scarcely unique) propensity for reusing movements and parts of movements in multiple guises helps stamp some sonatas as his but does little to uncomplicate the matter of how to play them. But the good thing about all this is that if there are no obviously right answers, neither are there any decidedly wrong ones if performers use historically correct instrumentation and performance practices. And that is just what the Ganassi Consort and guest artist Anne Röhrig did when recording 15 Handel solo sonatas in 1990 – performances now re-released on a very fine-sounding two-CD set from MDG Preziosa. The Handel catalog (HWV) numbers help keep things orderly but bear no information about the works’ dates of composition, which are unknown with any specificity but range from the 1720s to about 1750 and thus cover a great deal of his compositional life. There are three sonatas here for oboe (HWV 357, 363a and 366); two for transverse flute (HWV 367b and 378); six for recorder (HWV 358, 360, 362, 365, 369 and 377); three for violin (HWV 359a, 361 and 371); and one for viola da gamba (HWV 364b). The “a” and “b” designations indicate known variants – the viola da gamba sonata, for example, draws from a violin sonata, HWV 364a, within whose autograph Handel wrote out an octave-lower alternative that he designated for the larger instrument. But for all the confusions and complications of origin and specificity, the things that all these sonatas have in common are an easy grace, comparatively modest performance requirements that in no way make the works less charming to play or hear, and a firm and careful stylistic integrity that sets them firmly in Baroque times while leaving room for Handel’s special brand of creativity. Many of the sonatas are four-movement ones grouping two two-movement (slow/fast) subsections, but some have other designs, such as the suitelike HWV 363a in five movements and HWV 367b in seven. Six of the 15 are in minor keys and accordingly offer a slight degree of melancholy or thoughtfulness without, however, any particularly deep emotion being called for or needed. Echoes of other music emerge from time to time – the “hornpipe” from the Water Music in HWV 367b, for example – and Handel’s easily free-flowing melodic and harmonic explorations are everywhere apparent. The use of period instruments or carefully constructed reproductions, and the performers’ careful attention to stylistic niceties, make this recording one to cherish for lovers of smaller-scale Baroque music in general and less-known Handel in particular. 

     It has taken five years for the ever-expanding Vivaldi Edition on Naïve to complete its survey of the composer’s three dozen or so bassoon concertos, as performed by Sergio Azzolini and L’Onda Armonica: the sixth and final volume has now appeared, with the fifth having come out back in 2021. As with Handel’s solo-instrument sonatas, the exact number of Vivaldi’s for bassoon is impossible to pin down, and this recording actually manages to complicate matters a bit further. It includes four complete bassoon concertos, RV 466, 478, 487 and 501, then adds newly completed concertos that exist in only partial form: the two movements of RV 468 get an adaptation of the finale of the cello concerto RV 399 added to them, while the single surviving movement of RV 482 gets two movements from the cello concerto RV 406. And lest there be any doubt about Azzolini’s enthusiasm for this music – and Vivaldi’s penchant for writing for solo instruments with a rich lower register – there is Azzolini’s own version of the cello concerto RV 402 played here with the bassoon as solo. If one chooses to count all the works here as bassoon concertos, then there are 40 in all; but if the number is arguable, the performance quality is not. Azzolini’s playing and conducting are first-rate throughout, and L’Onda Armonica is a wonderful string ensemble that shows itself to be assured and historically informed in all these works. As in the earlier releases of Vivaldi’s bassoon concertos, it is enjoyable to hear the extent to which bassoon and strings are forthrightly playful from time to time, showing that even serious music-making can be a great deal of fun for performers and audiences alike. Yet the bassoon is not solely an instrument “for fun” in Vivaldi, as it became for some composers in later years: Vivaldi considers it a fully capable woodwind whose ability to amuse is a bonus and just one element of its charm. The concertos also give it plenty of chances to express lyricism, drama and a degree of emotional intensity – further evidence, if there can be any doubt now that the Vivaldi Edition has reached Volume 76 with this release, that Vivaldi thoroughly understood and thoroughly explored every instrument for which he wrote (including the human voice), and that this long-running series is doing an enormous service to his oeuvre by demonstrating, time and again, just how varied and skillfully constructed all his musical explorations were, whether on a larger scale or a more-modest one.

(+++) DISTINCTIVE INSTRUMENTS

Asuka Kakitani: The Garden. Mark Urness, double bass. Neuma Records. $15. 

Steven Ricks: Motor Culture; Caroline Louise Miller: Ansible; Elainie Lillios: Living Between Seconds. SPLICE Ensemble (Keith Kirchoff, piano and electronics; Adam Vidiksis, drum set and electronics; Sam Wells, trumpet and electronics). New Focus Recordings. $20.99. 

     Double-bass virtuosi, although few and far between, are nothing new: Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889) remains world-famous, Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) preceded Bottesini in skill and fame, and Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) was famed for his bass playing (and to a lesser extent his compositions for the instrument) before he cemented his career as a conductor. Nevertheless, the double bass is unusual enough as a solo instrument so it is always surprising and a touch amusing to hear its clever elephantine appearance in The Carnival of the Animals – where Saint-Saëns uses only its highest register. An extended work for solo double bass, using all the capabilities of the instrument, is exceedingly rare, which makes Asuka Kakitani’s The Garden immediately noteworthy. And its notes are indeed worthy, although 43 minutes of them – briefly relieved only at the start of each movement, when the title is announced verbally by Kakitani, her daughter Mia, and cellist Mark Urness – will be a bit much for most listeners. In her seven through-composed movements, Kakitani does try to have the double bass produce differently distinctive sounds, and Urness cooperates fully with that approach in four movements that he improvises: Ants’ House, Apple Tree, Fireflies, and Hummingbird Moth. Knowing the movements’ titles is important for understanding and accepting the musical portrayals of the various garden conditions, for instance through the pizzicato emphasis of the start of the first movement, Seeds, contrasted with the non-pizzicato bow strokes of the second and longest, Germination, which eventually moves into more legato expressiveness. The improvised movements are all short and technically quite adept, often using techniques not usually associated with the double bass to produce effects such as the skittering in Ants’ House and the deeply resonant buzzing in Hummingbird Moth. Kakitani’s greenery-focused movements have a modicum of advocacy (the insistently percussive Ditch the Chemicals) but focus mostly on quotidian plants and their life cycles: Apple Tree, Rooting, Pollinators, and eventually Fly, Fly, Fly Away, Seeds – before the closing Beneath Our Feet. Impressionism is at most partially present in these movements, although listeners who pay attention to the titles will be able to focus fairly easily on how Kakitani tries to interpret them musically. The pleasantly arpeggiated finale, with an underlying buzz that gradually permeates the sonic tapestry, rises in volume to a conclusion that simply stops – not so much a climax as a proclamation of continuity. The Garden has many interesting elements and, although it is a bit much to listen to a solo double bass for this length of time, Urness certainly brings his instrument’s capabilities and in particular its expressive potential to the fore on this Neuma Records CD – in ways that audiences wanting to hear something different that does not rely on electronic modification will find intriguing. 

     Even for those who do gravitate to electronics combined with acoustic instruments, some performers offer combinations beyond the avant-garde norm. One example is the SPLICE Ensemble, which offers three of its commissioned works on a New Focus Recordings release. The three members of the group not only produce unusual combinatorial sounds using their respective instruments but also are all versed in electronic expressiveness, which they contribute in varying ways. As is often the case in modern music, a clear understanding of the not-always-clear titles of works and their individual movements is necessary for the pieces on this CD to have their intended effect. And none of this titling is as clear as Kakitani’s in The Garden. Steven L. Ricks’ Motor Culture, for example, is supposed to be about how cars influence modern life. Its three movements are called Hank’s Drive Through the Multiverse, Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, and Disastrous Experiment. The amusement underlying the words is by no means apparent in the raucous intensity of the first movement, the complex and multifaceted and constantly shifting middle movement, or the swells and silences of the finale – which includes recordings of people discussing auto accidents. Whether Ricks intends Motor Culture as a cautionary tale or simply as descriptive is unclear and pretty much beside the point – the instruments and electronics exist and interweave for their own sake. Ricks’ work is partly inspired by a movie scene, and Caroline Louise Miller’s Ansible is entirely grown from a device used by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Without knowing that, and without being familiar with the novels in which Le Guin uses the ansible (an instantaneous communicator that functions over interstellar distances), audiences will be unable to make much sense of the four movements: Antiphony, Gethen / Icecaps, Urras / Walls, and Passacaglia – although at least the first and fourth provide musical referents. The first movement deliberately uses a piano with poor sound, with microtonality adding to an impression of decay; the second has an Arctic chill about it, with trumpet shivers as emphasis; the third is percussive, disjointed, and incorporates recorded voices, including one saying “I knew fear.” Then the fourth movement, which scarcely lives up to its title, lays the instruments and electronics over each other to produce a kind of sound cloud. The work is quite extended, lasting more than half an hour, but exactly how all its elements connect to Le Guin’s ansible, and exactly what sort of commentary Miller intends through that connection, audiences are left to decipher for themselves. Elainie Lillios’ Living Between Seconds is half as long and in a single movement, features an extended opening of recorded birdsong, and is the most intensely electronic work on the CD: the SPLICE Ensemble’s instruments are often not recognizable as acoustic at all. Lillios’ title implies a philosophical or metaphysical orientation toward acceptance of and thoughtfulness regarding the moment, but nothing in the piece especially invites a contemplative response. All the works here are of primary musical interest because of the way the unusual instrumental combination of the SPLICE Ensemble produces the sounds the composers seek. All will be engaging exclusively to listeners captivated by those sounds, and their electronic enhancements – or willing to invest the time and effort to find out what the composers are trying to express or illustrate in these pieces, then listen to them with those desired expressions and intended illustrations front-and-center in their ears and minds.