(+++) CASTLE AND CHURCH

Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle. Andrea Meláth, mezzo-soprano; Gustáv Beláček, bass; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $8.99.

Respighi: Vetrate di chiesa (Church Windows); Impressioni brasiliane (Brazilian Impressions); Rossiniana: Suite for Orchestra. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $8.99.

      Of all the works on these two CDs, Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle was written earliest, yet sounds the most modern. Ever since its first performance in 1918, it has been a wonder and a puzzlement. It takes the old legend of Bluebeard, who married and killed his wives, and turns it into symbolist poetry and an inner drama in which all the wives – four of them – are still alive at the end, to the unknowable extent that they ever were. The opera is all dialogue between Bluebeard and Judith, his latest wife; nothing happens except that Judith opens seven doors and says she sees many things beyond them – but the audience sees nothing. The words are all-important here, which is why the new Naxos recording, despite its many musical pleasures, is ultimately unsatisfying. There is no libretto; very few listeners are likely to know Hungarian well enough to understand what is being said; and the included synopsis is rendered meaningless by the fact that what happens on stage is almost irrelevant to what this opera is about. The performance itself is well above average, with Andrea Meláth especially good, her Judith coming across as more powerful than Gustáv Beláček’s Bluebeard almost to the end, and her voice considerably stronger as well (probably because of the miking: Beláček is sometimes overmatched by the orchestra, while Meláth is not). Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony do a fine job with the music, especially the dark and ominous beginning and the huge orchestral climax before the opening of the seventh door. The one-act, one-hour opera requires the two performers to declaim in a manner that is not quite melodrama, not quite Sprechstimme, and that both singers handle comfortably. As for what this version of the Bluebeard myth really signifies, it is hard to escape the notion that when everything means something, nothing means anything. Librettist Béla Balázs, in seeking profundity, merely created obscurity – certainly for non-Hungarian speakers. Bartók’s music, though, is as much a character as either Judith or Bluebeard, and it is every bit as odd and disturbingly effective today as it was in 1918.

     The three works by Ottorino Respighi are far more straightforward; they are also far less interesting. Vetrate di chiesa (Church Windows) dates to 1925 (although it was not performed until 1927) and was in fact not written about church windows: the four movements’ titles were added after Respighi finished the suite. The work is pleasant and, as usual with Respighi, cleverly scored. The gently nostalgic first movement, “The Flight into Egypt,” and dramatically warlike second one, “St. Michael the Archangel,” sound best as interpreted by JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic. The third movement, “The Matins of St. Clare,” drags, and the finale, “St. Gregory the Great,” never really builds to an impressive climax. Impressioni brasiliane (Brazilian Impressions) was written in 1928, after Respighi made a trip to Brazil, but this performance never quite takes off. The first and longest movement, “Tropical Night,” should sound more sensuous than it does here; the second, “Butantan” (the name of a research facility where dangerous snakes were raised) is never quite sinuous or menacing enough. “Song and Dance,” the finale, is pleasant, but this performance does not break free into the sort of abandoned joy associated with Brazilian rhythms. Nor is there a sense of delight in Rossiniana: Suite for Orchestra, written the same year as Vetrate di chiesa. The suite’s four movements are based on piano pieces that Rossini called Les Riens (“Trifles” or “Nothings”), much in the manner of Respighi’s 1919 ballet, La boutique fantasque. Unfortunately, Rossiniana is not as charming as the earlier work, and Falletta fails to evoke more than occasional joy from it. The one thing missing most on this CD is lightheartedness – a quality that would enhance all the pieces here, including the one whose movements’ titles make it seem to be related to sacred matters.

(++++) DINO DELIGHTS

Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages. By Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., Ph.D. Illustrated by Luis V. Rey. Random House. $34.99.

      If you know someone who is serious about dinosaurs – really interested in what they were, how they lived, and what we know and don’t know about them – you can scarcely find a better gift for him or her than this hefty, scientifically accurate, meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated volume. Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., a leading authority on tyrannosaurs and the founder and director of the Earth, Life & Time Program at the University of Maryland at College Park, here combines his own knowledge with that of 33 other top paleontologists to present a book about dinosaurs that is truly…well…encyclopedic.

      Younger children will want to start with the pictures: Luis V. Rey is one of the foremost dinosaur illustrators working today, and what he shows is absolutely marvelous – and in line with the best science currently known. It is also often very surprising. For example, his drawing of what Deinonychus – believed to be one of the smartest dinosaurs – could have looked like makes the creature’s head resemble that of a huge turkey, but with numerous super-sharp protruding teeth. Fanciful? Only to an extent: there is no way to know what soft tissues coated dinosaur skulls, since soft tissue does not fossilize, so this carnivore could have looked much like this – or not like this at all.

      It is the combination of carefully marshaled knowledge with free-ranging speculation that makes Dinosaurs such a fascinating book – and not only in the illustrations. The chapter on “Avialians (Birds),” for example, begins by explaining that “to modern scientists, an animal is a dinosaur if it is a descendant of the most recent common ancestor of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. …[O]ne of the most important discoveries in paleontology of the pasty forty years is that birds are descendants of the most recent common ancestor of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. In other words, birds are dinosaurs!” This leads to a discussion of flight and feathers (wing and tail), and an aside that is as interesting as anything in the chapter’s main argument: “[S]ome people mistakenly think that marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs were ‘seagoing dinosaurs.’ Others say that there were no marine dinosaurs. Both groups of people are wrong!” Holtz, of course, then goes on to explain why.

      Even these short excerpts from the text show that this is a plainly written but not simplistic book, rife with exclamation points but well grounded in the findings of modern scientists. The contributions by people other than Holtz himself tend to be more soberly written, but each takes up only a page and deals with a specific subject. Readers interested in a particular focus will find these sections fascinating; others can easily skip them. What no one should skip are the information on finding, classifying and assembling dinosaur fossils; the illustrations showing just how big various dinosaurs were; the “cladograms” showing the relationship among different dinosaurs of similar types; and the wonderfully speculative pictures showing how dinosaurs may have lived, reproduced and interacted. Would-be paleontologists get a fantastic bonus at the end: a multi-page dinosaur genus list in which Holtz tries to arrange all known dinosaurs into appropriate groups. New discoveries of dinosaur species continue to happen regularly – the very recent discovery of a dinosaur that apparently ate low-lying vegetation the ways cows do today occurred too late to be included in this book – so the end-of-book list is certainly not graven in stone; nor are this book’s chapters the last word on anything, since this field is ever-expanding. But Holtz provides such a firm grounding in the world of dinosaurs that an interested reader could certainly use this book as the basis for a long-term study. Or just read the book for fun – it’s equally good, and equally fascinating, on that basis.

(+++) DEMONS OLD AND DEMONS NEW

Mister B. Gone. By Clive Barker. Harper. $24.95.

The Dark Sacrament: True Stories of Modern-Day Demon Possession and Exorcism. By David M. Kiely and Christina McKenna. HarperOne. $25.95.

      Demons are an ideal subject for horror, being bundles of uncontrollable evil with vast if ill-defined powers to harm humans and their world. But Jakobok Botch, the “Mr. B” in the title of Clive Barker’s new novel, turns out to be somewhat endearing – disgustingly so, it is true, but endearing nevertheless. The book is structured as his (not really “its”) memoir, supposedly written in the mid-15^th century, and the connective tissue of the novel is provided by Mr. B’s continual demands that the reader burn the book. Again and again, he orders, cajoles, begs, wheedles and threatens the reader in an attempt to get the book burned – a narrative device that is interesting the first few dozen times but wears thin thereafter, especially since it becomes pretty clear to any careful reader (long before Barker intends it to) why Mr. B would want the book burned. The idea here is that Mr. B will tell the reader snippets of his life story to induce the reader to burn the book. It is a story that starts in the ninth circle of the “Demonation,” a place that one would expect Barker to describe in detail but that, unfortunately, he never really talks much about. It seems to be much like Earth, but uglier and filthier; certainly there is no sign of eternal hellfire, or the eternal cold imagined by Dante when he created the concept of the circles of Hell. The way Mr. B leaves for the upper world, the people he encounters there (some of whom seem more demonic than he), and the adventures he has, make up the bulk of the book. Barker has written masterful horror before, but he is not at his best here, perhaps because he wants Mr. B to be both sympathetic and deeply evil. At one point, for example, he has Mr. B bathing in a tub of babies’ blood, then tries to create a grotesque comic scene by having him found out because he had a hole in his baby-collecting sack and left a trail to his hiding place. This doesn’t quite work. Nor does his relationship with Quitoon, a more-powerful demon who accompanies him for many years and whom Mr. B is surprised (as the reader will not be) to discover that he sort of…loves. The last part of the book, involving Johannes Gutenberg’s discovery of the printing press and the negotiation (not battle) between demonic and heavenly forces over the spoils of the world-changing forces thus unleashed, has effective parts but is mostly rather silly. The problem with Mister B. Gone – whose title, incidentally, makes little sense – is that Barker never quite balances horror and the supernatural against mundane affairs and humor. The book is written well, but to little purpose.

      The purpose of The Dark Sacrament, on the other hand, is explicit: to show that demons exist in the modern world, continue to possess humans, and can be expelled by knowledgeable and trained representatives of organized religion (demons seem not to attack atheists). The book is in many ways more frightening and more humorous than Barker’s, including stories ranging from one of a woman told by her evil, dead grandmother to kill her boyfriend, and one of a little girl who hears a ghost sorting videos in the next room. The cases are treated by one of two exorcists: Canon William Lendrum, a Protestant, or Father Ignatius McCarthy, a Roman Catholic. The Dark Sacrament is structured as if David M. Kiely and Christina McKenna know the exact actions and innermost thoughts of everyone they profile: there are long dialogue scenes that include the precise words spoken by demons to the people they are possessing. And there is never more than a passing mention of possible non-demonic explanations for the occurrences. The woman with the evil grandmother, for example, had two suicide attempts, an eating disorder and depression so deep that it required hospitalization before she was possessed. Nor is there ever any questioning of the power of organized religion. “It is wonderful to participate in such a healing victory,” Canon Lendrum says after treating the girl with the ghost and the videos. “Experiencing the power of God’s love in these situations is something neither I nor those afflicted ever forget.” This is no doubt true for Lendrum and for people whose beliefs allow him to soothe them. It was no doubt true for McKenna, who claims to have had a six-week paranormal experience at age 11 that was resolved by an exorcist (Kiely, her husband, is a freelance writer of biographies, crime novels and mysteries). But readers who do not already believe in demonic possession as strongly as the authors do will find nothing in The Dark Sacrament to change their views. Indeed, the precise recounting of people’s words and thoughts makes the book read more like a novel than a work of nonfiction, and the unquestioning acceptance of organized religion’s version of spirituality guarantees the book an audience with a narrow, if strongly held, set of beliefs.

(+++) EATERS AND EATEN

A Taste for Rabbit. By Linda Zuckerman. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $16.99.

Hungry. By Alethea Eason. HarperCollins. $15.99.

      The idea of a world populated by animals rather than humans is nothing new – it dates back at least to Aesop’s fables. The idea of rabbits as intelligent creatures with their own society is nothing new, either – Watership Down made the notion famous. What Linda Zuckerman does in her first novel, A Taste for Rabbit, is take these previously used ideas and twist them around a bit, producing a fresh look at what it means to be human, even if you are not human-shaped. In Zuckerman’s world, foxes are civilized and are the dominant species. Like humans in our own world, these foxes eat other animals with lesser brainpower; they are especially fond of rabbits, to the point that the foxes are actually dependent on a steady supply of rabbits for food (there is something of a parallel here to humans and cows – at least in much of the world outside India). But then comes a time when rabbits are nowhere to be found: it turns out that they have escaped the foxes’ dominion and established their own society far away. Now what? Obviously, the two societies are destined to collide, and Zuckerman makes sure they do through the time-tested approach of having members of the two societies become friends. In a strict predator-prey relationship, this would be impossible, but A Taste for Rabbit works on the assumption that the foxes are not merely predators – they are intelligent creatures who have ordered their society as best befits them, and they are unaware (until the events of this book) that rabbits are more than…well…dumb animals. Zuckerman arranges for a fox named Harry and a rabbit named Quentin to become friends, and of course both are young, earnest, well-meaning and vaguely aware that the world is out of balance. A Taste for Rabbit is told in chapters, usually alternating ones, focusing on the two friends (with an occasional chapter focused on another character), but the actual narration is third-person: Zuckerman tells what happens to Harry, Quentin, and the two of them together, but the story is not really told from their points of view (which might have made it more interesting – but also more adult than the book is intended to be). Eventually, Harry and Quentin learn that it can be better to trust one’s hereditary enemy than to accept unquestioningly the ideas of one’s own kind – a worthwhile lesson that turns out to extend not only to foxes and rabbits but also to other species.

      But what about a species that is truly alien? That’s what Alethea Eason introduces in her first novel, which is as amusing and frothy as Zuckerman’s is serious and thought-provoking. The basic subject matter is the same – intelligent species eating each other (or not) – but one of the species in question in Eason’s book happens to be Homo sapiens. A novel for middle-schoolers (ages 10 and up), Hungry focuses on a sixth-grader named Deborah, who is just starting to notice boys – especially one particular boy, Willy, whose has curly red hair and radiates coolness and is Deborah’s closest friend. Not that way, at least not yet – but there are certainly possibilities…until Deborah’s parents tell her to turn Willy into lunch. Or dinner. Whatever. The point is that Deborah and her parents are tentacled aliens, and they can eat humans, but not human food. “I wished I could eat like a normal human girl and drink sodas and milk shakes and find out what pizza tasted like,” moans Deborah. “My ski cap began to rise. Dad put his hand on top of my head and gently pushed my tentacles back down.” See, human food will kill Deborah’s family – at least they say they think it will, and as her dad points out, they can’t take the chance of finding out. So what’s a middle-school alien girl in a human overskin to do? Does she help with the invasion scenario (that’s what she and her parents are supposed to be doing on Earth), acknowledging herself as Dbkrrsh of the House of Mpfld, or does she shame her species by trying to stay plain Deborah Jones of Earth? The answer is a little long in coming, and the eventual use of a deus ex machina (actually alien ex machina) is a bit disappointing, but hey, at least Earth is saved at the end. For the time being, anyway.

(+++) SEARCHES

The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist. By Reviel Netz & William Noel. Da Capo. $27.50.

Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind. By Paula Kamen. Da Capo. $26.

      The Da Vinci Code was fiction. The Archimedes Codex is fact – although some aspects of it read like fiction. The codex is a palimpsest, a manuscript with a new layer of text written over an old one that has been scraped or washed off. The new text is a set of prayers in Greek, written by a monk around the year 1200. The underlying text is what remains of a copy of the papyrus scrolls onto which Archimedes wrote many of his most important discoveries before his death in 212 B.C. The tale of the palimpsest really does read like an adventure story: discovered in Istanbul, partially transcribed in 1906, then stolen or lost, missing until around 1930, bought by a French traveler in an antiques shop, kept in Paris for seven decades (although one page that had been torn from it was analyzed at Cambridge University in England in 1971), and eventually sold in 1998 for $2 million. The authors of The Archimedes Codex are intimately involved in figuring out what it says: William Noel is Curator of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, to which the codex is on loan, and Reviel Netz is a specialist in ancient science and professor of classics and philosophy at Stanford University. Unfortunately, since this is a book of fact and not fiction, it is not as neatly paced as a novel and may not produce knowledge of much interest to the casual reader – although it will be enormously exciting to historians and mathematicians. Just to cite one amazing example, it seems from the codex that Archimedes developed a form of mathematics that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz discovered (or, it now appears, rediscovered) and called The Calculus nearly 2,000 years later. But to get to the discoveries and understand their significance, readers must wade into discussions of the medieval origins of mathematical symbols, the development of abbreviations by the copiers of old manuscripts, and a great deal of theoretical math. The elegance of Archimedes’ reasoning will be readily appreciated by mathematicians, but not by everyday readers, who are unlikely to understand exactly what the authors mean when they write, “Consider that each treatise by Archimedes contains at least one…moment of magic [in its proofs] and you can begin to see the measure of the man.” Unfortunately, this book, for all its fascinations, does not make it easy for the non-specialist to see what that measure is.

      What, then, is the measure of Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking, who died a suicide at the age of 30, in 2004? Paula Kamen, a commentator and longtime friend of Chang – whom she had known since they were in college together – sets out in Finding Iris Chang to discover what lay behind the apparent perfection of Chang’s life. That perfection, Kamen reasons, could not have been real, since Chang committed suicide (there were rumors that she was murdered, but there is no evidence of that). And sure enough, Kamen finds out things about Chang that the author herself never wanted revealed – most notably that she struggled with bipolar disorder, likely connected with numerous miscarriages caused by her inability to carry a child to term. Mental illness is more stigmatized in the Asian community than in many others – witness the discussions, after the fact, of the mental state of Seung-Hui Cho, the Korean who killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech last year. Chang was at pains to conceal her psychological problems; Kamen professes herself shocked at the lengths to which Chang went “to appear perfect.” Kamen also reveals that Chang’s son was born to a surrogate mother. These and many other revelations will be at least mildly interesting to fans of Chang’s work, but they are really irrelevant to the quality of the work itself – and unnecessary to understand and be moved by what Chang left behind. Unlike paparazzi-attracting celebrities who spend much of their time acting famous, Chang was quite private about many of the details of her life that Kamen ferrets out and reveals. Although the book is written sensitively, with Kamen expressing considerable affection for Chang, there is a certain unpleasant sense of voyeurism about Finding Iris Chang that makes it seem less a work of friendship than one in which a friendship is, after the fact, exploited.

(++++) THE PRICE OF COMPUTER DEFENSE

Norton Internet Security 2008. Windows Vista or XP. Symantec. $69.99.

Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware. Windows Vista or XP. Symantec. $39.99.

      It has become an old argument, but it is an ongoing one: why pay for computer protection when you can get it for free? Some argue that it gets harder every year to justify spending significant amounts of money to fight viruses and protect yourself when browsing the Web, because there are better and better antivirus programs available every year without cost, and more and more built-in browser features that keep you safe. Symantec, though, keeps upping the ante for the free and built-in products by giving its admittedly not inexpensive protective software more and more features and making its programs work better and better all the time. Where things stand now is that you can get many (but not all) of the features of Symantec’s products for free or for less money than it will cost you to buy the Norton product line. But you cannot get seamless integration of all the functions, along with ease of use and ease of updating, in the freeware world. It is an individual decision how much the functional simplicity and high quality of the Norton products are worth.

      If you do decide to buy Norton Internet Security 2008, you need to know one limitation: it can be installed on a maximum of three computers. As for Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware, it can be installed on only one machine. And while both products include free updates, they remain free for only one year – so the cost of these offerings actually buys you only a single year of protection (although you can, of course, pay extra to continue getting updates in future years).

      During that one year, though, Norton Internet Security 2008 and Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware will keep your computing remarkably safe – and will make you feel safe while working online or offline, which itself is worth something. Note that you do not need to buy both products: Norton Internet Security 2008 includes all the functions of Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware. If you buy only the antivirus program, you get software that is remarkably effective at blocking viruses (including those from E-mail and IM programs), blocking worms and Trojan horses, stopping online tracking software from following you around the Web, preventing spyware from hijacking your computer and turning it into a “zombie” that (without your knowledge) passes along spam and malicious messages, and getting rid of malware contained in downloaded files. That’s a lot of protection, and Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware provides it simply, constantly and in the background. The software has some neat tweaks for 2008, such as “Symantec Threat Interceptor Browser Defender,” an awkwardly named feature that makes sure malicious code cannot reach your computer even if it shows up on a legitimate Web site that has been compromised; and a home-network mapping feature that lets you see all the computers and devices on your network and identify anything unauthorized. Everything works well, installs easily (provided you have 300 megabytes of available hard disk space), and operates more quickly than in earlier years despite the inclusion of additional features.

      All this adds up to quite a lot of safety, but there is even more in Norton Internet Security 2008 (which takes up 350 megs). It includes additional protection that kicks in when using a wireless connection, plus a setup that only allows authorized programs to contact the Internet – thus preventing anything malicious that does somehow get past other defenses from getting back online and causing mischief. The big additional benefit of Norton Internet Security 2008, though, is the protection it provides for online bill-paying, shopping and investing. It inspects Web sites to be sure they are what they claim to be, thus preventing phishing, and its “Identity Safe” feature stores confidential data and lets users decide how much information is shared with which Web sites (it can also automatically fill in Web forms, a timesaver if not exactly a security element). The features, some enhanced and some new, work efficiently and more quickly than in past versions of this software, and provide a level of online confidence that for some families will, in and of itself, be worth the price of the product.

      It is worth repeating that most of the features of Norton Internet Security 2008 and Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware are available elsewhere for less or no money. Grisoft’s AVG Free Edition 7.5, for example, is a very good antivirus program; the Firefox browser and Internet Explorer 7 (to a lesser degree) include anti-phishing features and data protection; banking and investment sites build in their own identity-protection features; and major Web E-mail programs by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! include some protection against malicious message attachments. It is also worth pointing out that no software, Symantec’s included, is or can be guaranteed to be 100% effective (although a neat Symantec feature can actually detect emerging spyware and viruses whose signatures are not yet confirmed). However, as more and more of family life migrates to the computer, as more and more homes have their own networks, as quick and seamless integration of protective functions becomes ever more important (so users do not have to spend their time doing multiple updates and making sure that free programs work properly together), the cost of a one-stop solution becomes increasingly attractive for many home and small-business users. On that basis, the price of Norton Internet Security 2008 or Norton AntiVirus 2008 with Antispyware will quickly seem like money very well spent.

(++++) ONCE GREAT, NOW NEGLECTED

Hummel: Le retour de Londres—Grand Rondeau brilliant; Variations and Finale in B flat major; Oberons Zauberhorn; Variations in F Major. Christopher Hinterhuber, piano; Gävle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd. Naxos. $8.99.

Spohr: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 10; Overture in F Major. NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Howard Griffiths. CPO. $16.99 (SACD).

      Two of the major post-Beethoven musical figures were both born while Mozart was still alive; yet both were touted for a time as towering composers and worthy Beethoven successors. Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) and Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr (1784-1859) knew each other’s music; Spohr certainly thought well of Hummel’s. Hummel was a friend of Beethoven and was Haydn’s successor as Kapellmeister to Prince Esterházy in Eisenstadt. He was also a piano virtuoso of very considerable skill, with much of his writing for piano designed to demonstrate his own abilities as a performer. Christopher Hinterhuber plays four “showcase” works on this new Naxos CD – and the pieces confirm that Hummel, although scarcely the great composer he was once thought to be, never deserved the obscurity into which he later fell, and is worthy of the somewhat tentative revival of his music that has taken place in recent years.

      Le retour de Londres—Grand Rondeau brilliant is the latest work here, dating to 1833, and is quite impressive. A sweeping, emotional introduction gives way to a rather trivial rondo theme that is varied in a wide variety of ways, from grand and moving to decidedly perky. The Variations and Finale in B flat major of 1830 also begins with a slow introduction, followed by a symmetrical and rather gentle theme in ¾ time that Hummel pulls apart and elaborates in more ways than the basic theme would seem to support. Oberons Zauberhorn (1831) is a fascinating work and a strange one. Purely on its own, it is an impressive dramatic fantasia built around a horn call and including, among other episodes, an unusually dark and dramatic section about two-thirds of the way through. But this work was never intended to be heard without context: it is an interpretative tribute to Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Oberon, which is built around a horn theme (but not Hummel’s horn theme) and which features similar episodes (but not using Hummel’s music). It is, in effect, Hummel’s interpretation of the mood of the opera, making references to Weber’s work without actually quoting much of its music. For those who know Oberon, Hummel’s piece will be all the more fascinating. Not so the final work in the CD, though: the Variations in F Major (1820) are workmanlike but not particularly distinguished. However, they do clearly show Hummel’s place in musical history, since the theme itself is distinctly Mozartean, featuring interesting ornamentation and considerable poise and balance. Hinterhuber plays all this music with a great deal of panache, and Uwe Grodd and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra provide absolutely wonderful backup: detailed, enthusiastic and very well played.

      Howard Griffiths and the NDR Radiophilharmonie bring enthusiasm and intensity to Spohr’s music on their new CPO recording, and the SACD sound is outstanding: warm and bright by turns, with excellent detail. But the music of Spohr, who was for years touted as a successor and/or alternative to Beethoven, does not hold up particularly well. Spohr’s Symphony No. 3 of 1829 was the first symphony he composed after Beethoven’s death and was widely viewed at the time as showing a new and different direction for the symphony. In retrospect, there is less to it. It is in C minor, the same key as Beethoven’s Fifth, and uses that key to create a sense of seriousness and intense purpose from the beginning. The opening of the first movement is quite dark, and the movement is pervaded by melancholy throughout. The second movement is gentler and well orchestrated, but there is nothing profound about it. There is no lightening of the mood in the third movement, which has rhythmic vigor and strength and some good wind writing. The finale features artful themes that are not particularly attractive or distinguished, although the second theme has nice lilt, and a fugal passage in the development is well constructed. The symphony as a whole leaves the impression of careful, even cautious workmanship.

      The Symphony No. 10, Spohr’s last, is in some ways more interesting. Spohr disavowed the work but did not destroy it, and it turns out – surprisingly – to have charms that hark back to Mozart and Haydn. The first movement has fairly light themes and a more classical structure than would be expected in 1857. The second movement is gentle, with transparent scoring and an untroubled feeling. The third movement is Haydnesque in its use of a start-and-stop theme (although the scoring is clearly post-Haydn), while the contrasting middle section flows pleasantly. The finale also features some thematic hesitation, but is basically broad in structure – and the work as a whole comes across as an attractive throwback, as if Spohr, near the end of his life (and already past the point of being considered some sort of successor to Beethoven) no longer had anything to prove.

      The final work recorded here was written earliest, in 1819, although it was not published in Spohr’s lifetime. The Overture in F Major makes a good encore or curtain-raiser, with a portentous and darkly ominous opening giving way to a driving, well-shaped faster section that builds to a potent stretto at the end. Spohr was once so admired that there is a line in The Mikado about “Bach, interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven.” It turns out that that level of admiration was overdone – but there are elements of Spohr’s music that continue to communicate effectively today.

(++++) BIG GIFTS AND SMALL

The Gilded Bat. By Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $14.95.

The Wuggly Ump. By Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $12.95.

How to Understand, Enjoy and Draw Optical Illusions. By Robert Ausbourne. Pomegranate. $14.95.

M.C. Escher Kaleidocycles. By Doris Schattschneider and Wallace Walker. Pomegranate. $24.95.

      Looking for an unusual stocking stuffer for someone who thinks he or she has everything? Or perhaps a more substantial gift for the same sort of person? Just how offbeat are you willing to be? Here are two small items and two larger ones that are highly unusual – and almost certainly not things that even a picky gift recipient will have seen before.

      Edward Gorey (1925-2000) was an artist whose extraordinarily careful style and attention to detail were inevitably put at the service of subject matter that was a trifle…err…weird. The Golden Bat and The Wuggly Ump are eerily delightful little books that show Gorey at his best, which means at his strangest. The Golden Bat is a ballet story – a very peculiar one, indeed. It starts when a little girl named Maudie Splaytoe is found to be fascinated by a dead bird (this is typical Gorey humor). She learns ballet in a tale sprinkled with realistic pictures of dancers at practice combined with thoroughly offbeat specifics of Maudie’s advances: “She was given her first solo as the Papillon Enragé [“angry butterfly,” superbly portrayed by Gorey] in a revival of Golopine’s Jardin de Regrets.” Throughout all her professional progress, though, “her life did not cease to be somewhat dreary” – and Gorey’s blacks and grays beautifully show the dreariness. There is no happy ending here – this is Gorey, after all – but Maudie’s eventual exit, which makes the book’s title clear, represents the sort of grim humor that Gorey fans (and people who do not yet know they are Gorey fans) will find irresistible.

      The Wuggly Ump is grimly humorous in a slightly different way. There is more brightness in the drawings, and the tale is told in the sort of singsong poetry that immediately identifies this as a children’s book. But it is a Gorey children’s book, which means you just know the three wholesome kids seen at the start are going to come to a bad end – and that the Wuggly Ump will have something to do with it: “It eats umbrellas, gunny sacks,/ Brass doorknobs, mud, and carpet tacks./ How most unpleasing, to be sure!/ Its other habits are obscure.” The reader will no doubt guess the other habits well before the end – and see them, in Gorey’s inimitable style, at the end.

      Too grim? Or perhaps not a big enough gift, since the Gorey books are stocking-stuffer size? Consider, then, How to Understand, Enjoy and Draw Optical Illusions, a fascinating and very colorful exploration of pictures that seem to be one thing but in fact are something else. Robert Ausbourne does not merely explain how illusions work (although he does that, and quite clearly). He shows readers exactly how to create 37 of them, each with step-by-step instructions that are a breeze to follow and lead to some truly fascinating completed projects. Ausbourne never takes himself or his subject too seriously (“Serious artists should know where the point end of a pencil is”), but he takes his instructions seriously, and that is what matters. From broken lines that seem not to join (but do), to shapes that look three-dimensional when drawn but cannot be created in a three-dimensional world, Ausbourne shows why the eye is tricked by careful but simple drawings – and how to trick it.

      The great modern master of this sort of trickery was M.C. Escher (1898-1972), who is legendary for his impossible buildings, metamorphoses of two-dimensional objects into three-dimensional ones and back again, and staircases and waterfalls in which it is impossible to tell what is down and what is up. A fantastic gift for a very special person is M.C. Escher Kaleidocycles, in which mathematician Doris Schattschneider and graphic designer Wallace Walker go several steps beyond Ausbourne’s drawn illusions to show readers how to produce 3D objects whose even divisions of the plane form the basis on which Escher created many of his most famous works. The 48-page book contains more than 80 reproductions and diagrams of kaleidocycles, which are closed-chain solids with four identical triangular surfaces that can cycle endlessly through a center hole. These are wonderful to learn about and even more delightful to construct. M.C. Escher Kaleidocycles includes 17 geometric models, each of them die-cut and scored for (relatively) easy assembly. Six are geometric solids, which are highly interesting in themselves; the other 11 are kaleidocycles. This and How to Understand, Enjoy and Draw Optical Illusions are “project” books at their best: unusual, very informative, packed with science and – above all – a great deal of fun. In fact, if you can’t think of an appropriate recipient for them, why not get them for yourself?

(++++) THE PLOT’S THE THING

The Golden Compass: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion. By Brian Sibley. Scholastic. $14.99.

The Jewel Box Ballerinas. By Monique de Varennes. Illustrated by Ana Juan. Schwartz & Wade. $16.99.

Babymouse #7: Skater Girl. By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm. Random House. $5.99.

      Sometimes books with a visual focus turn out to be at least as interesting for their stories as for what they picture. This is not altogether surprising in the case of the “movie companion” to the new film of The Golden Compass, since Philip Pullman’s novel – the first part of a trilogy called His Dark Materials – is exceptionally well written and among the most serious of all works intended, at least to some extent, for children. A division of Scholastic called Scholastic Media was involved in producing the movie of Pullman’s book, so it is scarcely a surprise to find out that this oversize paperback gets top-notch treatment. It is very handsomely illustrated, abounding with scenes from the film and “inside information” on the casting, special effects, costumes and much more. All this would be enough to ensure the book’s popularity among fans of the movie and perhaps even some readers of the book. But there is a great deal here beyond the standard oohing and aahing over stars and computer-generated images. The book includes enough information on Pullman’s work to (one hopes) get kids who may see the film without having read the novel interested in doing so. The trilogy is an experience far surpassing anything a movie based on one-third of the story can offer; and this Scholastic guide can actually serve as an introduction to the larger work. Included here is Pullman’s explanation of borrowing the idea for daemons – animal spirits that accompany every person in the world of The Golden Compass – from Socrates. Here too is Pullman’s discussion of his original plan to call the whole trilogy The Golden Compass – referring to a drawing tool mentioned in Milton’s Paradise Lost, not to a compass that points toward the north – and the confusion that resulted in the first book being called The Golden Compass in much of the world but Northern Lights in Pullman’s native England. There are photos of Pullman as well as the stars of the film, information on a theatrical adaptation dating to 2003, and even comments on deliberate differences between the book and the film – such as the director’s decision to make the hair of the villainous Mrs. Coulter “ice blond” instead of long and dark, as it is described in the novel. As a gateway both to the film of The Golden Compass and to the superb books without which it could not have been made, this movie tie-in is an exceptional production.

      Pictures are also a very big part of the charm of The Jewel Box Ballerinas, but again, it is the story that the illustrations serve that is the major attraction here. Monica de Varennes tells the tale of an extremely rich woman named Bibi Branchflower, who has two of everything – except friends, of which she has none. One day, in “a tiny shop in a crooked street,” she sees a small jewel box – which is unique, but which contains two of something: two sad-faced ballerinas. There is an old sorcerer’s magic in the box, the shopkeeper says, relating a tale of “selfish, foolish girls” who rejected the beautifully made box with its then-smiling ballerinas. Pooh-poohing any notion of magic, Bibi buys the box – and the rest of the book is all about her gradually becoming more and more determined to make the little ballerinas smile; how she finally does; and what happens then to relieve Bibi’s loneliness. It is a lovely story, and Ana Juan’s illustrations fit it perfectly, from the dark and atmospheric shop interior and the nighttime scene outside after Bibi buys the box, to the wonderful appearance of Bibi’s two pugs, to the curious animals clustered outside Bibi’s tent when she takes the ballerinas along on a trip to Africa, to the expressiveness of Bibi’s and the ballerinas’ faces when they all realize they have indeed become friends. It is the story, though, that will bring a smile to children’s lips and perhaps a tear to parents’ eyes.

      There’s nothing to cry about in the Babymouse series by the sister-and-brother team of Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm, but the seventh book in the series, Skater Girl, proves to be the most serious of all – and one of the best. Babymouse is often portrayed as barely competent, getting through difficulties with charm and a kind of offbeat and endearing luck, but here she finds out that she has real talent for ice skating. In addition to her usual daydreaming (she turns into “Frosty the Snowmouse” in one daydream and gets slimed by a tricky leprechaun in her school locker in another), Babymouse confronts the school’s trophy case, realizing that she has never managed more than an honorable mention in anything. She loves skating, though, and when a coach happens to spot her one day and offers to train her, Babymouse brushes off the idea that it is hard work and jumps (and slides, glides and pirouettes) at the chance. Then she finds out that competitive skating really is hard work, requiring super-early appearances at the rink and constant compromises involving homework, friends and family. This is an accurate portrayal of the hard-driving world of young people’s skating competitions, and Babymouse’s eventual decision to give up the quest for glory in order to reclaim her friends and the fun of the sport has real-world resonance, too. This is highly unusual in the Babymouse books – a first, in fact – and lends Skater Girl depth that makes it more intriguing than the earlier books. It’s just as much fun, though, and the pictures of Babymouse are as enjoyable as ever. The story’s added dose of reality is an unexpected and welcome bonus.

(+++) DETAILS OF WHAT NEVER WAS

oPtion$. By Fake Steve Jobs (Daniel Lyons). Da Capo. $22.95.

The Last Days of Krypton. By Kevin J. Anderson. HarperEntertainment. $25.95.

      Nothing in either of these books ever happened, but the idea of both works is to treat themselves more as nonfiction than as novels – one as a memoir, one as a history.

      oPtion$ actually has a real-world history, one almost as strange as the spelling of its title. A Forbes senior editor named Daniel Lyons was revealed in The New York Times earlier this year as the author of a very popular blog about Apple Computer, its CEO and his friends and colleagues – written with tongue so firmly in cheek that it could, with a little more pushing, break through. Lyons wrote under the name “Fake Steve Jobs,” and has now expanded his persona and his blog into a full-length book – which is oPtion$. The title ties into the controversy over the real Steve Jobs’ role in backdating options for himself and others so everyone could make additional profits as the stock of Apple rose (and rose and rose). If you don’t know about options, backdating or the controversy involving Jobs, or if you don’t care, this is emphatically not the book for you: it is an extended in-joke, full of dropped names and snide business comments and parodies of the way companies operate. There is, for example, an imagined meeting with Hillary Clinton at which not-Jobs writes that Jobs said (but not really), “The thing is, I’m planning to endorse Al Gore, if he runs, because he’s on my board, and he’s going to save the planet from melting, and he’s going to make my pal Bono the head of the Supreme Court or something.” Hilarious, right? No? How about this one? “We’re driving along Skyline Boulevard, close to Neil Young’s ranch, and I’m thinking maybe we should pull in and see if he’s home. We could go in and talk politics for a while and smoke some weed and Neil can give me shit about how music sounds better on vinyl than on an iPod.” There’s a lot more of this – in fact, there’s pretty much nothing but this – in oPtion$, and if you don’t get it immediately, you won’t get it at all. For the self-proclaimed “in group” only – you know who you are.

      You also know who you are if you are so dedicated a fan of Superman that you would like to read a 90-chapter, 412-page book about the destruction of the planet where Superman lived before coming to Earth and becoming…well, Superman. The planet is Krypton, whose explosion produced Kryptonite, which is deadly to Superman; the book is The Last Days of Krypton, whose ending is a foregone conclusion (hey, just read the title!) and whose pages are taken up with a description of the world’s society and the political infighting and willful blindness to danger that lead eventually to its inevitable end. Comic-book superheroes have had some rough times in recent years: Captain America was shot dead at point-blank range (laying the foundation for someone new to assume the name), and Superman himself was beaten to death by an implacable foe (laying the foundation for him to return). So it is hard to say whether The Last Days of Krypton will find an audience. It is, after all, not about Kal-El, the some-day-to-be Superman, himself, since his parents managed to get him away from the exploding planet when he was still a mere baby (later to become, of course, Superboy). It is about Jor-El the scientist and Lara the historian, Kal-El’s parents, and the doomed world in which they lived. There is, unfortunately for those not steeped in Superman lore, nothing especially new in the characters here, in what they do or in what happens to them. Nor is the narrative exceptional. Here is Kevin J. Anderson writing about Jor-El’s brother, Zor-El (these names sound sillier in a novel than in a comic book), who rules Argo City: “He stood on the central golden bridge that spanned the bay separating the peninsula from the mainland, letting traffic flow around him. Once again, he did not want to call attention to his arrival. Doing so would mean having to admit that his warning to the Council had been ignored.” And here is Anderson writing about one of Jor-El’s attempts to save the world: “When the distant early-warning outpost was completed on the empty plains, all twenty-three receiving dishes turned their detector arrays toward the open sky. They listened for the faintest whispers from the empty heavens. Optical telescopes studied the stars at night, while longer-wavelength sensors combed the neighborhood of space during the day.” This is extremely ordinary, even formulaic SF writing, conveying no particular sense of wonder or even of differentness about Krypton, its people or its story. Nor is there anything new in the factionalism and politics of the world’s rulers. The idea of an in-depth story about the world from which Superman came might have made a good comic book, but it’s just not, err, novel enough to succeed in the form of a lengthy work that is nothing but words.

(+++) QUESTS

The Faerie Path, Book Two: The Lost Queen. By Frewin Jones. Eos. $16.99.

Warriors: Firestar’s Quest. By Erin Hunter. HarperCollins. $17.99.

Warriors: The New Prophecy—Book 6: Sunset. By Erin Hunter. HarperTrophy. $6.99.

The Pinhoe Egg: A Chrestomanci Book. By Diana Wynne Jones. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $7.99.

      The quest is a staple of fairy tales and heroic fiction, and authors seem to have an infinite number of ways of taking their characters hither and yon and back again. Actually, “hither and yon and back again” is almost exactly where Princess Tania, known in the human world as Anita Palmer, goes in The Lost Queen, for ages 12 and up. In Frewin Jones’ previous book, simply called The Faerie Path, 16-year-old Anita learned that she was the seventh daughter of Oberon and Titania and the only one who could set things right in the realm of Faerie, from which Oberon was missing and Titania had disappeared many centuries before. Torn between the mortal world and Faerie, Anita/Tania (the names are anagrams) eventually did set things almost right, using her unique ability to travel at will between the two worlds. In The Lost Queen, she sets out on a quest to resolve a major problem left unsolved at the end of the first book: Queen Titania remains missing, apparently lost somewhere in the mortal world after setting out to rescue her daughter – Tania herself – five centuries earlier. Tania’s search brings her into conflict with her mortal parents, causes confusion when she again meets her mortal friends, and reopens a danger that seemed conquered at the end of the first book, as it turns out that the sinister Lord Drake is not yet truly defeated. The Lost Queen is not quite as successful as its predecessor – many of the arguments and conflicts here are predictable or repetitious of ones in the earlier book – but Jones again writes stylishly and with a welcome dose of humor, which is so often absent in quest stories.

      Firestar’s Quest is very serious indeed. Billed as a “Super Edition” and structured as a story in itself rather than as part of the long-running sequences collectively called Warriors, the book follows the legendary leader of ThunderClan – a group of cats on which Erin Hunter focuses strongly during the various sagas she has built. All the Warriors books have essentially a single idea – cats behaving like the heroes of epic fantasies – with Hunter weaving a wide variety of webs to entrap young readers (the Warriors books are intended for ages 10 and older). Firestar’s Quest is quite a long book – more than 500 pages – and focuses on Firestar’s discovery that his warrior ancestors have lied to him on a crucial matter. He must leave his home in the forest to discover the truth, entering into what proves to be a lengthy and complex quest indeed.

      Things are somewhat simpler in Sunset, the sixth and final book of the series Warriors: The New Prophecy. Now available in paperback, this book shows the rising tensions outlined in the previous novel, Twilight, bursting into full-blown battle among the clans that have been living in an uneasy peace. The underlying trouble comes from a prophecy the medicine cat, Leafpool, has received, that “the lake will run red” before there is peace. The cats are already recovering from a badger attack, but the prophecy appears to indicate even worse to come. And indeed, the reappearance of an old enemy, bent on revenge, points toward a dire future for the heroic cats – unless they make the right choices to preserve their clans.

      The Pinhoe Egg, also for ages 10 and up and also now available in paperback, is all about choices, too. There is a Cat here as well – Cat Chant is one character’s name – but there is little further resemblance between this somewhat over-complex story and the straightforward tales of the Warriors series. The egg of the title is really the basis of a tale-within-a-tale: it is given to Cat and hatches into a fast-growing griffin. The primary story is about the distrust of Chrestomanci, the most powerful enchanter in the world, by both the Pinhoe and Farleigh families – and the ongoing feud between the families themselves. This is not a very good entry point to the Chrestomanci series, since many characters here have been introduced before (although others are new). The book will be best for readers already captivated by Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci tales; and it paves the way for new ones – perhaps focusing on an interesting element in this story, which involves ways to combine magic with technology.

(++++) DESKTOP “WOW” THAT’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000. Windows Vista or XP/SP2. Microsoft Hardware. $299.95.

      Nobody needs a sports car. All cars are essentially the same thing: boxes on wheels, designed to carry people from Point A to Point B. Sports cars do their job far less efficiently than most: smaller passenger compartment, smaller space for carrying items, smaller overall profile (making it harder to see over and around trucks, SUVs, etc.), high-speed capabilities that are irrelevant or illegal in everyday driving, and so on. But sports cars have panache: they put the fun in “functional.” Even when doing mundane tasks, many a sports-car driver feels elevated, energized, full of enjoyment that would never be experienced in a more ordinary vehicle.

      By the same token, nobody needs the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000. At $300, it costs 50% more than a full computer running Linux, available at Wal-Mart. Heck, it costs as much as a basic computer running Microsoft’s own Windows operating system. Furthermore, its small-profile rechargeable wireless keyboard, lacking a separate numeric keypad and requiring frequent use of a function (Fn) key to accomplish everyday tasks, has a steeper-than-usual learning curve and a Byzantine recharging system. And its rechargeable wireless mouse is not much different from similar input devices made by Microsoft and available for far less money.

      But the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is gorgeous. It lends instant class to even the most ordinary computer; turns dull, mundane tasks into adventures; and happens to have a truly excellent ergonomic design that, once you adapt to it, makes the keyboard seem intuitive and so enjoyable to use (even on your lap) that everything else becomes clunky and old-fashioned by comparison. It elevates the computing experience in the same way that a high-quality sports car elevates the driving experience – even when you’re stuck in traffic or (the office or home equivalent) doing word processing and spreadsheets.

      Not that the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is designed just for word processing and spreadsheets. The “entertainment” in its name belongs there: there is a neat button on the right, bearing the Windows logo, that provides instant access to the Windows Media Center on computers equipped with it; and there are buttons to the left of the keyboard that control most aspects of media use: play, stop, pause, raise and lower volume, change channels, even record. There is also a button for instant startup of Windows Live Call, if you use it. And since the keyboard is optimized not only for Windows Media Center but also for Windows Vista, it has a separate “Gadgets” button as well. And right in the middle, at the bottom, just below the space bar, there is a large Windows-logo button that takes you to the Start menu with a single touch.

      The keyboard itself is elegant in the extreme. In two-tone grey, solid and sleek, it has an extremely low profile (like a sports car), being only ¾” high at its highest point. It has a tremendously nifty (although electricity-hogging) backlighting system that automatically adjusts to ambient lighting and comes on when it senses a user’s proximity. The system is manually adjustable, too, and you can shut it off to conserve battery life. The batteries – four for the keyboard, one for the mouse – are rechargeable, and are included. Keyboard and mouse both flash small red lights when they need recharging (although the light on the keyboard is almost imperceptibly tiny). And here’s a neat feature: the keyboard can handle all mouse functions while the mouse recharges, thanks to a touchpad that can function in two different ways (with a switch to click between modes) and buttons that duplicate left and right mouse clicks.

      The beauty of the keyboard’s design is really something to behold. The function keys (F1 through F12) are small bars that you activate by barely touching them; the Escape, Home and End keys are similar. You do have to hold down the Fn key to use F1 through F12 differently – for example, to gain direct access to five favorite Internet sites. The Fn key is also needed for Number Lock (which lets certain letter keys work as numbers), for instant access to photos, and more; but it is not required for Caps Lock. A user soon adapts to this layout (think of adapting to a sports car’s manual transmission after usually driving automatics) – and from then on, it’s fun.

The gently curved keyboard, with enlarged letter keys in the central section, has a simply wonderful design. The mouse is more ordinary, similar to other Microsoft mouse products and to products made by other companies; a smaller, sleeker mouse, like the ones in Microsoft’s Notebook line, would better have complemented the keyboard. Still, the mouse works extremely smoothly, is accurate in pointing, has a scroll wheel that functions both vertically and horizontally, and has a small button on the right that brings up a magnifier – a wonderful tool for seeing the tiny type on some Web pages. There is a magnifier button on the keyboard, too, so you can reassign the mouse magnifier if you like – for example, to page forward on the Web. In fact, many mouse and keyboard functions are changeable – easily and reversibly. This is not unique to the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, but it is very helpful.

One thing users will not want to change is the mouse wheel’s function as a button. Press down on the wheel and it instantly splits your screen among all currently open windows – a great feature that, among other things, lets XP users approximate the cascading-windows feature in Vista. One thing users will want to change – but can’t – is the recharging system, which uses a small docking station that has to be kept nearby and requires AC power as well as a USB plug-in. The mouse sits on top of the charging station; the keyboard slides under it to touch two contacts. It must have looked good in the design stage, but if your desk already has a lot of things on it, finding the extra room for the cords, plugs and occasional-use charging station will be irritating. Microsoft cleverly dulls the potential pain by making the charging station into a USB hub with three ports (well, four, actually, but one is needed for a transceiver; the whole wireless system runs through a Bluetooth connection). But the setup is still irritating. Speaking of which, you can expect longer-than-usual setup time as the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 configures Bluetooth, validates your Microsoft operating system, downloads and installs any needed hotfixes or updates (there is an included warning about this for Vista users), does an initial charge (minimum one hour), and configures the keyboard and mouse. There’s nothing plug-and-play here. But just as in a fine sports car, the initial adaptations and adjustments are quickly forgotten in the sheer joy of ongoing use. So although it is true that nobody needs the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, it is equally true that nobody who buys it is likely to regret the purchase, and everybody who uses it will find it a triumphant example of making the ordinary (in this case ordinary input devices) into the extraordinary.

(++++) THE SACD DIFFERENCE

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5; Ode to the End of the War. Russian National Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, K. 364; Rondo for Violin and Orchestra, K. 373; Concertone for Two Violins and Orchestra, K. 190. Julia Fischer, violin; Gordon Nikolić, violin and viola; Netherlands Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yakov Kreizberg. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

      Intended as the next generation of audio after CDs, Super Audio CDs (SACDs) are highly unlikely to replace them. The SACD is a niche product, ideal for audiophiles who not only want volume but also – and more importantly – want wonderful definition of sound, superb reproduction of solo instruments within a larger group, and silence that seems actually palpable. Within its limited area of interest, the SACD can add a great deal of presence – and therefore enjoyment – to a wide variety of music.

      Prokofiev’s works would seem to fit the SACD format well, being dense but requiring close attention to detail. Vladimir Jurowski’s reading of the Symphony No. 5 is an idiosyncratic one that highlights the strengths of SACDs clearly. In the first movement, there are areas where horns and piano come through exceptionally clearly. In the second, there is a strong sense of three-dimensionality, with strings in the front, winds behind, and amazingly clear wood blocks. But this movement is paced oddly, with a slow start, uncalled-for speedup, then a slowdown for the mid-movement wind theme – the result being an interpretation that is musically questionable but well adapted to SACD reproduction. The sarcasm of the winds and the pounding of the bass drum come through especially effectively. In the third movement, surprising touches abound: piano, bassoon, trumpet and more. The entire symphony is very well played – the Russian National Orchestra is an outstanding ensemble – but the third movement is extra-special, with a massed climax that nevertheless boasts wonderful transparency. In the finale, the main theme is taken very fast – but the orchestra keeps up – and the details are again outstanding all the way to the hectic end.

      For sheer sonic splendor, the bombastic Ode to the End of the War, written in 1945, fits the SACD format especially well. The 14-minute work is very strangely orchestrated: eight harps, four pianos, winds, percussion and eight double basses (!). Perhaps not surprisingly, the Ode sounds more like Shostakovich than Prokofiev at times, notably in the sardonic bounce after its portentous opening. The work proceeds with organ-like striding, then unexpectedly fades to complete silence in the middle before emerging into a tender section in which the harps predominate. After this relaxed section goes on for a while, a martial and overdone segment – resounding with timpani, gong and more – brings the work to a trumpet-laden conclusion. It is certainly not great music, not always even very interesting music, but it sounds wonderful with Jurowski’s deliberate pacing and the audio quality of SACD.

      Mozart, though, is a far subtler composer, and does not benefit as much from SACD reproduction – certainly not in the same way. The gorgeous Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, K. 364, is beautifully played by Julia Fischer and Gordon Nikolić, but Yakov Kreizberg is not really in tune with the music. He drives the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra hard in the first movement, giving the music little time to breathe, and makes the second movement more deeply melancholy than it ought to be. The quick and light finale, though, is outstanding, and the SACD makes it easy and pleasant to hear the intertwining of Fischer and Nikolić with each other and with the orchestra. Fischer then offers gentle, light and flowing playing in the Rondo for Violin and Orchestra, K. 373, after which she and Nikolić – both on violins this time – take on the earlier and less substantial Concertone for Two Violins and Orchestra, K. 190. Here Kreizberg seems more relaxed than in the Sinfonia Concertante. The first movement is bouncy and enthusiastic, with fine oboe playing by Hans Meyer and cello work by Herre Jan Stegenga complementing the violinists’ performance. The second movement is nicely balanced, pretty and not too solemn, and the finale is rhythmic and pleasant, again featuring attractive interplay with the solo oboe and cello. These are not fully idiomatic performances, but here the SACD format adds a level of clarity and instrumental separation to the readings – apparent, incidentally, even when the SACD is played on standard CD equipment – and that raises the presentation up a couple of notches through the sheer beauty of the sonic experience.

(+++) “PIRATES” WITH GLITTER

Gilbert and Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance. Virginia Opera production conducted by Joseph Walsh. Stage Director: William Theisen. Presented at George Mason University Center for the Arts, Fairfax, Virginia, November 30, 2007.

To be a music critic in the one-and-20^th century
Requires pluck and valor, and you’ve got to be adventure-y
And learn complex equations, both the simple and quadratical
To analyze the ups and down of matters most piratical.

      The rhythm of Major-General Stanley’s self-introductory patter song from The Pirates of Penzance is well-nigh irresistible to imitate. One of Tom Lehrer’s most famous songs, “The Elements,” used it, starting out:

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium…

      And a marvelous parody by Anna Russell, featuring the machinations of rich-but-boorish Clodbelly Bunion in his plot to marry poor-but-aristocratic Pneumonia Vanderfeller, was equally clever:

To found a Bunion dynasty of very great pomposity
Pneu-mo-ni-a shall wed me though she finds me a monstrosity
And has a feeling for me of the wildest animosity:
The nuptials shall be solemnized this afternoon…

      And this ditty is but one of the charms of Pirates, whose joys range from the delightful “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One” to an absolutely perfect parody of coloraturas’ hyped-up entrance lines, Mabel’s opening: “It’s Ma-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-bel.” Virginia Opera’s new production was often great fun and always very well staged, getting a lot of the operetta’s sheer zest right; but it was a trifle ragged and lacking in exuberance in spots.

      This was a traditional staging, thank goodness: Pirates needs no updating and invariably suffers when given one. William Theisen designed plenty of nooks and crannies for both acts, enabling smooth entries and exits both at the Cornwall shore and at the Stanley estate. Neat and elegant lighting nicely highlighted a variety of moods, being used especially effectively in Major-General Stanley’s asides to the audience. Stanley was sung, unusually, by a tenor, Gary Briggle, rather than by a baritone. Briggle strutted well and overacted just as much as the role requires, and he handled that famed patter song with good speed and fine pronunciation.

      But he was not the strongest singer on stage: two others were even better. One was Alicia Berneche as Mabel, who absolutely nailed the role, and whose flitting changes of expression and emphatic foot-stamping were as much fun to watch as her voice was to hear. The other was bass Jonathan Kimple as the Sergeant of Police: his strong voice and spot-on delivery of his lines were delightful, and he managed to sound dignified and silly at the same time.

      A pre-performance announcement noted that tenor William Ferguson (Frederic) was suffering from a cold, and that surely explained some tightness and lack of force in his singing in Act I. But he must have been holding something in reserve, because his voice was altogether fuller in Act II – although it was a bit disconcerting to realize that this Frederic seemed more effective as a pirate than as a lover and reformed evildoer.

      Other voices were less compelling. Baritone Dominic M. Aquilino, as the Pirate King, seemed to be channeling his inner Johnny Depp in some of his speech and action mannerisms; but this operetta is, thank goodness, not Pirates of the Caribbean, and the role-playing did not quite work. It also seemed to come at the expense of Aquilino’s voice: his singing often seemed strained. Contralto Myrna Paris as Ruth had a different problem: she was frequently off the beat, entering too late and then rushing to catch up. She sounded as Ruth should and acted well, but her failure to stay with the orchestra was quite distracting.

Part of the problem may have been the conducting of Joseph Walsh. He is quite capable of evoking sweep and drama, as he did in Virginia Opera’s production of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, but in Pirates things were too often ragged and sometimes disconcertingly off-kilter. For example, the famous Act II chorus in which the pirates approach “with cat-like tread” while singing at the top of their voices needs a great burst of orchestral sound, but here Walsh seemed to keep the Virginia Symphony members overly restrained.

There were plenty of high points in this production, such as the maidens’ Act I chorus (carried over by G&S from their very first collaboration, Thespis, and the only music now remaining from that work) and the a cappella paean to poetry that is so wonderfully incongruous near the end of the act. But other forms of incongruity were much less welcome. The insertion of the patter trio from Ruddigore into Act II made it sound as if Virginia Opera were paying homage to the fairly dreadful William Leach film of Pirates, which made the same interpolation in 1983. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. And some of the dialogue modifications were either unnecessary (changing “cutting out a P&O” to “cutting out a Whitestar”) or just plain silly (having the Pirate King exclaim “Liar, liar, pants on fire” in Act II).

It is almost impossible not to have fun at a Gilbert and Sullivan performance, and Virginia Opera’s Pirates certainly offered fun aplenty. As it turned out, the enjoyment was not entirely unalloyed. But it was still a great deal better than fool’s gold.