(++++) POETRY IN (UNCEASING) MOTION

Poems of Parenting. By Loryn Brantz. William Morrow. $19.99.

     All children are different, all parents are different, but somehow, some of the time, in some ways, all parenting is the same. Loryn Brantz not only figures this out but also has the talent, both verbal and representational, to bring the insights of commonality to the world at large. Hence we have Poems of Parenting, a charming little written-and-drawn journey through some not-always-charming elements of parenthood. And many that are charming. And some that are definitely worth thinking about but are not thought about very often, such as the realization, while breastfeeding, that “this will be a fully grown adult someday” and that fact is “REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD,” illustrated with a full-grown adult curled happily on the lap of a suitably bemused-looking woman.

     Brantz is particularly good at bemusement, a kind of second cousin of amusement (she is particularly good at that, too). For example, the exuberance of the illustration for “Mom Joy” (a state of affairs including “Solve big problems” and “Do nothing”) is neatly complemented by the picture for “Splash,” which shows the all-too-common everyday event occasioned by the words “Like a moth/ to a flame/ Baby hand/ to my cup” (actually a glass, whose ice-cube-cooled drink is about to be everywhere except in the glass). Most words of most poems drift around the page, although some longer ones are laid out more traditionally, line by line – while some entries are barely poems at all, containing as few as three words: “Fat. Baby. Hands.” (The half-dozen chubby little human paws spread across two pages are the point here.)

     Parenting does not, by any means, stop when children are babies, so neither, of course, does Brantz’s book. As squishy little infants grow into mobility, Brantz provides guides to such episodes of everyday life as “Warm Jammies” and how it feels to experience the insertion of a little one into them (“If a rabid raccoon/ was dipped in oil/ And I had to dress it/ in a three-piece suit”). Again and again, Brantz juxtaposes the internal joys of being a parent with the external, mundane, often maddening quotidian duties of parenthood involving matters both big and small (mostly small). Thus, her poem about trimming baby’s “sweet tiny nails” concludes, “Damn/ this is/ A lot of work.” Indeed, she notes elsewhere that babies are in effect in charge of things, parents do all the work, and the result is “the cutest tyranny,” in which an adult who must gather all the detritus of babyhood becomes in essence a “Beautiful/ Walking human/ trash bin.”

     By the time Brantz gets to kids’ toddler stage, she is referring to them as “tiny bestie” and “spicy little nugget,” and the reality is that they are both, all the time. And as amusing as many of her observations are, this is the place in the book where Brantz pauses for some sincere First World thoughtfulness: “How lucky am I/ That we have so much” and “How lucky am I/ That we have a place to sleep” and “How lucky am I/ I can’t believe what good fortune we have.” The overt sentimentality does not last long – Brantz quickly reverts to amusingly-juxtaposed-opposites mode – but it is worth bearing in mind for every reader’s individual-yet-common parental journey. Indeed, “You’re living/ The poetry/ Of/ Parenting,” Brantz reminds readers directly. That poetry sometimes encapsulates reality in just a few words, sometimes sprawls across two pages, sometimes curses, sometimes indulges in bathroom breaks and doomscrolling, and sometimes invents entirely new concepts that seem to have age-old resonance – such as the discovery that something even worse than the Terrible Twos is possible when a child becomes a “threenager.” Throughout all this amazing everyday life, Brantz celebrates traditional man-woman-children families in a 21^st-century urban environment, even as she offers thoughts to which parents in many other times and places can relate – such as the journey from staying up all night “buzzed on new love” to staying up all night “Because our children/ Are trying to kill us/ By sleep deprivation.”

     “The days are long/ But the weeks are also long,” writes Brantz in one of her small, semi-precious poetic gems, concluding this particular bit of blank verse by saying, “It’s not always easy/ But it’s always hard.” And there you have the central message of Poems of Parenting, provided you do your best to add, in your own mind, the words “And it’s always worthwhile.”

(+++) THE BROAD SCALE AND THE INTIMATE

Wynton Marsalis: Blues Symphony. Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini. Pentatone. $17.99.

Music for Unaccompanied Violin by Melia Watras, John Corigliano, Ástor Piazzolla, Paola Prestini, and Leilehua Lanzilotti. Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin. Planet M Records. $15.

     Today’s composers, like those of earlier eras, have many reasons for choosing to write music for large ensembles or small ones – or even for solo performance. The type of material they are working with, the sensibilities they wish to explore and present, and the availability of appropriate-size and appropriately skilled performers all figure into compositional planning. So it certainly makes sense that Wynton Marsalis (born 1961) wanted to create something on a very large scale, for full orchestra, in his Blues Symphony, because Marsalis’ ambition was a grand one: to explore not only the sound of the blues but also the history, background, emotional underpinnings and sociopolitical context of this musical form. That is a lot of text and subtext to pack into a symphony, even a seven-movement one that runs more than an hour. A new Pentatone recording of this 2009 work, featuring the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jader Bignamini, provides an opportunity to find out whether Marsalis’ accomplishment matches his ambition. A fair answer would be: not quite, although the composer tries mighty hard to encompass everything about the blues – and the conductor and orchestra do their best to put the composer’s auditory vision across. The symphony is in seven movements, whose titles are integral to Marsalis’ thinking and planning and are therefore crucial for the audience to know and consider while listening to the music: Born in Hope; Swimming in Sorrow; Reconstruction Rag; Southwestern Shakedown; Big City Breaks; Danzon y Mambo, Choro y Samba; and Dialogue in Democracy. As those titles make clear, Marsalis focuses throughout on the society (really, societies) in which the blues were born and developed; a kind of societal gloss is intended to permeate the work. How well it does so, and to what end, is a matter of opinion. The first movement, for example, communicates an upbeat sense of “hope” clearly enough, but it communicates it again and again and yet again – there is clangor in the music whose effectiveness diminishes the longer it goes on. The second and longest movement is dour enough, expressing itself in a rather cinematic (that is to say, surface-level) fashion, with plenty of swells and exclamations contrasted with unhappy string sighs. The third opens with a continuation of the same mood before working itself into something bouncy and upbeat but, at least by implication, with sorrow suppressed rather than eliminated. The fourth features some genuinely bluesy-sounding material, with brass chorale elements mingled with the sound effects of a TV commercial featuring the imagined ruggedness of the Old West – an amusing potpourri that is not, however, intended to amuse; this is a disparity, and not the only one, between the work’s intentions and its execution. The fifth and shortest movement is back in “bounce” mode, now with irregular rhythms and prominent drum set. The sixth movement sighs and laments in a solo violin before lapsing into a vaguely Latin dance beat, then becomes increasingly insistent (and loud) before dipping again into quieter material; the feelings alternate, on and off, until a rather silly police-whistle-dominated section leads to an eventual cartoonish fadeout. The finale immediately brings speediness to the orchestra’s sections, individually and together, with a cartoonish sound of a different sort – a kind of chase scene in which no one ever catches anyone. After going on this way for a while, Marsalis opts for a full-throated climax (with more police whistle) and then a gallop toward a hectic conclusion that, inevitably, comes to an abrupt stop. A lot of this is great fun, and the enthusiasm that conductor and orchestra bring to this performance is enough to gloss over some of the structural and communicative inelegances of this sprawling work – whose sprawl is itself an issue, making the piece sound more like a series of individual tone poems than a tightly knit symphony. Marsalis really wants the symphony to be profound and meaningful, but it does not sound that way, coming across more as a once-over-lightly (but not too lightly) romp through and with a musical form that is scarcely undiscovered and that has already been used by a great many composers in a great many ways for a great many years. Bignamini and the Detroit Symphony have given this work as fine a recorded performance as it is likely to receive. But the piece, despite its many pockets of enjoyment, ultimately tries too hard to assert its importance, and as a result comes across as unconvincing – it just plain takes itself too seriously, or, rather, more seriously than Marsalis is able to communicate convincingly.

     The foundational element is different on a new Planet M Records disc featuring Michael Jinsoo Lim and released under the title KINETIC: it is dance, with everything that Lim plays said to be dance-derived to a greater or lesser extent. The approach is different as well: these are works for a single instrument, the solo violin, rather than an ensemble. The CD presents material by five composers, arranged rather arbitrarily: for example, the two works by John Corigliano (born 1938) are separated by a Tango-Étude by Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992), while works by Melia Watras (born 1969) appear first, fifth, and ninth among the 10 pieces on the disc. This peculiarity of arrangement also extends to Piazzolla’s music, which shows up third, sixth, and tenth. The rather forced sequencing does not, however, detract from the interesting elements of the program, from the effectiveness that can result in certain instances from using a single instrument rather than a group of them, or from the considerable verve with which Lim performs. Actually, Lim does bend the “solo instrument” approach a bit: Watras’ A dance of honey and inexorable delight includes a narrator (Herbert Woodward Martin), and A Jarful of Bees by Paola Prestini (born 1975) is for violin and electronics. Nevertheless, the overall impression here is of a solo recital, and a very nicely performed one at that. The three Piazzolla Tango-Études from 1987 (Nos. 1, 3 and 4, given in reverse order as well as being separated on the CD) are high points, by turns sultry and alluring, playful and (especially in the case of No. 1) quixotic. John Corigliano’s contributions are also noteworthy (so to speak). Stomp (2011) is somewhat overdone, over-insistent, and, well, over-produced, but it certainly puts Lim through his paces and has a somewhat endearing quality of trying a bit too hard. The Red Violin Caprices (1999), which predate Corigliano’s well-known Red Violin Concerto (2003) that is based on the 1997 film, consist of a theme and five variations in a compact 10-minute time frame, during which the violin needs to evoke extreme emotionality while displaying substantial technical prowess. The other major elements of this recording come from Watras. A dance of honey and inexorable delight (2022) is not especially evocative of either poetic emotion or apian matters, and Homage to Swan Lake (2018), thematic fragments aside, pays little attention to the unending melodiousness and dark beauty of Tchaikovsky. Watras’ Doppelgänger Dances (2017) are more intriguing. Although they are somewhat self-consciously modern in sound and technique, and frequently lose sight of the meaning of “dance” in favor of irregular rhythms and uncertain motion, they are often interesting to hear if they are not thought of too closely in a dance context: the movement called Fantasia and the fantasia-like concluding William are high points. The remaining two works on this very well-played but programmatically rather scattered CD are brief. Prestini’s A Jarful of Bees (2020) is the longest work on the disc, its 11-minute single movement more extended than the seven elements of Doppelgänger Dances or the six of The Red Violin Caprices. Even with the addition of electronics to expand its aural world, Prestini’s work goes on much too long: the repetitive electronic elements include the usual cloud-sounding background noises and snippets of mallet-percussion-like tones, all mostly at odds with the surprisingly rather tender (but scarcely dancelike) material given to the violin through most of the piece. And in where we used to be (a 2022 piece that bears one of those insistently non-capitalized titles), Leilehua Lanzilotti (born 1983) also presents a kind of soundcloud, here emanating from the violin itself – followed by some brighter material that then subsides into pizzicati and harmonics, the totality leaving the impression of a six-minute technical exploration far closer in spirit and approach to an instructional étude than to anything remotely dance-oriented. It is to Lim’s credit that he plays all these works with equal commitment and an equal determination to extract from them as much meaning and interest as they contain. That amount, though, varies so widely that the disc becomes one that will be found considerably more engaging by listeners interested in fine solo-violin performance for its own sake than by an audience that is genuinely attracted to dance in any of its multifaceted forms.

(++++) CONTEXT CREATION

Schubert: Symphony No. 9, “Great”; Songs for soprano and orchestra. Mary Bevan, soprano; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner. Chandos. $21.99 (SACD).

Liszt: Aprés une lecture du Dante—Fantasia quasi sonata; Debussy: Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut; L’isle joyeuse; Lowell Liebermann: Gargoyles; Valentyn Silvestrov: Three Bagatelles, Op. 1; Postludium, Op. 5. Dmytro Choni, piano. Naïve. $16.99.

     It has taken quite a long time to complete Edward Gardner’s Schubert cycle, whose four volumes present the symphonies in no particularly rational order: Volume 1 includes Nos. 3, 5 and 8 and appeared in 2019; Volume 2 has Nos. 2 and 6 and was released in 2020; and Volume 3 contains Nos. 1 and 4 and became available in 2023. The second and third volumes supplement the symphonies with Schubert overtures, with which the symphonic works combine readily enough. The fourth and last volume, focusing on Schubert’s final symphony, takes a somewhat different combinatorial approach that proves to be quite fascinating. Symphony No. 9 is preceded on this Chandos release by five Schubert songs – one of them written by Schubert himself for soprano and orchestra (Romanze from Rosamunde) and the other four orchestrated by four other composers. This SACD thus creates a very unusual environment for the “Great C Major” symphony, and one that turns out to shed some unexpected and welcome light on the symphony’s pervasive songfulness. The song orchestrations are fascinating in themselves: the one of Die Forelle was done by Benjamin Britten in 1942; that of Erlkönig by Hector Berlioz in 1860; that of Geheimes by Johannes Brahms in 1862; and that of Im Abendrot by Max Reger in 1914. The fact that these disparate songs attracted the close attention of such different composers, each of whom put his personal stamp on the music while remaining true to Schubert’s underlying mood-setting, makes this release a fascinating one even before the first note of the symphony is heard. Berlioz’ decorations, Britten’s string passages, Brahms’ use of a single horn with string section, and Reger’s deliberately narrow tonal palette all shed intriguing light on their respective song settings, and all do a fine job of putting Schubert’s handling of the various poets’ words into a context different from the composer’s original one but complementary to it. Mary Bevan’s sensitively evocative exploration of the songs’ words, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s equally sensitive and well-balanced accompaniment, produce a warmly intimate sound world into which Gardner then brings the symphony. The performance is in fact a songful one, highlighting the pervasive lyricism of the symphony with generally fleet tempos and a welcome light touch that connects this work to Schubert’s earlier and less-ambitious symphonies as well as to the lovely flow so evident in his songs. The symphony’s first movement is the only one that slightly disappoints, with a few unneeded rubato elements that interfere with the smoothness with which Schubert presents and develops his themes. These are minor, though, and the remaining movements thankfully proceed without them, as Gardner keeps the orchestra’s sections well-balanced and allows Schubert all the expressive beauty that this large-scale but intimate symphony invites. The performance, taken as a whole, is a very fine one and is certainly a capstone of Gardner’s Schubert cycle. And the symphony is all the more interesting for being presented in an aural environment that not only includes some of the composer’s song settings but also lets listeners hear how several other fine composers absorbed Schubert’s music and channeled it through their own sensibilities.

     The performances are equally compelling, but the musical connections more forced, on a new Naïve CD featuring the young Ukrainian pianist Dmytro Choni (born 1993). The centerpiece of this recital is the work usually referred to as Liszt’s “Dante sonata” although actually, as its title indicates, it is something between a sonata and a fantasia. Choni has no evident difficulty with the work’s considerable technical demands, and as a result is able to focus throughout on its emotional highs and lows. Liszt himself created this piece within a specific context: it is No. 7 of Italie from Années de pèlerinage II. But Choni is less interested in its geographical provenance than its emotional one, using the Dante connection to make the work the linchpin of a rather meandering recital containing elements of both the hellish and the heavenly. Actually, Liszt’s own contrast between beauty, even sweetness, and dramatic intensity, is everywhere apparent in this fantasia/sonata, and Choni does a fine job of allowing the contrasting sections to flower on their own and within the work as a whole. The performance is technically impressive and emotionally convincing – but not everything with which Liszt’s music is coupled on this disc works equally well. Choni’s program opens and closes with pieces by Valentyn Silvestrov (born 1937). The opening of the CD is Silvestrov’s Three Bagatelles: the first delicate in the extreme, the second darker and more portentous, the third hesitant and uncertain in mood. The disc concludes with Silvestrov’s Postludium, the title certainly being apt for its placement but the piece itself – which is also essentially a bagatelle – somewhat too uncertain in mood and structure to be a truly satisfying conclusion. The other works that Choni plays are suitably atmospheric but not as indicative of the contrast of ups and downs in life that Choni wants them to be. Debussy’s well-known Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut (No. 2 from the second series of Images) and L’sle joyeuse are quietly lovely and evocative, of course, and Choni’s sensitivity to their moods is quite impressive – as are, in particular, the clarity of the trills and the balancing of left and right hands in L’isle joyeuse. But how the works fit musically and/or emotionally with Liszt’s fantasia/sonata, which they follow on the disc, is less than apparent. On the other hand, Gargoyles by Lowell Liebermann (born 1961) limns its subject matter as clearly as does Ravel in Scarbo: Liebermann’s four short pieces burst with differing forms of energy – the first driving and intense, the second light and delicate, the third an arabesque of color and gentle rhythm, the fourth as strongly propulsive as the first and with even more demonic coloration. Choni’s handling of these pieces, which are more monochromatic than Liszt’s expansive and variegated fantasia/sonata, is exceptionally convincing, the concluding Liebermann work in particular showing marvelous control of both technique and emotional communication. The Liszt and Liebermann pieces and L’isle joyeuse are the most effective and meaningful ones on this disc, and although they do not fit especially well together – and the CD as a whole is somewhat more diffuse both musically and emotionally than Choni wants it to be – this is nevertheless a highly impressive presentation of performances by a pianist whose skill and sensitivity are both at an equally high level.

(++++) PLUCKED AND STRUMMED PLEASANTRIES

J.K. Mertz: Elegie für die Guitare; Bardenklänge—excerpts; Fantaisie Hongroise; Schubert’sche Lieder—excerpts. Petra Poláčková, guitar. Bridge Records. $16.99.

Music for Guitar by Lennox Berkeley, Aloÿs Fornerod, Pierre de Breville, Fernande Peyrot, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Henri Martelli, Raymond Petit, and Cyril Scott. Matthew Slotkin, guitar. Summit Records. $12.99.

     Given the excellence of guitar music by composers such as Paganini, Giuliani, Fernando Sor, Ferdinando Carulli, and Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the tremendously engaging and impressive playing by guitarists such as Segovia, Bream, Parkening, Romero, and John Williams, it is surprising that solo-guitar CDs are not more common. The good news is that as a result, the ones that do appear tend to be of remarkably high quality and to feature music that is as charming and enjoyable as it is comparatively unknown. That is certainly the case with the new Bridge Records disc devoted to works by J.K. (Johann Kaspar) Mertz (1806-1856). Mertz was the first major guitarist/composer to apply the techniques and approaches of 19^th-century virtuoso piano music to the guitar, including in a trilogy of complex fantasias inspired by Liszt’s piano music. The pieces chosen by Petra Poláčková are not quite at the difficulty level of those three, but they are nevertheless quite clearly influenced by composers such as Mendelssohn, Chopin and, specifically in the case of the Bardenklänge, Schumann. There are 15 of these “sounds of the bards” in all, 13 published during Mertz’s lifetime (in 1847 and 1850) and two added later by a publisher. Poláčková plays eight of these character pieces (not in the order in which Mertz presented them), and all are charming, moving and often quite remarkable in sound: the opening of An Malvina, for example, is distinctly piano-like. The remarkable aural contrasts among the works show Mertz to be a composer with consummate understanding of the guitar’s capabilities, and Poláčková does a fine job of highlighting the variegated moods and technical requirements of these pieces. The speedy Capriccio and Unruhe, for example, are just as effective in their way as the quiet and thoughtful An die Entfernte and very sparely harmonized Gondoliera are in theirs. The other Mertz work on this CD that is tied strongly to a specific composer is Schubert’sche Lieder, a set of six Mertz arrangements of Schubert songs, of which Poláčková plays just four (one of the few disappointing things about this disc is that neither Bardenklänge nor Schubert’sche Lieder is heard in full). Mertz’s understanding of Schubert’s moods and the lyrical beauty of his themes comes through clearly in the Schubert’sche Lieder, which Mertz decorates with intriguing guitar flourishes while he ensures that the underlying melodic material remains always recognizable. Among the pieces heard here, the sweetness of Liebesbotschaft and expressive warmth of Ständchen are especially notable. Poláčková's lovely playing – on a nine-string romantic guitar made in 2014, based on a model from 1840 – is also apparent in Elegie für die Guitare, an expansive and serious work, and in Fantaisie Hongroise (the first of Trois Morceaux pour la Guitarre, Op. 65), whose themes and rhythms bear direct comparison to Liszt’s in some of his distinctly Hungarian-influenced works. Mertz’s music is uniformly well-made, lies and sounds very well on his chosen instrument, and in Poláčková's hands offers listeners an aural journey thoroughly packed with delight.

     The works are more varied and scarcely less interesting on a Summit Records release whose title – “Recovered Gems from the Andrés Segovia Archive” – points directly to the provenance of the material and indicates what the eight composers on the CD had in common. In truth, though, the source of all this 20^th-century music matters less than the high quality of all the material that Matthew Slotkin performs with a combination of technical skill and stylistic understanding. Quatre pièces by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) is a work of warmth sprinkled with dissonance, with an especially welcome contrast between the third piece (Mouvement de Sarabande) and the energetic concluding one. Prélude, Op. 13, by Aloÿs Fornerod (1890-1965), has a pleasantly Bachian air about it, although its harmonies are clearly those of the 20^th century. Fantaisie by Pierre de Breville (1861-1949) requires some particularly adept finger work. Thème et variations by Fernande Peyrot (1888-1978) puts Slotkin through his paces with a series of vivid contrasts. Spiritual by Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936) is brief, bouncier than its title would indicate, and has some attractive rhythmic irregularities. Quatre pièces, Op. 32, by Henri Martelli (1895-1980), opens with a charmingly old-fashioned dance, continues with an attractive moto perpetuo that insists on interrupting itself, slows down for a bit of thoughtfulness, then rushes to a brightly animated conclusion featuring some complex fingerings. Sicilienne by Raymond Petit (1893-1976) is an extended, moody work that carefully explores the guitar’s emotive side. And the Sonatina by Cyril Scott (1879-1970) uses traditional three-movement form very effectively: the first movement has a stop-and-start quality, the second is rhythmically meandering and includes some distinctly unusual harmonic touches, and the third has an ostinato quality mixed with attractively insistent themes. None of these composers will likely be familiar to many listeners, but given the fact that solo-classical-guitar recordings are comparatively uncommon, one further element of rarity is, if anything, an additional fillip of enjoyment for this very well-played, convincingly programmed disc – which clearly demonstrates that there is a great deal of very fine, very enjoyable solo-guitar music that has yet to be explored, and there are some first-rate guitarists who, happily, seem determined to explore it.