(++++) SHORT BUT INFORMATION-PACKED

Living Color. By Steve Jenkins. Sandpiper. $7.99.

3-D Chillers: Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves. By Deborah Kespert. Scholastic. $7.99.

     In just 32 oversize pages, Steve Jenkins manages to convey a great deal of interesting material about colors in nature – and to showcase those colors through his very well-done drawings. Jenkins points out that mammalian colors tend to be drab, possibly because the entire line of mammals started with small, evasive creatures that came out primarily at night, when bright colors would be useless or even an outright danger (by making mammals easier for their predators to see). Elsewhere in the animal world, though, colors have many uses, from warning potential predators away to drawing the attention of possible mates. Jenkins devotes four pages apiece to the colors red, blue, yellow and green, and two pages apiece to orange, purple and pink. The varying uses of the colors are fascinating. The deep-sea jellyfish and blood red fire shrimp, for example, look bright red to humans, but they live so far under water that almost no red light reaches them – so they appear black and blend in. The cleaner wrasse is bright blue, with distinctive markings – so potential predators recognize it and do not eat it, and the wrasse cleans the larger fish by eating parasites from their skin and gills. The crab spider changes from white to yellow so it matches the color of the flower on which it rests, waiting for a bee or butterfly to land and be captured. The bright orange of the monarch and viceroy butterflies warns predators of the insects’ foul taste. The pink squat lobster has no shell, but often lives inside pink sponges, which disguise it effectively. These and many other examples are amazing in themselves, but there is more here: Jenkins also explains how animal colors come about, how they evolve to different colors over time, and how colorful creatures find ways to attract mates but not predators. The book ends with five pages of more-in-depth information on the animals pictured in the main section, giving their size, habitat, diet and some additional data. Everything is carefully presented and attractive to look at, and the total amount to be seen and learned here is very impressive indeed.

     The 48-page 3-D Chillers: Vampires, Zombies, and Werewolves must be taken more lightly, but despite the sensationalized title and the included 3-D glasses, this is a significantly more informative book than most entries in the supernatural-chiller field. Yes, there are plenty of pop-culture references and pictures here, for example to Twilight vampires and also to the low-budget Hammer Films vampire movies starring Christopher Lee. And yes, the book has a strong visual orientation and lots of exclamation points in its text. But this (+++) book also includes some genuinely interesting and less-known material, such as the story of a possible real 18^th-century vampire named Peter Plogojowitz, whose body did not decompose after death and was found with fresh blood in its mouth; information on a Chinese vampire-zombie combination called jiang shi; an explanation of the derivation of the word zombie (from an African term meaning “soul of a dead person”); a note on Mexican naguals, witches that turn into wild dogs; and even a few comments on such literary repositories of werewolf legend as Gilgamesh and Little Red Riding Hood. Add in the “Dictionary of the Supernatural” at the back of the book and you have a short, punchy work designed for entertainment (although the 3-D effects are not especially impressive) – but also a book with some solid facts on the background of today’s versions of vampires, zombies, werewolves and other creatures of the night and of nightmare.

(++++) SHIFTS AND FOUNDATIONS

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. By Eric Klinenberg. Penguin. $27.95.

The Instant Economist: Everything You Need to Know about How the Economy Works. By Timothy Taylor. Plume. $16.

     The numbers are compelling. In Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., more than 40% of all households consist of a single resident. In Manhattan, the cultural center of New York City, the percentage is 50%. In Stockholm, it is more than 60%. People living alone – sociologist Eric Klinenberg calls them singletons – make up 28% of all households in the United States. There are more female singletons than male, and they are concentrated in central cities – in contrast to half a century ago, when singletons made up less than 10% of U.S. households and included more male migrant workers in Western states than any other group. The analysis and implications of the numbers, though, are less clear, and those are the areas where Klinenberg focuses in Going Solo. Through a combination of statistics (the macro picture) and interviews with singletons (the micro view), he argues that living alone has significant positive meaning and benefits in every age range. Young professionals get their own apartments as a success indicator, and move into adulthood through living alone rather than by marrying early and having children. Middle-aged urban adults join the singles subculture, often after escaping bad relationships, and frequently “give back” to the community: people living alone are more likely than others to volunteer in civic groups. Elderly singletons retain their autonomy, dignity and independence instead of moving in with family members or friends. Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, puts across his intriguing ideas well, although not always convincingly: he believes, for example, that the rise of singleton living has boosted the housing market, because singles account for about a third of home sales; but the vast majority of home buyers are families or at least couples, and there is little if any evidence that the increase in singles has led to a dramatic alteration in the types of homes being built or the favored locations for home-based (rather than apartment-based) life. Being in New York, Klinenberg has some situational bias; but New York City is scarcely the United States as a whole, and Manhattan is scarcely New York City as a whole (of the city’s five boroughs, it is the second-smallest in population and by far the most expensive). If some of Klinenberg’s particulars can be questioned, though, his macro view really cannot, being well-supported by nonjudgmental statistics. And some of the individual stories in Going Solo are telling, even if readers should not make the mistake of assuming that they are typical. For example, a writer and teacher named Helen, who is in her early 60s and has lived alone “for decades” in a Greenwich Village apartment, talks about the erroneous assumptions underlying her two marriages to two very different men, both of whom she divorced: “‘I was never more miserable in my life than when I was married,’” Helen says, and Klinenberg adds that in Helen’s view, “living alone stands in opposition to living falsely in a conventional but unhappy marriage.” All well and good, but scarcely guaranteed to be attitudinally typical or indicative of a major societal shift. “‘When you live alone, there’s no compromising,’” says another woman interviewed by Klinenberg, but an accumulation of such quotes may well make a reader think, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” That is, while many people clearly take to the singleton life and thrive in it, many others – including some interviewed in this book – seem, their overt words to the contrary, to be trying to adapt to a lifestyle that may be better than others they have tried but that still seems in some psychological ways (rather than sociological ones) to be empty. Of particular concern in Klinenberg’s analysis is his belief that modern technology so interconnects people that living alone can be restorative. But singletons, as well as couples, tend if anything to feel themselves more connected to the world through digital life than they actually are: digital involvement separates people from other people, no matter how many online “friends” one claims to have. Klinenberg is trenchant in his analysis of the growing trend toward single living (the “extraordinary rise” part of his book’s subtitle), but he is less convincing in his attempts to show how positive the singleton trend is for its members (the “surprising appeal” part).

     Klinenberg does note that there are significant economic effects of the singleton trend: a boost in business for urban bars and restaurants, for example. This statement is a bit facile, since it indicates that “happy alone” singletons are spending their money in venues where they try to connect with others. But certainly the rise of singletons is one factor among many affecting the U.S. economy. For an idea of what this and other factors do and how they interconnect, The Instant Economist is a top-notch basic guide (although it is not, as its back cover says, “the only economics book you will ever need”). Timothy Taylor, managing editor of the American Economics Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives, does include a certain amount of jargon here (“goods with elastic supply have an elasticity of greater than 1,” while “goods with unitary elasticity of supply have an elasticity equal to 1”). But he goes out of his way to make the “dismal science” (so called by Thomas Carlyle) at least somewhat accessible and interesting. Thus, “the dramatist Oscar Wilde (1891) once defined a cynic as ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ That’s also a good description of economists, who focus on the price of everything and the intrinsic value in use of nothing.” This is an important concept, one of many, because it shows how economists are highly analytical and at the same time divorced from the way people actually make economic decisions. People are not rational and statistically driven when they decide what to buy or not buy – a major emotional component is almost always present. But emotional components are not measurable and are therefore outside the sphere of economics. What economists do well, though, is bring objectivity to emotional subject matter: “Environmentalists sometimes see the free market as the enemy of a clean environment, but free markets are often not the worst enemies of the environment. In fact, low-income countries with weak markets often have environmental problems that are much worse than [those in] high-income, market-oriented countries. Countries that have tried to eliminate free market forces – such as China and the former Soviet Union – have had severe pollution problems.” It is in this sort of analysis that economists and The Instant Economist excel. Taylor deals in 36 chapters with just about every element of the modern U.S. economy, including subjects that make politicians – and many voters – decidedly uncomfortable: “Poverty and Welfare Programs,” “Inequality,” “The Unemployment-Inflation Trade-off,” “Fiscal Policy and Budget Deficits,” and “The Gains of International Trade,” among other matters. In the international-trade chapter, for example, he shows how trade between the United States and Mexico can benefit both countries even though the relationship may be considered one-sided, because in many areas the U.S. has “more educated workers; better and newer capital equipment; and a better infrastructure of communications, electricity, and transportation.” Taylor’s analysis is intellectually clear and convincing, but of course the emotional and political underpinnings of issues such as cross-border trade are frequently more powerful as driving forces than logical analysis. The Instant Economist will give readers an excellent introduction to numerous aspects of the U.S. economy and the forces that make it work; but one reason it cannot be “the only economics book you will ever need” is that the psychological elements of economic behavior are constantly distorting the rational ones that are foundational to economists’ way of thinking – and to understand those non-rational factors, readers will have to go elsewhere.

(++++) RECONSIDERATIONS

Twice Upon a Time: No. 1—Rapunzel, the One with All the Hair; No. 2—Sleeping Beauty, the One Who Took the Really Long Nap. By Wendy Mass. Scholastic. $6.99 each.

Everest: Book One—The Contest; Book Three—The Summit. By Gordon Korman. Scholastic. $5.99 each.

     Six years after their first release, Wendy Mass’ Twice Upon a Time stories about Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty are as much fun as ever, and just as clever. The photographic covers of the books’ new editions may draw in some new readers, which would be just fine, since these retold tales deserve to continue to delight. The “twice” in the overall title refers to two separate things: the notion that these are twice-told (that is, retold) fairy tales, and the fact that each of them is told from two perspectives – that of the title character and that of her prince. These are decidedly not traditional tellings of the stories. In Rapunzel, the One with All the Hair, both Rapunzel and Prince Benjamin are trapped – she in the traditional tower after being abducted by the traditional witch, he in a castle that his mother won’t let him leave even though he is 13 years old. (The original fairy tale, which is a particularly dark story, involves lust, pregnancy and other very adult themes that Mass excises from her version.) The tale is fleshed out with animals (a cat that Rapunzel finds in her tower prison) and new characters (a green one helps Rapunzel). Mass plays with the story in many ways – before the prince knows about Rapunzel, for instance, he is hunting in the woods for a treasure that turns out not to exist. Mass also gives the chief characters personality: Rapunzel is initially rather self-absorbed, but learns to think more about others, while Prince Benjamin is too cerebral for his role – he prefers chess to hunting. Mass rings similar changes on Sleeping Beauty, the One Who Took the Really Long Nap. Here the prince, who has no name (just “Prince”), has a mother who is part ogre and who has a strong craving for human flesh on the first and third Thursdays of the month. The princess, who does have a name (Rose), is good at everything (except maybe cooking), thanks to the gifts she received from her fairy godmothers before the offended angry fairy cast the death spell (later magically changed to a sleeping spell) on her. The prince spends a fair amount of the story being confused rather than heroic: the way he finds Rose is by unexpectedly discovering a building in his back yard. And when he does revive Rose, of course he has to figure out how to bring her home to dear old mom. Both these retold fairy tales are fun and funny, enjoyably written and fleshed out in ways that the original stories never were (and never were intended to be). These books were delightful reading for ages 8-12 in 2006, and they remain delightful for preteens in 2012.

     Gordon Korman’s Everest trilogy, which dates to 2002 and is for the same age group, does not repay rereading quite so well and gets a (+++) rating. The idea here – set forth in The Contest – is that a company called Summit Athletic (get the name?), which makes sports drinks and energy bars, runs a contest in which 20 young climbers compete to become part of a four-teenager team to climb the world’s tallest mountain. The typecast personalities are never fleshed out, and the eventual winners – Dominic, Perry, Sammi and Tilt – are, not surprisingly, a diverse group with contrasting goals (three boys and one girl; one reluctant climber, Perry, and one heavy one, Tilt; and so on). The entire first book is devoted to the competition for the chance to climb the mountain. The second, The Climb, follows the four teens, the expedition leader, a doctor and a cameraman up Everest, facing mostly predictable fears, worries and perils. The third book, The Summit, piles on the drama (or rather the melodrama) as the temperature drops to well below zero, supplies begin to run out, and (in line with typical melodramatic plotting) it turns out that one of the competitors is trying to sabotage the others. A huge storm complicates things even further. The certainty that one of the teens will not survive the climb permeates the final book, but in light of Tilt’s unending rule-bending in his determination to make it to the summit, there is never much doubt about who will be Everest’s victim and thus attain redemption of a sort. There is also no doubt that the Everest trilogy is exciting and fast-paced; and the character interactions, surface-level though they may be, add to the sense of danger posed by the mountain climbing itself. But the trilogy is just too neatly staged, too carefully arranged, too formulaic, to hold up well a decade after Korman created it. Exciting, certainly; memorable in the long run, not really.

(+++) MULTIFACETED FANTASY WORLDS

Winterling. By Sarah Prineas. Harper. $16.99.

The Book of Wonders. By Jasmine Richards. Harper. $16.99.

A True Princess. By Diane Zahler. Harper. $6.99.

Princess of the Wild Swans. By Diane Zahler. Harper. $16.99.

     There is a certain reliability to modern fantasy novels. Their worlds may differ, their protagonists may differ, and the specific events in their plots may differ, but their overall ambience tends to be similar and their eventual outcomes satisfying in similar ways. Readers who enjoy any of these new fantasies will likely find at least some things to like in all of them. Winterling has a straightforward plot: young girl who has always felt she does not belong learns where she does belong and what she is fated to become. And it has some elements that will not surprise fans of the fantasy genre: a hidden passage to another world (here called the Way), a land in thrall to a powerful and evil character (here called the Mór), unknown parentage, and plenty of secrets that must be discovered. Sarah Prineas mixes these elements interestingly, and her writing is appropriately dark (but not too dark) – suitable for ages 10 and up: “She gave a sigh, put her hands behind her head, and gazed up at the sloping tent ceiling. Things weren’t as wonderful here as she thought they’d be. She couldn’t forget about the bloody death of the stag in the clearing. He hadn’t really been an animal, had he? Her stomach twisted just thinking about it.” There are, of course, magical creatures and elements galore: wildlings, a seeing-stone, wolf-guards, flying horses. And there is an inevitable, melodramatic speech by the evil huntress: “‘She could be dangerous. But I will bind her to me. …I will bind her with blood, and my power in the land will be secured.’” Amid the easy-to-anticipate elements are some less-predictable (although still not unique) ones, such as the notion of the bonding power of oaths. The eventual triumph over the Mór, despite a wholly expected revelation at the heart of it, is well done, and in fact Winterling is well-written enough so that it rises above its many formulaic elements to produce a satisfying venture into Prineas’ fairyland.

     The Book of Wonders, the debut novel by Jasmine Richards, is for slightly younger readers, ages 8-12, and its fantasy realm is one that has often been visited before: that of One Thousand and One Nights, the classic often known as The Arabian Nights. Here, though, the land is not Arabia but Arribitha, and the protagonist is 13-year-old Zardi, whose sister, Zubeyda, has been taken by the evil sultan (who can see even with his eyes closed) for nefarious purposes. One thing the sultan forbids is discussion of the powers of magical beings, such as djinns and sorcerers. But Zardi loves to hear stories about them, and of course she will encounter them when she and her best friend, the silver-haired Rhidan, embark on a voyage with none other than Sinbad. The objective: find an object called the Windrose and bring it, and magic, back to Arribitha – and overthrow the sultan. The language here, especially the dialogue, is somewhat too freewheeling for an Arabian-nights story: “‘It was weird. We were getting along quite well at first. He wanted to know a bit more about my magic, why I had it, why I’d lost it. I told him that I didn’t really understand what was happening with me and that’s why I wanted to find my real parents.’” Yes, there is a real-parents plot here, too – they are very common in fantasies – and there are also the usual threats: “‘Such a shame that your story will end here,’” for example. The eventual confrontation with the sultan Shahryār leads, not surprisingly, to a decision not to kill him but to transform him – yet another oft-repeated theme (it appears in Winterling as well). The Book of Wonders is not especially inventive, but the characters are attractive and the story is nicely paced, with the sort of satisfyingly upbeat conclusion that young readers of fantasy will enjoy.

     Diane Zahler’s fairy-tale retellings, also intended for ages 8-12, draw even more directly on legend than does The Book of Wonders. Zahler chooses known fairy tales and expands them: “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” in The Thirteenth Princess, for example, and a combination of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” with bits of Goethe’s Der Erlkönig in A True Princess, originally published last year and now available in paperback. A common theme in fairy tales, used again and again by Zahler, is that of a girl often raised as a servant who is really a princess and who – after she discovers her true identity – becomes the rescuer of others. The girl in A True Princess is 12-year-old Lilia, an orphan who gets on the wrong side of the Elf King when fleeing through his domain with her friends, Kai (a name from Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”) and Karina. After Kai falls under a spell cast by the Elf King’s daughter, Lilia determines to rescue him – which she can only do by tracking down a particular jewel that is connected to Odin, chief of the Norse gods (whose eventual appearance in the story is a bit of a deus ex machina event but does tie things up rather neatly). Zahler’s latest foray into fairy tales is based on Andersen’s “The Wild Swans.” Princess of the Wild Swans features yet another 12-year-old protagonist, in this case one known as a princess from the start. She is Princess Meriel, and the story follows the basic outline of Andersen’s: Meriel must sew shirts from stinging nettles in order to rescue the princes, her brothers, from a spell – cast by their evil stepmother – that has turned the princes into swans. There is a bit of “Swan Lake” in this book as well: Meriel faces a deadline involving a body of water called Heart Lake – if it freezes, her brothers will fly south, so she must complete her task quickly. And, as in the original story, Meriel must not speak until her task is complete – but Zahler makes sure we stay in touch with her thoughts, and as usual introduces characters to help the princess and flesh the story out (the half-witch Riona, her clever brother Liam, and others). There is, unsurprisingly, an eventual confrontation with the evil queen: “There was only anger…that she had taken my father and my brothers from me, anger that she had harmed my friends and destroyed their home.” The queen, known as Lady Orianna, speaks the sort of gloating lines that recur in far too many modern fantasies: “‘Did you think to escape me, you foolish girl? …Do you not know that I am faster than you, stronger than you, smarter than you? …I shall sweep you aside as if you were an insect.’” But good triumphs over evil, of course, and even Andersen’s bittersweet conclusion, in which one prince retains a swan’s wing because the final shirt was not quite finished, is turned into something positive here. Like Zahler’s other fairy-tale-based books, Princess of the Wild Swans will be most appealing to preteen girls, who will enjoy the “princess” fantasies within the recognizable world of fairy tales – even if they have not read the specific stories on which Zahler bases these novels. Some settings, in Zahler’s books and those of authors such as Prineas and Richards, are so culturally familiar that even if readers have not been to them before, they will likely feel a pleasant sense of familiarity and have the impression that they are journeying to places that are well-known and comfortable to visit, if only in fiction.

(++++) IN CONCLUSION

Hanson: Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7 (“A Sea Symphony”); Lumen in Christo. Seattle Symphony Chorale and Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Naxos. $9.99.

Roussel: Le festin de l’araignée (complete); Padmȃvatî: Suites Nos. 1 and 2. Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Stéphane Denève. Naxos. $9.99.

     Two top-notch Naxos series here come to an end at the same high level they have maintained throughout. The re-release of the Delos International recordings of the complete symphonies of Howard Hanson concludes with the composer’s final works in the form, played by the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz with as much warmth, skill and stylistic attentiveness as the earlier volumes received. Symphony No. 6 (1968) flows elegantly through six interconnected sections that in effect make up a single movement – a structure similar to that of the final symphony of Sibelius, a lifelong influence on Hanson. A simple three-note theme sounds as the start of the work and knits the entire symphony together, with Hanson showing his skill in treating the theme in a wide variety of ways: sensitively in the Adagio, colorfully in the Allegro assai, and so on. After undergoing numerous changes, the theme returns triumphantly at the very end of the work, whose structure is tight and whose essentially tonal language is attractive. Hanson’s final symphony, No. 7, dates to 1977 and bears the same title, “A Sea Symphony,” as Vaughan Williams’ First. It is based on the same source, too: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. But while Vaughan Williams’ work was to be his longest symphony, running some 70 minutes, Hanson’s is one of his shortest, lasting only 18. There are clever and well-considered metrical shifts in the first movement, “Lo, the unbounded sea,” reflecting the ever-changing rhythms of the water. The short second movement, “The untold want,” is more chromatic than usual in Hanson’s work, ending quietly with strings and alto voices. The finale – “Joy, shipmate, joy!” – is a wonderful conclusion from the then-81-year-old composer, filled with ebullience and deliberately quoting from his Symphony No. 2, “Romantic,” as if asserting the continued importance of Romanticism for Hanson, even though the musical world had largely turned its back on that form of expressiveness. The affirmation of this final movement is infectious – it is a worthy conclusion to Hanson’s symphonic output. Also on this CD is Lumen in Christo (1974), a two-movement work for women’s voices and orchestra that is sometimes meditative and sometimes sounds rather like Orff’s Carmina Burana. This piece lasts longer than either of the symphonies, includes a number of the metrical changes of which Hanson was fond, and uses its text (from Genesis, Isaiah, IV Esdras and the Requiem Mass) to produce effects ranging from the poignant to the dramatic to the yearningly expressive. The Hanson cycle was a significant accomplishment when originally released and remains one in Naxos’ fine reissue.

     Equally fine, despite the tremendous difference in its sensibility, is the five-CD Naxos sequence of music by Albert Roussel, played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the knowing and sensitive Stéphane Denève. The final CD includes two sort-of-ballet scores: the composer called Le festin de l’araignée (“The Spider’s Banquet”) a ballet-pantomime, and designated Padmȃvatî an “opera-ballet.” Both works are about 100 years old (the former dates to 1912, the latter to 1914-18), but both sound fresh and modern even today. Le festin de l’araignée, which depicts insect life in a garden (and by implication tells the audience something of the human world), is characterized by particularly clever use of instrumental combinations, including woodwind and strings for “Entrance of the Ants,” brass and percussion with strings for praying-mantis music, and a decline into silence followed by use of the full orchestra (for the only time in the work) when a mantis strikes down the spider. Le festin de l’araignée is a series of miniatures, each carefully constructed and each distinctive. The colors of the orchestra are beautifully displayed here. As for Padmȃvatî, it incorporates elements of Indian music into Roussel’s typically haunting use of carefully chosen orchestral sections: woodwind and harp, lower strings with woodwind above, horns and strings in surging gestures, and more. Again, Denève brings out the coloristic effects while shaping the music well and keeping it moving smartly ahead, producing a highly effective reading of a work that never achieved significant popularity but that, in the context of this excellent overview of Roussel’s orchestral music, fits the composer’s oeuvre well and certainly deserves more-frequent performance.

(++++) PIANISTIC PORTRAYALS

Rossini: Péchés de vieillesse, Volume 4—Volume VIII, “Album de chȃteau”; Volume IX, “Album pour piano, violon, violoncello, harmonium” (piano pieces only). Alessandro Marangoni, piano. Naxos. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Albéniz: Iberia. Peter Schaaf, piano. Victor Elmaleh Collection. $15.

     These excellent releases are examples of portraiture in two senses. The composers have created pictures of themselves (Rossini) or their country (Albéniz); the performers, in re-creating the music, provide listeners with views of themselves as interpreters and musicians. The fourth two-CD set in Naxos’ planned series of all Rossini’s piano music includes the entire eighth volume of the Péchés de vieillesse (“Sins of Old Age”) plus five excerpts from the ninth – a volume that also includes works for instruments other than piano. Alessandro Marangoni continues to show tremendous skill with and understanding of this music, which is by no means as trivial or salon-like as the Péchés de vieillesse are often deemed to be. In fact, several pieces here qualify in length and complexity as pianistic fantasias or even tone poems. Examples are Spécimen de l’ancien régime, which contains a waltz and fugue and runs nearly 18 minutes; the contrasting and lighter-hearted Spécimen de mon temps, which spends 13 minutes exploring the operatic fashions of Rossini’s time; and the 15-minute Prélude semipastorale, a highly ornamented work that progresses through multiple keys. There is plenty of lightness here, to be sure: Prélude pretentieux, for instance, is filled with fugal counterpoint to and beyond the point of ostentatious display, while the delightfully titled Tarantelle pur sang (avec Traversée de la procession) – “Purebred tarantella with procession crossing” – contrasts the dance’s headlong progress with two interruptions in which a stately procession, complete with hymn tune, gets in the way. It is the richness, the contrast among these pieces that makes them so delightful to hear, and Marangoni’s free-and-easy virtuosity lets listeners focus on the delights of the music rather than any struggles of the pianist (Rossini hinted that these works were for fourth-class pianists like himself – a joke for sure). Each CD here contains a full 80 minutes of music, the maximum for the medium, and to accommodate that, the 12 pieces from Volume VIII are split between the two discs, while the five from Volume IX are not only split but also presented out of order (Nos. 9 and 12 on the first CD; Nos. 6, 7 and 11 on the second). Given Rossini’s rather dysfunctional sense of organization throughout the Péchés de vieillesse, this diminishes listening pleasure not at all. And the arrangement makes it possible for the second CD to conclude with two real gems. One is Marche et reminiscences pour mon dernier voyage, a funeral march into which Rossini weaves excerpts from no fewer than seven of his operas: Tancredi, Cenerentola, La donna del lago, Semiramide, Guillaume Tell, Otello and Il barbiere di Siviglia. The other, appearing as the last piece in this release, is the enchantingly odd Echantillon de blague mélodique sur les noires de la main droite (“Example of a melodic joke on the black keys for the right hand”), which is just what the title suggests – and contains a main melody that Rossini called chant cochon (“singing pig”). Rossini’s health had declined significantly by the time he created the Péchés de vieillesse, but his ebullience and creativity clearly had not – and Marangoni’s delight in these works comes through clearly in his performance of them.

     Peter Schaaf’s recording of Isaac Albéniz’ Iberia showcases very different personalities, both in composition and in performance. Schaaf is not as facile at the keyboard as Marangoni, and Albéniz is not as accessible or trenchant a composer as Rossini. Yet this is an exceptionally fine Iberia performance, drawing listeners in through Schaaf’s sheer intensity and the dedication that he so clearly brings to each of the 12 pieces. One thing that this recording has in common with Marangoni’s is that it is hard, in both, to choose “best” or “favorite” tracks, since every one has so much to recommend it. The contrast between the slow and solemn central part of El Corpus en Sevilla and the bravado at the end of the piece is one highlight; the effective way Schaaf brings out the alternation of 3/4 and 6/8 bars in Rondeña is another. But Schaaf’s handling of these pieces from the first two of the four books of Iberia is ultimately less impressive than his way with the more-complex pieces of the third and fourth books. El Albaicín is simply beautiful here in its textural variety; the literally off-beat accents of El Polo come through clearly and effectively; the rhythmic sway of the final Eritaña is a worthy capstone to the overall work. The only piece that is not quite what it could be is Lavapiés, whose fiendish difficulty Schaaf surmounts well enough – but at the expense of some of the humor and expressiveness that this piece should ideally have. That is less a disappointment than a small detail, though: as a whole, Schaaf’s Iberia is a very considerable achievement, delightful to hear and played with enthusiasm that is absolutely infectious.

(++++) BIOGRAPHIES, WELL DONE AND OVERDONE

A Boy Called Dickens. By Deborah Hopkinson. Illustrated by John Hendrix. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.

Steve Jobs: American Genius. By Amanda Ziller. Collins. $5.99.

     Charles Dickens’ terrible preteen years were formative for his writing, giving him the empathy with London’s poor and downtrodden that he used as fodder for his novels for the rest of his life. It was not a time of which Dickens was proud: for many years, he would not discuss it at all, and even when he was famous as an adult and made his well-known walks around London, he avoided the location where the blacking factory where he had worked had once stood. Deborah Hopkinson, a sensitive writer for whom Dickens has a strong attraction, has turned this dismal period of Dickens’ life into a charming work designed to teach modern children to hold onto and pursue their dreams, never giving up even when life throws reverses at them. Like Dickens’ own novels, A Boy Called Dickens is overly sentimental; but unlike them, it is not filled with cliffhangers or repetitious passages resulting from serialization, nor is it packed with the series of unlikely coincidences that were a Dickens trademark and that, along with his Victorian style, can be difficult for modern readers to swallow. Hopkinson’s book takes the form of a search for young Dickens and a kind of benevolent spying on his life – as he walks the London streets, wishing he could go to school but being forced by his family’s straitened circumstances to work; as he spins stories to fellow workers, including one named Bob Fagin (who in real life helped him, but whose name Dickens used for an evil character in Oliver Twist); as he imagines the characters from his later novels following him like ghosts. John Hendrix’s illustration of Hopkinson’s invented “ghost parade” is especially well done, but all the pictures fit the story very well – although they, like the text, err a bit on the side of sentimentality, for example by making young Charles attractively dirty (a bit like Mary Poppins in the Disney movie) rather than grittily filthy, as he would have been because of his work. What Hendrix does best is show the darkness of London: many of the illustrations are almost monochromatic, giving an overall feeling of dull brown buildings and a sky turned permanently and depressingly grey by smoke from factories and homes’ chimneys. This is a short book, and it does simplify matters that modern readers may find puzzling. For example, Dickens’ mother and his siblings lived with his father in jail, where his father was sent for not paying a debt, and Hopkinson does not explain why (in fact, jail accommodations were better and more humane than anything else the family could afford at the time). But young readers who wonder about this point and others can find more in-depth information elsewhere – and hopefully A Boy Called Dickens will inspire them to do just that.

     Even those who admire Dickens are usually willing to admit that his works have narrative and structural flaws. But nothing comparable is being said about Steve Jobs, the adulation for whom has gone well beyond hero worship and turned into a sort of secular canonization. Jobs was inarguably brilliant, but was not invariably right in his ideas and not always easy for others to deal with – which simply means he was driven, determined and quite human. You would not know that, though, from many of the quickie biographies churned out since Jobs’ death last October 5. Steve Jobs: American Genius is a typical piece of hagiography, an easy-to-read biography for young readers in which Jobs comes across as practically messianic in his commitment to changing the way people and technology interact. In some ways, this unmodulated praise for a nerdy business leader is a wonderful thing, giving young readers a far better role model than do the biographies of meaningless celebrities and grotesquely overpaid, frequently unintelligent sports figures. But it is possible to take even a good thing too far, and that is what Amanda Ziller does. “As Jobs had demonstrated before, he had a sharp knack for seeing how technology could help people. He was also great at reading people.” “Certain details of the house…showed how in tune Jobs was at that time with artistic pursuits.” “One example of how this very free period of his life proved invaluable later on…” “Jobs realized that in addition to having a great product, they also needed a great, appealing package.” The litany of praise becomes tiresome after a while, and when Ziller deals with some of the difficult times in Jobs’ life, her tendency to downplay them (while failing to explain what went wrong) can be frustrating to read. For example: “Jobs was clashing more and more with [Apple] president and CEO [John] Sculley. He’d brought Sculley on and they’d worked well together for years, but Jobs couldn’t share power for long.” A possible character flaw? Oh, no – Ziller continues, “He started to feel like [sic] Sculley didn’t know computers and didn’t care enough about making a great product.” But it was Sculley, not Jobs, whom the Board of Directors backed – why? No answers here. Certainly Steve Jobs: American Genius adequately explains who Jobs was, how he worked and why he and his approach to technology were important and ultimately successful (although by no means always so). The book gets a (+++) rating for these positive elements. But by failing to place Jobs’ work and personality in any sort of perspective, it ends up reading more like a work of public relations than like one exploring the life and career of a very important and frequently visionary business executive.

(++++) ANIMALS ALL ABOUT

The Jungle Run. By Tony Mitton. Illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $16.99.

Giraffes Can’t Dance. By Giles Andreae. Illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

3-D Thrillers! Snakes and Other Extraordinary Reptiles. By Samantha Hilton. Scholastic. $4.99.

Fly Guy #11: Ride, Fly Guy, Ride! By Tedd Arnold. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

It’s Happy Bunny: Love Bites. By Jim Benton. Scholastic. $7.99.

     Guy Parker-Rees is one children’s-book illustrator who gets the body postures as well as the facial expressions of anthropomorphic animals just right to entertain young readers. Both Tony Mitton’s The Jungle Run and the board-book version of Giles Andreae’s Giraffes Can’t Dance are silly jungle stories, and both are made sillier and more enjoyable thanks to Parker-Rees’ handling of the illustrations. The Jungle Run is about a race-cum-obstacle-course that the big animals say Cub is too small to participate in – but she insists on taking part anyway, and goes quickly into the lead when the larger animals have trouble with the first obstacle (a vine net). It turns out that this particular race is ideally suited for Cub, who is light enough to use a rope to cross a stream (while other animals, such as Elephant, run into predictable problems). A final ride over a waterfall, on mats, leads to a gigantic splash in the lake in which no one is the slightest bit hurt; and – no surprise – who turns out to have won? Everyone dances a victory dance and has a celebration at the end, because “they all joined in and they all had fun!” Ah, but dancing is no fun for Gerald the giraffe in Andreae’s book: he is super-clumsy whenever he tries to run, and dancing is simply out of the question. In fact, when the other animals have their annual Jungle Dance – the pictures of dancing warthogs, rhinos, lions and other critters are among the book’s most amusing illustrations – Gerald does not take part at all, because the animals sneer at him and call him “weird.” A despondent Gerald clearly needs his very own Jiminy Cricket, and that is just what he finds – well, a nameless cricket, anyway. And with the insect’s help (“the cricket smiled and picked up his violin”), Gerald discovers his inner dancer, and that turns into a scene of outward dancing that is uplifting and hilarious, as the giraffe flips all the way off the ground and in a full circle. He is “the best dancer that we’ve ever, ever seen,” say the other animals when they happen by – and the moral is that anyone can dance by finding just the right music for himself. The second moral, this one for authors, is to have Guy Parker-Rees depict all the scenes of unhappiness turning to joy, if you possibly can.

     There is no attempt at realism in Parker-Rees’ illustrations, but the 3-D Thrillers! series is all about being realistic – hyper-realistic, in fact. Like other books in the series, Snakes and Other Extraordinary Reptiles is packaged with those familiar 3-D glasses, and certain illustrations (of a snake hatching from an egg and a rattlesnake with fangs extended, for example) are designed to look three-dimensional when viewed through the spectacles. This does not really work particularly well, and kids who have become accustomed to the sophistication of modern 3-D as used in movies may well find this old-fashioned type rather uninteresting. But the book itself is interesting, thanks to such photos as an extreme closeup of a long forked tongue extended fully, a spitting cobra sending venom toward its target, a sidewinder’s unique form of locomotion, a poisonous snake being “milked” so its venom can be used to produce medicine, and more. There are also a few pictures of Komodo dragons, a giant tortoise, an Australian frilled lizard, and other reptiles. The visual elements are the main interest here; the text is bare-bones and not overly stylish (reptile behavior is “pretty weird,” reptiles in general are “pretty freaky,” and so on). There are also some inaccuracies, such as the statement that pet snakes can only be fed live food (many will eat frozen and thawed rodents). Snakes and Other Extraordinary Reptiles gets a (+++) rating for the quality of its photos, despite its minimal text and only partially effective 3-D elements.

     Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy series remains highly effective, though, and the 11^th book – Ride, Fly Guy, Ride! – gets a (++++) rating. Like the other romps in this sequence, the book stars Fly Guy and his boy, Buzz, in an increasingly improbable series of events, beginning with Buzz and Fly Guy strapped into seat belts for a car ride with Buzz’s dad. It gets windy in the car, though, and Fly Guy is blown out the window, ending up in a passing truck – and then in the mouth of the truck driver, who spits him out while crossing a bridge, so Fly Guy falls onto the deck of a passing boat…and things only get more elaborate and ridiculous from there. A lot of the fun in this book comes from watching Buzz and his dad try to follow Fly Guy’s path – first in the car, then in a canoe, then on a railroad handcar, then in a helicopter, and so forth. Arnold’s Fly Guy books are all quite short (32 pages), but the author-illustrator has become increasingly adept at including a lot of activity in them, and this one may be the most action-packed yet. Everything ends happily, of course, with Buzz, his dad and Fly Guy heading home on a bicycle, each wearing his own appropriately sized helmet. Fans of the series, and even kids new to it, will look forward to whatever comes next.

     The new edition of Jim Benton’s It’s Happy Bunny: Love Bites looks backward, not forward – back to 2005, when the book first appeared. Seven years later, this (++++) little hardcover, which looks deceptively like a gift book or a kids’ book, is just as snarky and sarcastic as ever. It is definitely not for kids, and not for giving to adults, either, unless you are sure the recipient shares your warped sense of humor and you are not at the beginning of a love relationship. Benton’s bunny is as cute as can be, with long ears (one often flopping endearingly) and a huge smile befitting the Happy Bunny name. He looks like perfect fodder for purchase as a stuffed-animal gift. What Benton latched onto here, though, was the idea of having Happy Bunny look sweet and adorable while having a personality that is, to put it politely, rotten. So at the end of the book’s first chapter, “The Crush,” Happy Bunny says, “You’ve flirted a little, you’ve coughed up a gift. Now it’s time to get to know your cutesy-wootsy monkeyface.” And that leads to the second chapter, which is called “Spying” and includes the observation, “They’re in your thoughts. You’re in their bushes. It all evens out.” Then, as the relationship progresses, it may run into some rough spots, and Happy Bunny is there to help if “things are a little shaky.” One idea: “Ask your snuggly-wuggly if they have any friends that are as cute as they are, but, you know, way less irritating.” This is love in the age of cynicism, up to and including the eventual breakup: “Hate is just a special type of love that we give to people who suck.” If this is a gift book, it’s clearly only for…well, for whom would it be appropriate? Not even Happy Bunny offers an adequately sarcastic answer to that question.

(++++) THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ILLUSTRATED

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile Storybook Treasury. By Bernard Waber with Paulis Waber. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $10.99.

The Adventures of Beanboy. By Lisa Harkrader. Houghton Mifflin. $9.99.

     Even when the stories in books for young readers have a lot going for them as narratives, the addition of well-wrought illustrations can turn them into something better, even something very special. And the Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile Storybook Treasury shows just how special. This is a 50^th-anniversary edition of the first tale about Lyle, the crocodile who lives with a family in a New York City brownstone: The House on East 88^th Street introduced Lyle and the Primms in 1962. The other books here are Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which followed in 1965; Lyle and the Birthday Party, which dates to 1966; and Lyle Walks the Dogs: A Counting Book, which was published as recently as 2010. Older or newer the books may be, but the character of lovable Lyle remains the same. Bernard Waber, whose introduction to this collection explains how he came up with the idea of juxtaposing a friendly crocodile with a decidedly non-crocodilian urban habitat, came up with wonderfully apt illustrations for his books about Lyle, with just enough realism to show that the setting is New York but just enough oddity in the portraits of Lyle and his interactions with people to set these works firmly in the land of fairy tales. Some of Waber’s pictures are classics: Lyle feeding pigeons, which surround him as one of them perches on his head; Lyle ice-skating at Rockefeller Center with Mrs. Primm; Lyle and Signor Valenti performing in a department store; Lyle shedding a tear when put in the zoo; Lyle with mouth open super-wide so Mrs. Primm, standing on a chair, can look at his throat to see whether he is ill – there are so many delightful pictures that it is easy to lose sight of the wonders of the stories. But the stories are wonderful, filled with warmth and whimsy and gentle amusements. These are tales that have not grown old in the past half-century. The least successful of these books is the newest, because the pictures, by Paulis Waber, are really not as amusing as those of her father; nor does she render Lyle quite as well. But this book too has its pleasures, such as a line that perfectly sums up the delights of encountering Lyle in any form: “His kind heart and big croc smile win the day.” And should continue winning it for children ages 5-9, and their parents, for another 50 years.

     The Adventures of Beanboy is winning in some ways, too, but this (+++) book is scarcely a classic or likely to become one. It is a book whose illustrations are important to its story, although not absolutely integral to it; and it is never quite sure whether it wants to be an illustrated tale or a graphic novel. Lisa Harkrader’s plot involves comic-book fan and would-be comic-book creator Tucker MacBean; his divorced parents; his special-needs brother, Beecher; and his middle school (including the school bully, a girl named Sam). The plot is actually moderately complex for a book for preteens, and it touches on some significant real-life issues – but only lightly. Tucker’s mom is rarely home, because she works hard to make money to send herself through college, so when Tucker sees a comic-book ad offering a full college scholarship to anyone who can develop a new sidekick for the comic’s superhero, he decides to enter. But that means Tucker can’t watch his brother after school, because he needs to join the after-school art club; and that means Tucker’s mom needs to find a babysitter; and then the babysitter turns out to be Sam. But Sam turns out not to be so bad after all, and Tucker develops a relationship with her, even saving Sam from trouble several times. This puts Tucker in touch with his inner hero, and helps him create a sidekick character based on beans, including the fact that beans make people pass gas. The mixture of slapstick and seriousness does not quite work here, and the drawings, although amusing, are not necessary for following the story. The best part of the book, from an adult perspective, will be the changes in Tucker and Sam as they get to know each other and develop a new and better relationship. Target readers (roughly ages 8-12), though, will gravitate more strongly to the visuals, including the drawings, to the comments on “Beanboy’s gassed-up superpowers,” and to such descriptions as the announcement that Beanboy is “Saving the Planet through the Power of Vegetation.” The eventual happy ending is almost too happy, with too many things going right at the same time; but in that respect, at least, The Adventures of Beanboy is right in line with many old-fashioned comic-book stories.

(+++) BEING BLACK AT ANY AGE

When Grandmama Sings. By Margaree King Mitchell. Illustrated by James E. Ransome. Amistad/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Freedom’s a-Callin Me. By Ntozake Shange. Paintings by Rod Brown. Amistad/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Black Boy White School. By Brian F. Walker. HarperTeen. $17.99.

     There is a well-meaning, if perhaps slightly patronizing, publishing assumption that some groups traditionally underserved in the world of books need works targeted specifically at them and excluding members of other groups. Whether or not this is a valid idea is arguable, but publishers that accept it have been making what appears to be a genuine effort to bring out high-quality books intended to speak to the selected groups and exclude others. In terms of works for young readers, these books are designed for all age ranges. Thus, When Grandmama Sings is for African-American children ages 5-9; Freedom’s a-Callin Me is for those who are ages 8-12; and Black Boy White School is for African-American teenagers, age 14 and up. All the books are deeply felt, highly emotional and, each in its own way, very moving. But none makes an attempt to reach out beyond the core, limited audience for which it is intended – which is too bad, because whites and minorities other than African Americans would surely respond strongly to these works if given the opportunity to see them as anything other than exclusionary.

     But the books are what they are; and what they are is meaningful and strongly communicated. When Grandmama Sings is set in the old, segregated South, and is the story of an illiterate grandmother with a beautiful voice who is given a chance to sing in venues far from her small town of Pecan Flats, Mississippi. Her granddaughter goes on the road trip with her to help her out and read signs and newspapers for her. This is a story of small slights and small triumphs: the “Whites Only” signs; the white club manager who refuses to pay grandmama and her band (and the good thing that happens when they perform anyway); the waitress in the whites-only restaurant who shows the travelers a kindness even though she is forbidden to do so; the intensity with which grandmama sings whether the audience is small or large; and the eventual triumph in a sold-out theater, where grandmama sings for a crowd of both whites and blacks – but with the races firmly segregated in the hall’s seats. Grandmama dreams of a better world for her granddaughter, and does her small part to bring that world to reality. Margaree King Mitchell tells the story with warmth and a strong emphasis on family cohesiveness, and James E. Ransome provides illustrations that bring the characters vividly to life – and help reconstruct long-gone days that at least some 21^st-century African-American families will deem it important to remember and relive.

     Even older times are revisited by poet Ntozake Shange and artist Rod Brown in Freedom’s a-Callin Me, another in an apparently endless series of books celebrating the Underground Railroad and the slaves who “rode” it to freedom in northern states and Canada before the Civil War. This story has been told many, many times, but Freedom’s a-Callin Me is distinctive for its use of poetry and its depiction of the frightening reality of slaves’ attempts to escape. The only famous person depicted is Sojourner Truth, and the page on which she appears shows her in a light in which she is not usually seen: “four colored folks & beautiful colored chile/ ready to march on to freedom/ with the legend Sojourner Truth/ one man hesitates/ Sojourner Truth whips out a pistol/ ‘death or freedom/ either you comin wit’ us/ or us or you die heah…’” The picture of Sojourner Truth pointing the gun at the terrified man is very powerful – but no more so than the painting of an escaping slave in “The Hole” beneath a house’s floorboards, listening to the party upstairs and terrified that a slave hunter might hear him. This is scarcely the only book to bring the fears and accomplishments of the Underground Railroad to a readership of modern young people, but it is a particularly affecting and effective treatment of an oft-repeated story.

     Yet for sheer grittiness, the tale of 150 years ago has nothing on Brian F. Walker’s debut novel, the largely autobiographical Black Boy White School, in which Anthony “Ant” Jones – like Walker himself – grows up in squalor in East Cleveland, where he spends his life with thugs until being sent to an elite boarding school where he needs to figure out how, and whether, to try to fit in. The very thinly fictionalized story is filled with profanity and street language, uses the “n” word liberally, and has a theme summed up in the first chapter by Ant’s estranged father: “You only gotta do two things in this world: stay black and die. Everything else is up to you.” The pervasive, ugly, self-perpetuating violence of East Cleveland is contrasted with the subtler one-upmanship and games of Belton Academy, where everyone expects Ant to play basketball and he cannot get people to use his correct name (they call him Tony). Ant stays in touch with his roots even while becoming increasingly distanced from them: “Anthony thought about home and all the things that could go wrong there… Just like a lot of other things, even sex was killing its teenagers.” Ant punches another student, is put on behavioral probation, frightens classmates with his posing and his barely suppressed violence, and is surprised that “some people still treated him like a terrorist” weeks after the fight. “Now there was a strain on everything because he had crossed an invisible line,” Ant thinks – showing a substantial lack of self-awareness that is apparent throughout most of the novel. Walker’s writing is so one-sided, so determined to portray his surrogate Ant as brilliant and misunderstood and worthy and unfairly victimized simply because he is black and from East Cleveland, that the book teeters on the edge of unbelievability despite its autobiographical elements and determinedly rough language. Ant is uncomfortable with everything, including kindness. “Maybe everybody needs someone to hate,” one of Ant’s classmates observes in a scene involving the Somali population of Lewiston, Maine, where Belton is located; and if there is a philosophy underpinning this book, that would seem to be it. Never satisfactorily answered is the question of how Ant has managed to rise above his origins in the first place. Although there are other black students at Belton, Ant’s best friend there, who becomes his roommate in sophomore year, is white; but the book’s stance is that the racial gulf is largely unbridgeable. Despite a burning cross, “healing assemblies” and rather unfocused attempts to humanize some characters who are not black, a speech that Ant gives near the book’s conclusion – and which is supposed to be climactic – comes across as contrived and more simplistic than Walker wants it to be. There is no doubt that Black Boy White School is heartfelt and intended to convey a message of hope, but that message is muted by the book’s pervasive melodrama and a cast in which everyone except Ant seems like a cardboard character filling a role rather than a real human being.

(++++) FOURTHS AND SEVENTHS

Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7. Sinfonieorchester Basel conducted by Mario Venzago. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7. Royal Flemish Philharmonic conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

     Here we have two recordings pairing a fourth symphony and a seventh – one to start a cycle and one to complete one. Both composers wrote nine numbered symphonies, although Bruckner’s “No. 0” has pretty well made it into the canon, and there exists a “No. 00” as well, while Beethoven wrote part of a No. 10 but did not get very far with it. In both cases, therefore, these discs pair works from somewhere in the middle of the composers’ output – on the face of it, a rather curious decision. The Bruckner pairing, with which Mario Venzago begins a cycle that is being called “A Different Bruckner,” is somewhat more defensible: the Fourth is Bruckner’s most-performed symphony and the Seventh is the one with which he came into his own as a composer, gaining a huge triumph when the work was first played. But this is not Venzago’s or CPO’s stated rationale for combining these two works; indeed, there is no stated rationale at all. What is stated is how Venzago intends his Bruckner cycle to be “different,” following in the tracks of his previously released “A Different Schumann.” Venzago’s plans for Bruckner are intriguing, and his analysis of the symphonies is extremely interesting. He makes a distinction between composer-as-composer and composer-as-interpreter, arguing that when a composer says how his works should be played, he is inevitably trapped in the conventions of his time and is therefore acting as an interpreter – while later interpreters, such as Venzago himself, need to look at the pure composition and determine what effects the composer was seeking and how to achieve them at a much later date. This is a fascinating intellectual argument, and one more appropriate for, say, Mahler, who famously indicated the minutiae of his performance expectations, than for Bruckner, who insisted on very little. But what it does is send Venzago into the realm of historical performance practice, and that is what he and Sinfonieorchester Basel attempt, generally with considerable success, to offer listeners. Bruckner, like Brahms, is a composer thought of as “heavy,” with orchestration that (in Bruckner’s case) is at best organ-like in sonority and at worst simply clotted. But Venzago has noted that the orchestras of Bruckner’s time, for which he wrote his symphonies, were smaller and lighter-weight than those of later times, with a significantly smaller string complement; thus, Bruckner can be conducted, in informed period-practice style although without the use of authentic 19^th-century instruments, in a lighter, more buoyant vein than usual. That is what Venzago gives us in this Fourth and this Seventh: works of grandeur and scope, but ones clearly informed by the spirits of Schubert and Schumann. Venzago also chooses some tempos that are far from traditional (among modern conductors, anyway), and he is more willing to employ rubato and other techniques of emphasis and de-emphasis than are most conductors today. The result of all this is a performance of the Fourth and Seventh that is not quite like any other – sometimes highly effective, even revelatory, sometimes seemingly rather headstrong and self-indulgent, but never less than interesting. Whatever the merits of pairing these particular symphonies may be, there is no doubt that this first entry in Venzago’s Bruckner cycle stakes out some new and different territory and bears not only a hearing but several of them. The approach is highly intriguing, and if Venzago sticks to it throughout, he will definitely offer listeners a Bruckner cycle distinct from the ones to which they have become accustomed.

     The pairing of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh in the final disc of Philippe Herreweghe’s cycle for PentaTone is somewhat harder to understand. The arrangement of the whole cycle is a trifle odd: Nos. 1 and 3, recorded in 2007, share one disc; Nos. 2 and 6, from 2009, share another; Nos. 5 and 8, from 2007, are on a third; No. 9, from 2009, gets its own SACD; and Nos. 4 and 7, the oldest recordings of all – from 2004 – complete the sequence. Unlike Venzago’s Bruckner, Herreweghe’s Beethoven does not seem to have been conceived of as a complete set, even though that is how it has turned out. Leaving aside the peculiarities of pairings and recording dates, though, this is a very fine Beethoven cycle, with the readings of the Fourth and Seventh at the same high level as those of the other symphonies. Conductors in general have come to appreciate the Fourth more in recent years, no longer handling it as some sort of step backward into supposed simplicity after the “Eroica.” More lightly orchestrated than its predecessor and more Haydnesque, it is also more harmonically developed and filled with elegant instrumental touches, which Herreweghe clearly appreciates: this is a poised and elegant reading that flows well and has a fine balance of delicacy and power, despite one unfortunate slowdown right at the end of the Scherzo. The Seventh flows beautifully, too, especially in the lovely slow movement, which is here paced so it rocks back and forth gently even as it moves ahead. A stately opening movement, bouncy and well-balanced Scherzo and emphatic finale with strongly accented rhythms add up to a worthy and convincing performance and a fine completion of Herreweghe’s Beethoven sequence, its atypical sequencing and performance dates notwithstanding.

(++++) SOLO AND GROUP

Bartók: Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 for Violin and Piano; Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2 for Violin and Piano; Andante in A Major. James Ehnes, violin; Andrew Armstrong, piano. Chandos. $18.99.

Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 3; Saxophone Quartet; Michael Nyman: Songs for Tony. sonic.art Saxophone Quartet (Ruth Velten, soprano saxophone; Alexander Doroshkevich, alto and baritone saxophone; Martin Posegga, tenor saxophone; Annegret Schmiedl, baritone saxophone). Genuin. $18.99.

Rachmaninoff Romances. Dmitri Hvorostovsky, baritone; Ivari Ilja, piano. Ondine. $16.99.

Couperin: Motets. Soloists of New College Oxford and Collegium Novum conducted by Edward Higginbottom. Novum. $18.99.

     In music both instrumental and vocal, the contrasting effects of solo-focused and group-focused recordings are substantially different – equally enjoyable, but in very distinct ways. Violinist James Ehnes is very much the center of the first CD in a planned series of Bartók’s music for violin and piano. This is Ehnes’ second Bartók CD for Chandos, the first having offered exceptionally well-performed versions of the two concertos for violin and the one for viola. Here Ehnes shows himself equally at home in Sonata No. 1 in C-sharp minor (which dates to 1921 and offers wide mood swings in an essentially traditional formal structure) and Sonata No. 2 in C major (which came only one year later but represents a completely different, thoroughly non-Romantic approach, sounding more like an introduction and allegro than a sonata). Ehnes is equally fine in the two Rhapsodies, both dating originally to 1928 (the first was revised in 1929, the second not until the composer’s last year of life, 1945). Unlike the sonatas, these works are imbued with Hungarian folk elements, which Ehnes brings out effectively while also proclaiming the exuberance of the music. Included at the end of the CD are the earliest surviving violin-and-piano work by Bartók, a pleasant Andante in A from 1902, and an alternative ending for the second part of Rhapsody No. 1. There are charms aplenty here, with Ehnes’ ability to bring them out supported and enhanced by the fine pianism of Andrew Armstrong – who nevertheless takes a back seat to the violinist, on whose skill and interpretative nuances the entire CD relies.

     The CD of saxophone-quartet music by sonic.art Saxophone Quartet is, in contrast, a collegial offering. Philip Glass is fond of the saxophone, having written Play for two saxophones in 1965, Two Down for two saxophones in 1967, and Façades for two saxophones and strings in 1981. But his 1995 quartet (which also exists in an orchestral version) is richer and in many ways more interesting than the earlier works, thanks to some significant contrasts among the movements. It is not a particularly profound work, but it is one that sounds very good indeed when played by an ensemble as skilled as the one heard here. The 1985 String Quartet No. 3, known as Mishima, also gets a fine performance, although this arrangement does not seem to lie as naturally on the saxophone as the original does on strings. The playing is nevertheless quite impressive, with each individual performer subsuming his or her personality within the whole ensemble, producing beautiful sounds and lovely effects. The Glass works are nicely complemented by Michael Nyman’s Songs for Tony (1993), which was written for saxophone quartet and in memory of Nyman’s business manager, Tony Simmons. This entire piece has memorial elements, from the first-movement transcription of a song that Nyman wrote to words by Mozart to a finale that is explicitly designed as a remembrance of Simmons. Songs for Tony encourages each individual player to display communicative powers, and in this sense is less of an ensemble piece than either Glass work on this CD. But it is not quite the sort of display piece that listeners will hear in Ehnes’ Bartók recording, for the individualized elements are placed at the service of an overall ensemble feel that overrides any strictly virtuosic approaches.

     With a new CD featuring baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, listeners are once again in the soloist-focused area, this time vocally rather than instrumentally. This (+++) CD homes in so intently on its title, Rachmaninoff Romances, that it comes across as offering a surfeit of beauty and emotion: 26 tracks, some secular and some sacred, with varying but closely related forms of expressiveness that neither Hvorostovsky’s voice nor the excellent accompaniment by Ivari Ilja can prevent from sounding somewhat repetitious. The songs are taken from a variety of cycles and are arranged so that most deal with interactions between people (that is, love and loss) while a few, saved for the end, express more-spiritual feelings: the final song is Khristos voskres, “Christ is risen!” Hvorostovsky’s rich, expressive voice is both a positive and a negative here: he sings with considerable feeling, but it is essentially the same feeling from song to song, resulting in a CD that will certainly please fans of his very warm and emotive baritone but that more-casual listeners may find rather cloying, or at least better taken in small doses than all at once.

     In contrast, the new disc of Couperin motets and other sacred music, conducted by Edward Higginbottom, uses solo voices solely to highlight choral elements and pinpoint particular words to which the composer wanted to draw special attention. This (++++) CD is unusual for containing Higginbottom’s restorations of three motets whose string elements were lost long ago: Resonent organa, Ornate aras and Exultent superi. Higginbottom composed string parts based on what he believes Couperin might have done: he is an expert on this composer and has a strong sense of Couperin’s style. The resulting performances of these three pieces take up almost half the CD – and even though Higginbottom’s work is in no way authentic or restorative in a traditional sense, it says much about his compositional skill and his understanding of the composer that the three pieces with newly created string sections fit absolutely naturally among the six works here that are entirely by Couperin. The singing throughout, both choral and (when called for) individual, is very fine, the voices blending with skill and beauty and the cadences of the Latin texts falling naturally within the musical structures. This is a lovely disc of sacred music and is fine testimony to the effectiveness of a focus on multiple performers rather than a single central star singer or player.