(++++) DOGS AND CATS AND NUMEROUS NATES

Two Dogs. By Ian Falconer. Michael di Capua/HarperCollins. $18.99.

Big Nate: Release the Hounds! By Lincoln Peirce. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

Big Nate: Very Funny! (compilation of Big Nate: Welcome to My World and Big Nate: Thunka, Thunka, Thunka). By Lincoln Peirce. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

Big Nate: Destined for Awesomeness. Based on Nickelodeon episodes written by Mitch Watson, Elliott Owen, and Sarah Allen. Andrews McMeel. $19.99.

     Adorableness knows no bounds, only hounds, in Ian Falconer’s utterly engaging Two Dogs, which is one of those picture books for young children that grown-ups will find themselves sneaking a peek at even when they are not asked to read it to or with kids. It is just so endearing – almost beyond words. But not beyond words and pictures: Falconer’s skill at combining written and visual art makes the simple story simply delicious. It is the tale of dachshund brothers Augie and Perry, who live in a typical suburban household, where kids go off to school and adults work – leaving the pups alone all day and bored. That opens the door to mischief – assuming they can open the door, that is. Augie and Perry are used to barking at the squirrels they see outside, but one fine day they decide to go outside. Augie figures out how to turn the simple deadbolt lock – luckily, no key is needed – and the pups get to have a wonderful time peeing in the garden, rolling in raccoon poop, swinging on the kids’ swing set, using the seesaw and, eventually and best of all, digging. Oh my, do they dig! But then they hear a car, and they know the jig is up and they are going to be in a lot of trouble, unless…well, they rush back indoors, re-lock the door, and stand there barking fiercely, as if protecting the home from something-or-other that has been out there making a giant mess of things. Result: Augie and Perry are praised as heroes and given extra treats, and a good time is had by all. Well, by all dogs, anyway. Falconer’s pervasively delicious sense of humor and the skill with which he makes Augie and Perry look realistic but anthropomorphic at the same time – what wonderfully expressive faces they have! – make Two Dogs a thoroughgoing delight. And the final scene of the pups floating on inner tubes in a swimming pool (obviously on some later day of escapes and escapades), while one reads the book Lassie Finds a Way, fits the tone of Falconer’s work and the dachshunds’ personalities perfectly. Two Dogs is spot-on for kids and adults alike who find canine mischief endearing. Plenty of young readers will be begging for dogs like Augie and Perry by the time the book ends – which is about the only reason not to read and re-read this adorable adventure.

     Dogs are an integral element of Lincoln Peirce’s long-running Big Nate comic strip as well, although neighbor dog Spitsy – cross-eyed, Elizabethan-collar-wearing and tremendously happy with cats, which Nate fears and loathes – is scarcely on par with Augie and Perry. Nate has wanted a dog for what seems like decades (it actually has been decades in the real world: Big Nate started in 1991); his father has consistently refused to get one, which explains Nate’s frequent involvement with Spitsy. However, Spitsy and other canines are not quite the reference point of the latest Big Nate collection, Release the Hounds! Those “hounds” are Nate’s feet, which (as the cover illustration shows) are something like weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands…err, socks (when Nate takes off his shoes). The comically silly but ultimately mild “yuck” element of Nate’s feet fits Peirce’s ongoing approach to the mostly school-based stories of the 11-to-12-year-old title character of Big Nate. There is never anything mean or hurtful in Nate’s pranks, and while Peirce makes fun of Nate himself by showing him to be thoroughly self-absorbed and oblivious to his own shortcomings, the cartoonist does so without unduly mocking his title character. He leaves the mockery to other characters in the strip – although even they (notably Nate’s best friends, Francis and Teddy) know just how far to push critiques of Nate and when to stop pushing them. What Peirce does so well in Big Nate is to establish the title character as his own worst enemy. In the latest collection, he gets to coach his soccer team temporarily and invents a formation that does not even include the right number of players. He gets his umpteenth detention slip from his least-liked teacher, Mrs. Godfrey, and makes his collection of slips into a money maker by charging other students 50 cents each to view “the world’s largest detention slip collection” (Nate does manage to turn some of his failures into successes). He decides to become an author of children’s books and creates one featuring a severed, bloody hand – to mix murder mysteries with color education (“The sky is blue, the grass is green, the blood is red”). And when it comes to dog matters, Nate offers to drop out of school so he can stay home all the time and care for a pup; he shows Spitsy how to use a Netflix account to watch Star Trek; and he takes Spitsy outdoors to play in the snow – until the hapless pooch gets his tongue stuck to a frigid street-sign pole.

     Because Big Nate exists in a best-not-to-question-it time warp – the characters go through the entire school year and summer, then start all over again, still in sixth grade – older collections of Big Nate are just as much fun as newer ones, and do not grow stale. This creates the possibility of re-releasing previous collections in a new form and with a new overall title, the latest example being Big Nate: Very Funny! This is a double-length book that combines previous compilations from 2015 and 2016. Thanks to Peirce’s consistency of art and characterization, the “collection of collections” is just as funny and just as timeless as Big Nate strips created more recently. Spitsy, for example, at one point is persuaded by Nate that chasing squirrels will be fun – and ends up snared by the rodents and hanging upside-down from a tree branch. Nate, a notorious goof-off when it comes to school work, is determined to get 100 on one test so he can have a B for the course – but puts his name in the wrong place and gets a 99, along with the frustration of knowing he could get good grades if they mattered to him. Also here, Nate works as a photography assistant for School Picture Guy, a nameless recurring character always wearing a Band-Aid on his forehead – and Nate soon discovers that first-graders are a bit much for even a sixth-grader to handle. And Spitsy has a romance with Francis’ cat and starts talking feline language (“myow myow myow”), leading Francis to think that there may soon be some “little catdogs” running around. Also, speaking of running around, Nate continues to try to prove to his crush, Jenny, that he is right for her and she should stop running around with Artur, the Belarus-born student who is unfailingly nice, good at almost everything, very friendly to Nate, and therefore obviously a poor match for any girl who could have Nate instead. There it is: the lack of self-awareness that is one of Nate’s most salient features – along with his weird seven-tufted hair and his penchant for relaxing by hitting himself on the head with an empty soda bottle (thus explaining the Thunka, Thunka, Thunka title).

     It was probably inevitable that the Big Nate comic strip would eventually spawn a Big Nate animated series, such as the one from Nickelodeon that provides a different way to look at Nate – and a different way to see him in book form, too. Big Nate: Destined for Awesomeness looks nothing like other Peirce (or, more accurately in this case, Peirce-derived) books, not only because it is a hardcover volume but also because Nate and his friends are shown in the now-ubiquitous “three-dimensional” computer-animated style that is increasingly used on TV and in films, to such an extent that it is almost passé. The animated-series-based Nate and his friends look enough like Peirce’s originals to draw in viewers who already know and enjoy the comic strip, and Destined for Awesomeness even includes a few pages of real Peirce strips that comment on or help develop the three stories in the book, which is in effect a graphic novel. Those stories make a variety of unexplained and inexplicable changes in characters from the strip. Peirce’s Mrs. Godfrey, for example, is a fine teacher who knows how much potential Nate has and is constantly trying to get him to live up to it and stop being a slacker – thus causing the ill will between them. For Nickelodeon, Mrs. Godfrey really is Nate’s nemesis, lying in wait for him to do something he should not do and determined to bring him down. Artur is no longer from Belarus but from the fictional Stylgravia. Nate’s father, Milton, and older sister, Ellen, are far more prominent in animation than in the comic strip. And the Nickelodeon writers push those two subsidiary characters to have some over-the-top real-world fears that are crucial to the shows: Ellen is claustrophobic and Milton is afraid to use any bathroom except the ones in his home. Having Ellen try to get her father to urinate in a non-home bathroom, and later having Milton brag about his bodily functions to Nate, really is a bit much – and totally out of keeping with anything in Peirce’s work. There are, to be sure, dog and cat elements in the Nickelodeon Nate shows: in one, Nate and friends try to capture numerous stray dogs that have escaped after Nate, misusing his father’s credit card, has bought their freedom – the plan is to harness the dogs, win a sled-dog race, and use the prize money to repay Milton. As for cats, Jenny has one, so Nate is freaked out when the two work on a school project together, and eventually he lets the cat out of the house and creates a Rube Goldberg- style trap to capture it – thus fulfilling the assignment he and Jenny were doing, which was to make a Rube Goldberg-style mechanism of some sort. Big Nate: Destined for Awesomeness will be more fun for readers who already know and like the Nickelodeon series than for ones who are only familiar with Peirce’s original work. It is considerably less awesome than the Peirce-drawn books, but it does manage to show that Nate is an interestingly adaptable character as well as a perpetual sixth-grader.

(+++) ABSTRUSIFYING THE MUNDANE

Curious Minds: The Power of Connection. By Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett. MIT Press. $27.95.

     Curiously, there does not have to be a real in-the-dictionary word “abstrusify” for a reader to be able to figure out what the word means, or what it would mean if it were a real in-the-dictionary word. If you are curious as to why this is so and would like to bring both science and philosophy to bear on figuring out that “why,” then you are in the potential audience for Curious Minds, a book that does contain a mention of Lewis Carroll’s Alice but manages not to include what would seem an obvious quotation: “‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).” Perhaps it is the obviousness of the potential inclusion, and its admonition regarding the use of language, to which Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett object, so determined are they to abstrusify at every opportunity.

     Consider a typical sentence in Curious Minds: “The process of inductive inference can certainly help us to supersede the uncertainties caused by our imperfect senses and biased perceptions.” Readers who go trippingly on their way through prose of this sort will find much that is thoughtful, even engaging, in the book. Those who are tripped up by the verbiage will learn a good deal less and may be forgiven for wondering whether whatever learning may be offered is worthwhile.

     Zurn and Bassett are quite tenacious in trying not to let their prose, and by inference their thinking, stray too far to one of their specialty areas (philosophy) or the other (bioengineering). Everything is combinatorial: “As connective architectures, inherently defined by pinpoints and interstices, networks are nothing if not nodes and edges, units and relations, at once.” What the authors are putatively trying to do is to figure out what curiosity is and how it functions – whether it is one thing or many and, if more than one, what that means. Within this wide-ranging exploration, the authors cannot resist parading their erudition in matters both relevant and not: “Scientist and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe offers a thoughtful account in his 1810 Theory of Colours, which composer Ludwig van Beethoven kindly admits to be ‘important,’ unlike his other ‘insipid’ writings.” Beethoven’s literary thinking appears nowhere else in Curious Minds, and the authors had best beware of the potential ambiguity of “his other ‘insipid’ writings,” a phrase that could refer to Beethoven’s authorial pursuit rather than Goethe’s – indeed, if clarity were the point here, the phrase would need to be, “unlike Goethe’s other ‘insipid’ writings.”

     So determined are Zurn and Bassett to twist and spin an answer to their own question – “What are the kinesthetics of curiosity?” – that they self-entangle at times into expressive inaccuracy: “The convoluted shape of your wrinkly brain tissue, like the borders of a country, are unique.” The subject is “shape,” so the correct verb form would be “is unique.”

     No matter. Zurn and Bassett meander merrily along through their contemplative byways, determining that curiosity has three stylistic presentations. One is the busybody, “busy making it their [sic] business to know anything and everything.” A second is the hunter, who “explores, traces, and tracks with a singularity of purpose.” And a third is the dancer, whose mind “moves by leaps of creative imagination.” A good summation of their analysis of curiosity types, and one of the more straightforwardly expressed notions in the book, is: “If the busybody arranges bits of information into loose knowledge webs, while the hunter organizes specific tracts of information into tight networks, the dancer may rupture those networks by either jumping to a new idea or throwing existing ideas into a new frame.”

     What is one to do with this formulation? Well, outside academia – where, unsurprisingly, both authors are employed – there is no particular applicability to the analysis, especially since any individual assumes the mantle of all three forms of curiosity at different times, and the three types tend to shade into each other at the margins rather than be clearly defined and differentiated. Curious Minds is foundationally an academic exercise, an intellectual meandering through contemplative regions explorable by those who are employed at least in part because of their, well, curious minds. When perusing projects such as this, one must be especially wary of quoting snippets of W.S. Gilbert’s dialogue:

“Patience: ‘Well, it seems to me to be nonsense.’

Saphir: ‘Nonsense, yes, perhaps – but oh, what precious nonsense!’”

     As things turn out, more than the analytical intensity of the main section of the book, the appendix called “A Curious Bestiary” can be fun to peruse in a somewhat lighter vein. This is a section discussing curiosity in the context of Animalia, using as exemplars, for example, the snake: “Might snakelike curiosity further embody slipperiness in the thin antennae-like lines of inquiry that strike out from oneself in filamentous questions or filamentary questioning?” The 17 short sections of this appendix, while obviously intended to be as recondite as the remainder of the book, are at least more-or-less self-contained and besprinkled with references to a wide variety of literary material, from Archilochus to Curious George, as well as with commentary on ascesis, decolonial imagination, and “the pulp of woody words” and “the glue of spiny sentences” – glue that, in the case of Curious Minds, is more like an epoxy admixture of the trivial with the insubstantial, plus a dash of the nugatory.

(++++) MASTERFUL MUSIC MILDLY MISHANDLED

Per Nørgård: Symphonies Nos. 1-8 (complete). Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sakari Oramo (Nos. 1 and 8); Oslo Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds (Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6); Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs conducted by Thomas Dausgaard (Nos. 3 and 7). Dacapo. $47.99 (4 CDs).

     Per Nørgård (born 1932) belongs in any pantheon of 20^th- and 21^st-century symphonists: his eight works in the form – a form that he has modified and expanded in important ways – date from 1953-1955 to 2010-2011 and represent a microcosm of Danish music, and Nordic music generally, during more than half a century. The symphonies clearly reflect many changes and developments in Nørgård’s thinking and compositional processes, as well as his emotional and psychological orientation. Hearing them in sequence encapsulates, in important ways, the entire Nørgård music-creating experience and provides genuine insight into his changing personal approach and, to a lesser extent, the changes in classical-musical sensibilities from the mid-1950s until today.

     Unfortunately, the Danish label Dacapo, which understandably tends to pay particularly close attention to presenting Danish music in the best possible way, has released a complete set of Nørgård symphonies that falls short in frustrating ways: it uses three conductors and three orchestras, and the symphonies are arranged in a bizarre sequence that makes hearing them in the order in which they were written far more of a chore than it should be. Nørgård is so important, his symphonies are so good and so interesting, and all the performances are done so well that the release still gets a top ranking, but its irritations should be clearly understood by potential listeners.

     The boxed set is actually a compilation of four CDs that previously appeared as individual releases. The first disc includes Symphonies Nos. 3 (1972-1975) and 7 (2004-2006), the latter a world première recording, as performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choirs under Thomas Dausgaard and originally released in 2009. The second contains Symphonies No. 1 (1953-1955, revised 1956) and 8 (2010-2011), the latter also a world première recording, as performed by the Vienna Philharmonic led by Sakari Oramo and originally released in 2014. The third and fourth feature the Oslo Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds and were released in 2016. The third disc offers Symphonies Nos. 6 (1999) and 2 (1970, revised 1974) – in that inexplicable order. The fourth contains Symphonies Nos. 5 (1987-1990, revised 1991) and 4 (1981) – again in an inexplicable order that makes even less sense, given the provenance and interrelationship of those two specific symphonies. It is also worth noting that Storgårds commissioned Symphony No. 8, is its dedicatee, and led its world première performance, but is not its conductor in this boxed set.

     However, it is worthwhile to observe, to put things in a more-positive light, that Nørgård is very fortunate indeed to have three podium advocates of his symphonies with as much skill and understanding as Dausgaard, Oramo and Storgårds possess. That is one important thing about this release: it shows that Nørgård is not a “niche” composer but one whose work reaches out broadly to audiences and well deserves sensitive treatment by some of the world’s most-skilled conductors. Indeed, “sensitive” is a word that applies to all these interpretations, each of which explores in detail Nørgård’s world as it existed at the time of each symphony. Oramo clearly understands that No. 1, “Sinfonia austera,” has some roots in the works of Sibelius and Nielsen, but that it goes beyond both: to the extent that it contains anything derivative, the material comes more from Bartók or perhaps Hindemith, and in some ways it sounds a bit like what Mahler might have created if he had gone harmonically beyond his Symphony No. 10. In the single-movement Symphony No. 2, which is more reflective of, say, Ligeti, Storgårds nicely traces the arc of the work – which begins and ends in silence – while emphasizing some unusual elements of orchestral balance and some striking use of percussion. In the two-movement Symphony No. 3, Dausgaard revels in orchestral treatment that is even more extreme than in No. 2, with slippery tonality (and occasional atonality) brought forth through the compositional technique that Nørgård invented and dubbed the “infinity series.” Symphony No. 3 includes a wordless background alto solo (sung by Ulla Munch) that is somewhat reminiscent of the vocalise in Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3 – but then, later in the work, the composer introduces two separate choruses (here, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble and Danish National Concert Choir) as part of a very extended (26-minute) movement, the vocal presentation combining Ave Maris Stella with a poem by Friedrich Rückert. This creates a clear parallel with Mahler on one level, but the setting is so different from any of Mahler’s and so distinctive in its own right that the net effect is to emphasize even more strongly than in the first two symphonies just how far Nørgård has moved into territory all his own. Dausgaard and the choirs heard in this recording are actually the dedicatees of Nørgård’s Symphony No. 3, and on the basis of this highly idiomatic and involving performance, they deserve to be.

     Symphony No. 4 is a very different two-movement piece, almost but not quite program music, created after Nørgård became familiar with the work of Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930), who was a patient in a mental hospital for most of his life. Nørgård actually calls the work Hommage à Adolf Wölfli. It is based on an unrealized plan by Wölfli, dating to 1912, to create music reflective of, first, an “Indian Rose Garden,” and, second, a “Chinese Witch Lake.” Nørgård suggests both scenes rather than trying to portray them with any directness, and Storgårds takes full advantage of the contrasts between the movements to make the presentation as evocative as possible. Storgårds also takes the full measure of Symphony No. 5, which is as abstract as No. 4 is (almost) representational. No. 5 is in five movements that, however, are played without a break, so in a sense it is a single-movement work – its overall structure somewhat resembles that of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7. Nørgård’s No. 5 is thoroughly atonal, sometimes microtonal, and includes distinctly odd sound effects (the instruments sound like broken glass at one point) – and Storgårds’ ability to make the work coherent and keep it moving successfully forward is impressive.

     Symphony No. 6 is called “At the End of the Day” and subtitled “3 Passages for Large Orchestra,” and here too Storgårds shows how well he handles the mercurial moods that pervade individual Nørgård symphonies and occur in microcosm within every single one of them. Here the atonality and microtonality are on the light side, sometimes on the verge of playfulness although never quite getting there. And the use of the orchestra is very noteworthy (pun intended): Nørgård draws a high level of attention to the sound of instrumental groups, more than to the notes they are playing – trumpets delve into their low ranges, winds sweep to the top of theirs, the timpani produce a decrescendo, the piano blithely tosses out some atonality, and so forth. This is a rather chaotic work that never quite coalesces – Nørgård does not seem to want it to gel in any particular way – and Storgårds makes it both effective and out-and-out entertaining.

     Symphony No. 7 is most immediately notable for its use of 14 tuned tom-toms, but Dausgaard makes it clear that this unusual instrumental grouping is only one surprising element of the work. In some ways No. 7 resembles No. 6 by having small sonic elements split from larger sounds and, in No. 7, play against each other contrapuntally. But No. 7 has its own unique aural patterns, with a jazzy sound here and there, some outright lyricism interrupted by a chordal crash, syncopation that readily pulls in listeners’ ears, and other effects showing just how thoroughly Nørgård understands the capabilities of orchestral sections and the ensemble as a whole, and how willing he is to pit elements of the group against each other simply to produce striking effects. Then, in Symphony No. 8, Nørgård extends the playful elements of No. 7 further: here too there is counterpoint, lyricism, syncopation and more – with Oramo clearly seeing these as elements of a coherent totality. Instrumental treatments that listeners will recognize as Nørgård signatures, from lyricism including a celesta to wind swirls and ebullient percussion, blend here as much as they contrast with each other; and Oramo uses the always-outstanding sound of the Vienna Philharmonic to make the symphony a sonic spectacular as well as an encapsulation of Nørgård’s thinking in the form as it has evolved during more than half a century.

     The unfortunate arrangement of the elements of this release notwithstanding, it is an important presentation – because Nørgård is an important composer with a great deal to say, the “what” of his communication having varied considerably from symphony to symphony but never being less than sincere, intense, and emotionally meaningful in connecting with audiences well beyond Denmark’s borders. Dausgaard, Oramo and Storgårds treat this music with the respect it deserves, and listeners willing to put up with the disappointing elements of the release will find the totality of these symphonies to be an experience – or, rather, a set of experiences – well worth having.

(++++) PIANO PERSPECTIVES

Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas, Volume 2—Nos. 9, 12 and 18; Volume 3—Nos. 4, 5, 11 and 16. Orli Shaham, piano. Canary Classics. $29.98 (2 CDs).

Martin Matalon: Piano Music—Trame IV; Artificios; Dos Formas del Tiempo; La Makina. Elena Klionsky, piano; New Juilliard Ensemble conducted by Joel Sachs; Salome Jordania, piano; Eve Payeur and Julián Macedo, percussion; David Adamcyck, electronics. MSR Classics. $14.95.

     Mozart’s piano sonatas fit very neatly on five CDs, but the cycle that Orli Shaham is in the process of creating on Canary Classics is going to have six discs – one indication among many of the personal nature of her approach. Why six? Well, the sonatas are being released in no discernible pattern, which means the volumes apparently reflect Shaham’s personal feelings about which pieces go well with – or contrast best with – which others. This is not a set for anyone seeking orderly presentation. But that does not detract from the high quality of the performances themselves, however quirkily they may be arranged. The second and third volumes are now available as a two-CD set, and they show Shaham continuing the approach she began in the first volume, which included only three sonatas: the ones that Mozart wrote in the key of B-flat. Matters are more wide-ranging this time: the Volume 2 sonatas are in A minor, F and D, while the Volume 3 works are in C, E-flat, G and A. But Shaham’s approach remains consistent. She plays a modern piano, does not hesitate to use the sustaining pedal to a considerable extent (although usually without overdoing it), takes the indicated repeats, and uses repeated sections for additional ornamentation – usually enough to make the repeats sound a touch different but not too different from the original presentations. Unlike Beethoven’s piano sonatas, Mozart’s have enough similarity so that a performer can wear out his or her welcome when playing several of them: there are enough parallels of sound and structure so that it takes some thought to make the pieces distinctive. Shaham is good at showing the diversity of the sonatas. In No. 9, she does a nice job with the syncopation in the second movement and the third-movement anticipation of a theme that Mozart would later use in Piano Concerto No. 21. In No. 12, she does especially well with the ornamentation in the second movement: Shaham generally likes musical ornaments, including the ones she creates herself during repeats. In No. 18, the latest work offered here, she certainly has no difficulty with the sonata’s technical demands – it is one of Mozart’s harder works in the form – and seems especially to enjoy the playful aspects of the finale. The first of the four works in what is labeled as Volume 3, Sonata No. 16, was designated by the composer as “for beginners” but needs to be taken seriously by advanced players, something that not all performers do. Shaham, however, plays it as if she enjoys it, which is a fine and appropriate approach. Nos. 4 and 5 are short, early works, and they too are on the easy side and simply structured: for example, the development in the first movement of No. 5 is only 18 measures long. Shaham plays them pleasantly enough and without overdoing anything. As for No. 11, whose final movement is the famous Alla turca, Shaham does a particularly nice job of making it clear that there are three movements to the work, not just letting the finale carry the whole thing. In fact, the first movement’s theme-and-variations approach was innovative for its time: Mozart and other Classical-era composers generally created first movements in sonata form. Shaham handles the sonata adeptly, and breezes through its finale in fine fettle without making it seem like the work’s focal point. There is nothing in Shaham’s performances in these volumes – or the first one – that will change listeners’ perceptions of Mozart’s sonatas; nothing is especially innovative, although everything is nicely proportioned and heartfelt without being emotionally overdone. An occasional movement or part of a movement drags a bit as Shaham seeks out what emotion the works contain, but tempos are generally well-considered, and the additional ornamentation that is clearly important to Shaham comes across well – although listeners will not find it crucial to the enjoyment of these pieces. Shaham is producing an admirably pleasant Mozart cycle that is most notable for the enjoyment that she seems to feel when playing the music and that she is therefore able to communicate effectively to listeners.

     Piano music has undergone enormous changes since Mozart’s day, as has the piano itself – one reason that performing Mozart on a modern piano is not really ideal – but even in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, composers have found the piano uniquely able to put across their musical thinking and thus to connect with audiences. Argentinian composer Martin Matalon (born 1958) uses the piano in a variety of communicative ways in the works on a (+++) MSR Classics CD featuring pianist Elena Klionsky – to whom one of the pieces, Artificios (2014) for solo piano, is dedicated. That work is pleasant enough, a kind of fantasia with tonal roots but wide-ranging harmonies, although it seems more of an extended exercise for Klionsky than a piece with anything significant to say. Matalon uses the piano more creatively in some of the other music on the disc, although that does not mean the piano sounds better: Matalon delves into many of the extended techniques so familiar from other modern composers’ works, creating sound worlds that can be elaborate but that spend most of their time calling attention to themselves and their presumed cleverness. Thus, Trame IV (2001), for piano and 11 instruments, is cacophonous and dramatic without ever really becoming compelling. And the longest work on the CD, La Makina (2007), for two pianos, two percussionists, and electronics, explores the usual comparisons and contrasts of acoustic and electronic sounds, mainly using the piano for its percussion-instrument characteristics rather than its expressive abilities. The work is intermittently interesting, as when Matalon has electronics so closely approximate the piano’s sound that it is hard to tell where the acoustic material ends and the electronic elements begin. And the integration of the piano into the other percussion – it is, after all, a percussion instrument – is well-handled. But at more than 22 minutes, the piece simply does not have enough to say to sustain interest, and many of the electronic effects are duplicative of similar ones by other composers – the totality of La Makina is, in a way, mechanistic. Interestingly, the fourth piece on the CD, which like Artificios is for solo piano, is more intriguing despite its smaller tonal palette. This is Dos Formas del Tiempo (2000), which gives Klionsky plenty of opportunities to showcase her rhythmic skill, expressive abilities and close attention to dynamics. This is scarcely a profound work – and, like Artificios, in some ways it seems more like an étude for the pianist than a piece aimed at satisfying an audience. But there is enough variation of sound, tempo, harmony and special pianistic effects to make the work a worthwhile listening experience. Certainly Matalon’s aims in his piano music are quite different from Mozart’s intentions in his, and not only because of the two composers’ very different harmonic languages and approaches to style. But it is provocative to consider the many ways in which the piano, through so many different designs and forms and over so many years, has remained a primary instrument of choice for composers seeking an effective way to communicate their ideas.