(++++) ORCHESTRAS WELL USED AND ILL USED

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune; La mer; Jeux: Poème dansé; Children’s Corner. Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Jun Märkl. Naxos. $8.99.

Stanford: Symphony No. 3, “Irish”; Symphony No. 6, “In honour of the life-work of a great artist: George Frederick Watts.” Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Naxos. $8.99.

Dvořàk: Symphony No. 6; Vodnik (The Water Goblin). Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam conducted by Yakov Kreizberg. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

     In the best classical performances, both the composer and the conductor use the orchestra to maximum effect, working together (even when years or centuries apart) in creating a sonic experience that expresses the composer’s intentions. This is just what happens in the new Debussy CD by Jun Märkl and the Orchestre National de Lyon. Most of the music on this disc is quite familiar – perhaps especially so to a French orchestra like this – but no one in this orchestra plays these works as if doing a run-through of something performed far too many times before. In fact, Märkl handles each work as if he has studied it thoroughly and knows just where to place the orchestral emphasis for maximum effectiveness. Thus, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune excels not only in the opening flute solo but also in the sensitivity throughout to the subtleties of orchestration and rhythmic changes. La mer is also subtle and is carefully measured, with plenty of enthusiasm where needed but without any attempt to turn it into a traditional symphonic poem. Jeux: Poème dansé, the least-known work on this CD, gets a sensitive performance that emphasizes the careful rhythmic structure of what is, after all, a ballet score. And Children’s Corner, written for piano by Debussy and heard here in André Caplet’s orchestration, is effectively conveyed as a series of miniatures, mostly in moderate tempo and low volume – delicacy, so important to so much of Debussy’s work, is the dominant feature here. The best thing about this Naxos CD may be that it is labeled “Orchestral Works 1,” which implies that there will be more Debussy to come from this ensemble and conductor. That is a most welcome prospect.

      David Lloyd-Jones and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra offer equally fine performances in the third volume of their cycle of symphonies by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, but the music itself is of lesser quality, so the CD earns a (+++) rating. With this disc, Naxos has presented all Stanford’s symphonies except (oddly) the first, and it is clear that this composer had an excellent structural sense and fine command of orchestration, but not really very much to say within symphonic form. Certainly he had little new to say: his symphonies speak the melodic and harmonic language of works from Mendelssohn’s time to Brahms’, but never go farther. Stanford’s Symphony No. 3, in F Minor, is the more successful of the two here, because the frequent occurrence of Irish folk tunes helps lighten the rather heavy-handed orchestration of the work. This symphony dates to 1887 and was popular in its time and for some years thereafter, and it is worth an occasional rehearing even now: it very well put together, with impressive solidity. The Symphony No. 6, In E-flat Major, dates to 1905 but speaks the same harmonic language as No. 3, and it is a more difficult work to enjoy. Its elaborate subtitle labels it an occasional piece – the occasion being the death of George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), a highly regarded artist and sculptor in his time but one whose reputation today does not seem to support a monumental work such as Stanford’s. The prominence of the work’s subtitle leads an audience to expect some direct connection with Watts – the work is not merely dedicated to him but is actually named for him. But the symphony does not appear to be programmatic, and whatever contemporary meaning it may have had has been lost in the last century (although, in truth, it was not especially popular even when first performed). The work’s slow movement, its longest, never quite emerges as an elegy or tribute, as one would expect of an extended “Adagio molto espressivo.” Perhaps the symphony’s most effective moment is the tying-together of the rather brief scherzo with the opening of the finale. Both Stanford symphonies are very well played on this CD, but neither of them is sit-up-and-take-notice music.

      Yakov Kreizberg’s new SACD of Dvořàk’s Symphony No. 6 is a sit-up-and-take-notice release, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. His disc gets a (++) rating, and only because it contains a very fine rendition of The Water Goblin, an excellent and underperformed late Dvořàk fairy-tale tone poem. The symphony, though, is almost a complete disaster, with a first movement so execrable that, on its own, it would not even earn a (+) rating. Kreizberg conducts this movement as if he wishes Dvořàk were Bruckner; also, he conducts as if Dvořàk did not really know what he wanted his music to sound like, so Kreizberg must decide for him. The awfulness of this performance is truly epic. Kreizberg refuses to keep the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Amsterdam at the same tempo for more than a couple of minutes. By three minutes into the movement, the whole work has run out of steam – slowing to an agonizing crawl – and there have already been several slowdowns and speedups. They continue nearly constantly throughout a movement that lasts some three minutes longer than usual (because so much of it is so excruciatingly slow). Dvořàk’s triumphal tutti sections sound like lumbering elephant stampedes; Kreizberg anticipates every climax by slowing down before it occurs; he slows down before the recapitulation as if to signal, “here it comes”; and he ends with very dull and very slow final chords. There is no flow to this usually sunny movement and practically no joy: the few remnants of its many beauties are only those that Kreizberg has been unable, for all his trying, to extinguish.

      The rest of the symphony is better only by comparison. The Adagio is taken quickly and is rather light – pleasant enough, but never charming. Instrumental detail is good, but there are more of those unnecessary slowdowns, and the one more-intense section seems an afterthought rather than a mood change. The third movement, nearly always a surefire success, comes across best, with lovely instrumental touches in its slower central section. But even in this movement, Kreizberg must insert some unnecessary slowdowns to spoil the momentum. The finale lurches: a big slowdown as the main theme begins, then a speedup, then another slowdown – as if this movement (as well as the first one) were built with Brucknerian architecture and tempo changes. Kreizberg telegraphs the coda with another slowdown, then makes the coda itself speedy until a really big slowdown near the end, with a confusion of speed and slowness at the very conclusion. This 2006 performance is just lamentably bad – in strong contrast to the 2005 performance of The Water Goblin, in which perhaps Kreizberg thought he had less to prove. Starting quickly and lightly, this piece progresses through episodic sections and fast mood changes, as Kreizberg brings out the composer’s intentions instead of trying to second-guess him at every turn. There is real eeriness in the evocation of the watery depths, menace in many of the iterations of the eight-note “goblin” theme, and fine attention to instrumental coloration. You can practically hear the goblin growling and pacing as he awaits the return of his human bride, who fails to come back in time and whose half-goblin child pays the price. By the time the piece dies out very quietly, it has packed a great deal of emotional turbulence into 20 minutes. The Kreizberg who led this work is a conductor of stature and sensitivity. The one who conducted the symphony, though, is an amateurish tinkerer with music that he appears not to understand or appreciate in the slightest.

(++++) NAIVE VALUES

Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5. François-Frédéric Guy, piano; Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Philippe Jordan. Naïve. $16.99.

Messiaen: La transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ; Visions de l’Amen; Sept Haïkï; Couleurs de la cite céleste; Un vitrail et des oiseaux; Oiseaux exotiques; Des canyons aux étoiles... Various artists. Naïve. $41.99 (6 CDs).

      The French recording firm Naïve is distinctive in several ways. One is in design: its single-CD packages are the most consistently elegant on the market, featuring cardboard rather than plastic cases, artistically designed packages in which the predominant case color matches the color of the CD itself, and extensive booklets (which tuck neatly into a slot in the front of each case) that not only discuss the music but also give the performers themselves a chance to say something about it. Another is its sense of purpose: this is a label dedicated to French performers of all sorts of music – and to French music by all sorts of performers. Although not every release on Naïve is absolutely first-class, all are well done and appealingly presented.

      Two new Naïve recordings neatly focus on the label’s two musical concerns, and both are outstanding. There are many, many recordings of Beethoven’s piano concertos available, but François-Frédéric Guy and Philippe Jordan manage to produce one that is quite different from most others. This is surely the most Mozartean version of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto recorded in recent years. The very quiet opening of the first movement – beautifully played by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France – sets the stage for a performance that is distinctly non-overwhelming, and is all the more intriguing for that. In fact, the quiet sections, such as the start and finish of the second movement, are most impressive throughout; and so is Guy’s playing, which is exuberant when it should be and restrained when that is more appropriate. Too many pianists handle this concerto as if it looks ahead to later Beethoven, with crashing chords and full use of a modern concert grand’s resources. Not Guy. He treats the work with delicacy – reflective of the pianos in use when it was written, although he does play on a modern one – and pays close attention to thematic lines, rhythmic changes and a dynamic range that is appropriate without being as wide as it would become in the Romantic era. The result is a balance between piano and orchestra that allows inner voices and individual-instrument highlights to come through very clearly – an accomplished reading all around. It is almost endearing that Guy’s brief booklet essay incorrectly says that this CD contains “le premier et le dernier des concertos.” In fact, No. 1 was the second composed among the five that bear numbers (there are also an early E-flat concerto and a piano arrangement of the Violin Concerto).

      That Guy’s restraint in Concerto No. 1 is deliberate is quite clear from the opening of Concerto No. 5. The “Emperor” was written at a time when piano capabilities had expanded significantly, and it is a far more forceful work than No. 1 – it would have been called “more masculine” in less politically correct times. Here, from the piano flourishes at the opening of the first movement, Guy offers a much more outgoing performance, although he and Jordan remain attuned throughout to the more lyrical sections of the piece. This is an expansive reading, and some listeners may find that the first movement drags a bit in places. The second, though, is quite lovely, not the afterthought of an intermezzo into which some recordings turn it. And the finale is martial and potent without being bombastic, striding along strongly without falling into empty theatricality. This is middle-period Beethoven – there are no late-Beethoven piano concertos – and Guy and Jordan clearly have a good sense of the work’s proportion and style, as well as a level of mutual respect that leads to exemplary give-and-take between soloist and orchestra. It will be most interesting to see how they handle the rest of the Beethoven concertos – Naïve recordings of those will be forthcoming.

      If the Beethoven CD shows Naïve’s commitment to French performers’ handling of the non-French repertoire, the six-CD set entitled Olivier Messiaen, 1908-1992 shows the firm’s other side. The works here are connected, rather loosely, by having mostly religious themes, although that is a bit of a stretch when it comes to the bird-themed ones (Messiaen was an ornithologist as well as a composer and organist). In truth, this set is a grab-bag of Messiaen, not including any of his best-known pieces but focusing on a number of very worthy ones that show his fascinating handling of rhythm and harmony and his unusual instrumental colorations. The earliest work here is Visions de l’Amen, for two pianos (1942-3). Oiseaux exotiques dates to 1955-6; Sept haïkaï to 1962; Couleurs de la cité céleste to 1963; and Un vitrail et des oiseaux (“Stained-glass Window and Birds”) to 1986. These four works, collected here on one CD, are for solo piano and orchestra or instrumental ensemble. La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, written from 1965 to 1969, is the largest-scale piece in this collection, written for large 10-part chorus, piano solo, cello solo, flute solo, clarinet solo, xylorimba solo, vibraphone solo and large orchestra. Des canyons aux étoiles… (the ellipsis is part of the title) is a 12-movement work from 1971-4 and quite complex in its own way, although it uses more modest forces: solo piano, solo horn, solo glockenspiel, solo xylorimba, and small orchestra with 13 string players. Messiaen’s fondness for the xylorimba (which, despite its name, is a xylophone with an extended range, not a combination of the xylophone and marimba) is just one piece of evidence of his concern for extended tonal coloration and unusual instrumental combinations. All the performers on these CDs are impressive, with Pierre Boulez especially good conducting the piano-and-orchestra pieces and Reinbert de Leeuw outstanding as conductor of both large-ensemble works and one of the pianists in Visions de l’Amen (the other being Maarten Bon). Even listeners familiar with Messiaen may not know all the pieces performed here; those who have heard little or none of his music will be surprised by its depth, complexity and occasional outright strangeness. As a tribute to a major 20^th-century French composer whose artistic vision was uniquely his, this set is an unqualified success – and a clear reflection of one element of what may be called the Naïve ethos.

(++++) CURRENT COMIC CLASSICS

This Is the Part Where You Pretend to Add Value: A “Dilbert” Book. By Scott Adams. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Home Sweat Home: A “For Better or For Worse” Collection. By Lynn Johnston. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

X-Treme Parenting: A “Baby Blues” Treasury. By Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Take Our Cat, Please! A “Get Fuzzy” Collection. By Darby Conley. Andrews McMeel. $10.99.

      Get past the acknowledged masterpieces of the comic-strip medium – Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Walt Kelly’s Pogo and a few others – and it can be hard to pin down just what “classic” means and which strips fit the definition. Certainly Peanuts qualifies, and Charles Schulz’s strip continues to run years after its creator’s death, often labeled Classic Peanuts. But what about such strips as Blondie and Prince Valiant, whose creators have long since passed on and whose current versions – drawn by different artists – have only a marginal relationship to the characteristics that made the original strips so famous? And what about strips whose authors are very much alive and still producing high-quality work – at what point does it make sense to designate those strips “classics”?

      While trying to figure all this out, you can have a lot of fun reading recent collections of three strips that really are the classics of today, and one that has the potential to become one. Dilbert is as classic as they come, with its three-panel (rather than four-panel) weekday format, its focus on dialogue rather than action, its unending relevance to the real world (from which Scott Adams takes a number of his stories), and its wonderful use of utter absurdity in ways that make altogether too much sense. The latest Dilbert collection, which is in full color, includes a series in which Dogbert straps on tall pants and an old-fashioned hairpiece so he can run for president – promising to take money from people who don’t vote for him and give it to ones who do; a “coffee-swilling beaver” hired by the Pointy-Haired Boss to show people how to work faster; Ratbert’s demonstration of how to empty the brain by repeating the names of vapid celebrities; sensors to “alert management any time the pleasure areas of your brain have more blood flow,” so managers can stop people from being happy and refocus them on work; and much, much more – all of it thoroughly absurd and at the same time absolutely true. If that’s not classic, what is?

      Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse ties even more strongly into the real world, and in fact rarely seems like a comic strip at all – it is more of an illustrated ongoing family story with equal numbers of amusing and heart-tugging episodes. The latest Johnston collection contains a number of life-changing events: a fire that ousts Michael, Deanna and their kids from their home and forces them to move back into the Patterson house – leading to predictable crowding and bad tempers, but also to new opportunities (as in real life); Grandpa Jim’s slow, incomplete recovery from a stroke; teenage April’s mild experiments with sex; and Elizabeth’s rediscovery of her old love, Anthony, now divorced and with a child, after she herself has been dumped by her boyfriend. A straightforward description of For Better or For Worse makes it sound like more of a soap opera than it is: what makes this strip classic is Johnston’s enviable balancing of tears and laughter, not any wallowing in the former.

      To wallow in the latter – in laughter, that is – you can turn to another, very different family strip, Baby Blues, whose two most recent small-format collections have now been reissued in oversize “Treasury” format with color Sunday pages. Rick Kirkman’s art and Jerry Scott’s writing create an inimitable, always-endearing portrait of parents with young kids. It’s the well-differentiated personalities that make this strip so much fun. Hammie, middle child and only boy, loves spinning around until he gets dizzy, while bossy older sister Zoe remarks, “Not everyone looks at nausea as recreation.” Baby Wren has started crawling and getting into things, and in one hilarious Sunday strip is the only one who can lock dad Darryl’s new cell phone, leading Darryl to complain about being “at the bottom of the technology food chain.” In fact, a lot of the Sunday strips are especially wonderful, from the one in which the family members curl up, one at a time, and fall asleep next to each other on the floor; to the one recounting Darryl’s “odyssey” of grocery shopping with the kids with a mock-Homeric illustration (and Homer Simpson dressed as Homer the bard, to boot); to the great single-panel one in which mom Wanda teaches “really effective birth control” to three young women simply by trying to juggle the needs of all three of her kids at the same time while saying, “Being a parent is actually a lot harder than it looks.” A special treat here is the full-color presentation of a Baby Blues sequence that is a classic in every sense: a Christmas story in which Zoe and Hammie wish for – and get – every gift in the world, and find out that that doesn’t make them happy.

      There is nothing at this level in Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy, but Conley’s strip continues to improve and become more pointed and funnier, so even if it has not attained “modern classic” status, it at least has a shot at getting there. The newest Get Fuzzy collection is the best yet – Conley is definitely getting better over time – with dumb-but-lovable pooch Satchel getting more of the strip’s focus…an excellent decision, since he provides such a wonderful contrast to Bucky Katt’s constant bluster, foul mouth and delusions of grandeur. Bucky still victimizes Satchel, but now Conley makes sure there are limits beyond which Satchel will not be pushed, as when the pooch brings the cat a phone book that Bucky wants, Bucky complains that he wanted the two-volume book, and Satchel rips the single-volume one in half. The weakness of the strip continues to be Rob Wilco, the human with whom cat and dog live, because he is a loser but not a lovable one: stick-thin arms and legs, very hairy body, no social life, preoccupation with rugby and the Red Sox, and very few redeeming characteristics. When he tries to convince a depressed Satchel that “the world is not a totally evil place,” his reassurances fall mostly flat; and when he injures his back and needs help from his animals and his brother, Roger, it is hard to care much. But readers will care about the dog-and-cat show, more in this book than before, and it is the Bucky-Satchel byplay that gives Get Fuzzy the potential to become the kind of top-notch strip that Conley so clearly would like it to be.

(++++) REALLY ODD CHARACTERS

Giant Meatball. By Robert Weinstock. Harcourt. $16.

Potato Joe. By Keith Baker. Harcourt. $16.

The Dangerous Alphabet. By Nail Gaiman. Illustrated by Gris Grimly. HarperCollins. $17.99.

      Protagonists don’t get much stranger than the ones in these books. The giant meatball in Giant Meatball isn’t even an especially good guy: he’s enormous and destructive. But he’s kind of cute, too, singing, “Roundy, boundy, moundy me!” as he bomples and bounces with such intensity that cows, pigs and cabbages get thrown into the air and terrified (yes, even the cabbages). The farmer, marmalade maker and librarian all complain, but the mayor says maybe all they need to do is speak nicely to the giant meatball and he’ll behave better. So they try, but “the giant meatball was too woozy with whirling and whistling to listen.” The mayor – a kind-hearted sort – next tries giant signs to ask the meatball to be more careful and cooperative, but the meatball simply bomps his way through town, making a complete mess of everything. So the mayor agrees to give the meatball “a good talking-to,” which does not go well at all – the mayor gets “flattened like a pancake” – and so there is only one thing to do. After all, what do you do with a meatball? Robert Weinstock’s solution to the meatball problem is inevitable and, in its way, funny, but parents should be a little careful about sensitive children – especially those at the younger end of the target age range of 5-8 – who may find the meatball just too adorable to deserve to end up as…well, dinner.

      Potato Joe is for even younger kids, ages 3-7, and has less of a plot: it is basically a counting book, but one with a very appealing (a-peel-ing, get it?) central character. Joe and the other potatoes count, play tic-tac-toe, line up in a row, encounter a crow, get covered in snow, and so it does go: Keith Baker has the potatoes roll, get roped, meet Tomato Flo and Watermelon Moe, and eventually end up in the garden, planting themselves underground, “where we potatoes grow.” The mixture of counting and silliness is quite endearing – catch the picture of the potatoes wearing cowboy hats! – and kids will enjoy the vegetables’ expressions: these potatoes not only have eyes but also have noses and mouths. All that and a one-to-10 counting rhyme add up to a big pile of fun, sort of like the one on the back cover.

      The Dangerous Alphabet is not exactly fun, at least for the characters in Neil Gaiman’s thoroughly twisted A-through-Z, but children with slightly askew senses of humor will certainly enjoy Gaiman’s peculiar poetic flight of fancy and Gris Grimly’s appropriately grim illustrations. There is a warning at the start of the book that the alphabet “is not to be relied upon and has a dangerous flaw that an eagle-eyed reader may be able to discern,” but that just becomes part of the off-kilter enjoyment here: what exactly is wrong? That is, what in addition to everything about the story? In this tale, “E’s for the Evil that lures and entices,/ F is for Fear and its many devices,” as a boy and girl sail along in a bathtub through a world of underground sewers populated by floating eyeballs, bad guys proffering candy, and dungeons and pirates and ovens with unspeakable (but quite viewable) things baking in them. One page, “I am the author who scratches these rhymes,” features a character apparently half ghost, half tree stump, with pictures on the walls of the characters and settings of the other pages. The monsters and mischief-makers are eventually overcome, even though “U are the reader who shivers with dread,” and our hero and heroine (and their huge-eyed, antlered pet) return more-or-less happily to the normal world above ground. This is one alphabetical journey that kids won’t soon forget: most alphabet books are read once or twice and soon forgotten, but this one is dangerously addictive.

(++++) MANY WORLDS, MANY ADVENTURES

The Abhorsen (Old Kingdom) Trilogy: Sabriel; Lirael, Daughter of the Clayr; Abhorsen. By Garth Nix. Eos. $9.99 each.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. By Nahoko Uehashi. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $17.99.

The Noble Warriors, Book Three: Noman. By William Nicholson. Harcourt. $17.

The Sharing Knife, Volume Three: Passage. By Lois McMaster Bujold. Eos. $25.95.

DarkGlass Mountain, Book Two: The Twisted Citadel. By Sara Douglass. Eos. $25.95.

      The best fantasy adventures being written today seem to be those for younger readers – a situation different from the past, when fantasists from Edgar Allan Poe to Lord Dunsany to J.R.R. Tolkien created their greatest works for adults. Perhaps because so much of modern fantasy involves self-discovery rather than grand issues of war and peace, real and unreal worlds, and other themes of old, top-notch modern fantasy appeals especially to preteens and teenagers. Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy is one of the best series of this type in recent years. Now available in handsome oversize-paperback editions with color-coordinated covers, the series opened with Sabriel in 1995, followed by Lirael in 2001 and Abhorsen in 2003. This is a tale of wonder and wonders – more of them than usual, even in fantasy. Sabriel focuses on its title character, who is daughter of Terciel, the Abhorsen – a sort of sorcerer who puts to death the living dead that are raised by necromancers in the magic-pervaded Old Kingdom. After Terciel goes missing as a new evil rises, Sabriel searches for him, accompanied by a fascinating white cat called Mogget who is actually a magical construct of dubious loyalty. The two find the mysterious character Touchstone on their harrowing journey, eventually locate Terciel, and learn of Sabriel’s own destiny. In Lirael, set 14 and 19 years later, Sabriel and Touchstone have married; they rule the Old Kingdom, to the extent that it can be ruled. The title character is of the Clayr, who live in the Old Kingdom, but she looks different from them and does not fit in. The book is about her destiny, which involves her discovery that although she cannot see possible futures (as the Clayr can), she is a Remembrancer, with different but highly potent powers: she is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. In Abhorsen the plot threads are neatly tied together in a battle against the Ninth Bright Shiner, the most evil entity of all. Revelations abound here – including Mogget’s true identity – and the eventual victory of good is not without cost. Despite the many outré trappings, Nix’s works have a sense of reality about them, with characters whose feelings seem genuine and about whom readers come to care deeply. It is ultimately this, not the exotic settings and events, that makes the trilogy so successful.

      Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit succeeds admirably, too, although in a somewhat different way. This is the first Moribito book published in the United States, but Nahoko Uehashi has 10 of them available in Japan. It is the merging of Eastern settings and Western fantasy traditions that makes this handsomely produced, beautifully illustrated book such a pleasure to read. The dramatic wraparound cover, showing a woman warrior carrying an unconscious boy while evading attackers, as a bridge collapses in the background, gives an idea of the drama and intensity that Uehashi brings to the story -- which seems like a fine candidate for animé and is in fact expected to become a TV series. The protagonist, Balsa, is a protector of the weak, be they children or adults, on a quest to redeem her own life after eight people die for her sake. A martial-arts expert who is also adept with the short spear, she must guard the Second Prince, Chagum, who has been chosen as the sprit guardian, Moribito, to deliver the egg of the Water Spirit to a distant sea in order to prevent a devastating drought. Mythic and family issues develop throughout the book, as Balsa and Chagum must flee both an egg-eating monster and the prince’s own father. The intertwining of adventure with echoes of the past makes for a fast-paced and exciting read.

      William Nicholson’s Noble Warriors trilogy is not quite at this level, although Noman brings it to a fine conclusion. The book alone deserves a (++++) rating; the complete series is a solid (+++). The themes of the first two books, Seeker and Jango, permeate this third one, with friendship, love and loyalty all tested repeatedly as the three friends – Seeker, Morning Star and the Wildman – fulfill their destinies and move in some unexpected directions. The powerful Nomana have scattered, and their island of Nom is gone, setting the three protagonists on different and uncomfortable roads as they seek love, spiritual belief, war – whatever their individual but intertwined destinies require. The introduction in this third volume of a young boy preaching joy and peace is crucial to the plot, as belief seekers flock to the Joy Boy, with Morning Star and the Wildman among them. But not Seeker, who has been tasked with a violent quest indeed: to kill the last of the Old Ones. “All you can do is kill!” screams one character at Seeker. “You kill all beauty, all hope, all love!” But Seeker proves this by no means true, as he moves toward – as another character puts it – “in the end, faith!” The intermingling of good and evil, the uncertainty of divining which is which, leads to a surprisingly philosophical confrontation with a character called, not so surprisingly, Hope. The underlying spiritual-religious message of the book is perhaps a little strong, but less so than the overtly religious one of, for example, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and the conclusion (of the book and trilogy) is satisfyingly upbeat.

      Somehow, when it comes to fantasy adventures for adults, the elements that make the genre work for younger readers seem a little stale, even when assembled by a writer as skilled as Lois McMaster Bujold. Although her Sharing Knife trilogy deserves a (+++) rating, and its conclusion in Passage is satisfying, not even the mixture of sorcery with romance is quite enough to turn the work into a must-read, or even really-ought-to-read. The story begun in Beguilement and continued in Legacy develops in mostly expected ways in Passage, as Fawn Bluefield of the farmers and Dag Redwing Hickory of the soldier-sorcerers try to leave the enmity of their families behind and make a new life for themselves. Fawn and Dag pick up followers, from Fawn’s brother to a farmer boy and a riverboat captain, and must face bandits and bigotry – as well as magical challenges – as they and their group head for the sea. The journey-to-understanding theme is a well-worn one, although Bujold’s style makes it more pleasant than most: “He rather regretted not being able to spell out D + F in quivering feather shafts. He could imagine them spelling a trailing sort of argh! maybe, if he squinted a lot, which was almost as good.” But there is nothing especially unusual or unexpected about this Passage, in which challenges are faced, bigotries encountered, and new levels of understanding attained. The characters are more than types, but not always much more; the lines of demarcation between good and evil are generally clear; and the eventual new beginning in “the wide green world” is quite inevitable. Fawn and Dag’s journey, however well told, is one that adult readers have surely taken before, and will surely have many opportunities to take again.

      One such opportunity is available in The Twisted Citadel, the second of Sara Douglass’ DarkGlass Mountain books and another novel deserving a (+++) rating.. Douglass is not as well-known a writer as Bujold, but she is a highly talented one and a favorite in her native Australia. She writes big books: The Twisted Citadel, even in comparatively small type, runs 552 pages (and its predecessor, The Serpent’s Bride, ran 637). Douglass uses the space not for character development but for intricacy, creating plots that twist and turn on themselves, involve large numbers of characters, and are most intelligible to readers who have read such earlier Douglass works as The Wayfarer Redemption, Threshold and Beyond the Hanging Wall (since some characters from the earlier books reappear in the new series). The protagonists of The Twisted Citadel have names with the typical resonance of heroic fantasy: Ishbel Brunelle, priestess of the Serpent Coil; Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard; and Maximilian, Lord of Elcho Falling. Their prime enemy is the dark god Kanubai, who escaped from prison in the previous book. War is imminent; there are alliances and groups of uncertain loyalty; and there are the usual heroic (and anti-heroic) machinations common to adult fantasy novels. Douglass writes well enough so that it is easy to be swept up into her world. But it is hard to escape the feeling of having visited that world, or others a great like it, many times already – not only in Douglass’ own works but also in fantasies by other hands.

(+++) SUMMERTIME SOAP OPERAS

How to Be Bad. By E. Lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, and Lauren Miracle. HarperCollins. $16.99.

Likely Story. By David Van Etten (Chris Van Etten, David Ozanich and David Levithan). Knopf. $15.99.

Hot Mess: Summer in the City. By Julie Kraut and Shallon Lester. Delacorte Press. $8.99.

Fact of Life #31. By Denise Vega. Knopf. $16.99.

      Sometimes one writer isn’t enough to plumb the full depths (and sometimes they really are depths) of the frothy teenage summer novel. It takes a village, or at least a group, to explore all the nuances (such as they are) of this subgenre of the teenage-angst genre. And if you’re going to put this sort of group together, you might as well get some really good individual writers – such as E. Lockhart (The Boyfriend List and others), Sarah Mlynowski (Bras & Broomsticks and its successors), and Lauren Miracle (ttyl, ttfn & othr stuf lyk that). The three heroines of How to Be Bad must have been created, one apiece, by the authors, but it doesn’t really matter who came up with Vicks, who invented Mel and who developed Jesse (or if there is in fact a one-to-one correspondence between characters and writers). What matters is how well the authors handle this most formulaic of heartthrobs-and-heartaches genres, and the answer is: pretty darn well. The girls all leave Niceville (what else?), their Florida home town, and embark on a road trip right out of Fantastical Florida, a battered old guidebook. The girls’ adventures are predictably unpredictable, revolving around boys and driving and friendship issues, with chapters told in each girl’s voice. A sample from Jesse: “But me and him hung out once at a Fourth of July bash Brady threw. Penn felt bad for me, that’s what I figure, ’cause Vicks and Brady were pretty much the only people I knew and they ended up in Brady’s bedroom doing something that I preferred not to think about.” Got that? Fluff and nonsense, to be sure, but with a certain level of insouciant amusement throughout.

      But, see, How to Be Bad is a women’s collaboration. Over on the men’s side, there’s Likely Story, cobbled together by Chris Van Etten (a writer for the soap opera One Life to Live), David Ozanich (freelancer and playwright), and David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy and other novels, usually featuring homosexual protagonists). Each chapter of Likely Story opens with a brief bit of dialogue shown within a TV screen, and there are bits of dramatic scripts in the book, too, and protagonist Mallory has a mother who is a soap-opera star, and Mallory starts blogging about the unreality of the soaps, and her mom’s agent likes the blog and thinks it has possibilities, and of course everything gets so complicated, even more so because of too-cute Dallas, male lead on the new soap opera based on what Mallory has written. “Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic?” asks one character at one of the many melodramatic plot points. The answer is no – not a little. Melodrama is everything that Likely Story is about. Oh – and the book’s title is also the title of Mallory’s show; surprised?

      It didn’t take three writers to come up with Hot Mess – only two. Julie Kraut and Shallon Lester paired up to create the first book either has written for teens and young adults, and they landed a sure-fire plot: high-school girls in the big city for the summer. Wait – don’t go! Sure, you’ve heard it all before, but that’s really the point of Hot Mess and other genre books like it: familiarity of characters and incidents, but with enough offbeat writing and plot twists to get you through to the end (here, page 336). Emma and Rachel are girls who believe Sex and the City was a documentary, and of course they find out that New York isn’t like that at all, except maybe a little. The roommate in their sublet, Jayla, starts setting them straight pretty quickly, and what she doesn’t do, the city and its denizens handle. While Jayla parties and Rachel dates, Emma works at an internship that features an awful boss and a hot coworker. The book is just so with-it: “Once I was balmed up and officially ready, the girls wished me good luck and I promised to text from the bathroom with updates. I tried my hardest not to pit out the tank Jayla had lent me on my way down in the elevator, but as soon as I stepped outside, my nerves totally dissipated.” Breathless is as breathless does (there’s a lot of breathlessness in Hot Mess), and the eventual message that friendship trumps everything will go down as smoothly as melting ice cream.

      Of course, there are still plenty of authors who go solo in their teen-troubles books, such as Denise Vega, whose recipe in Fact of Life #31 is entirely conventional but whose presentation of it isn’t. Katima Flynn divides her story into three trimesters, so obviously there’s going to be a lot in it about pregnancy, and that’s because Kat’s mom is a home-birth midwife, and Kat (as she is almost always called) knows a lot of the facts of life but is learning more all the time. Her mom is one of those hippy-dippy types, calling herself Abra (no last name) and objecting to the nickname Kat because “it feels blasphemous.” Kat has the usual problems of friendships and boys and home life, and the fact that she’s considered weird because she does yoga in the hallway doesn’t help. She’s got a major crush on Manny Cruz, who is finally showing interest in her, and some major conflicting feelings about gorgeous Libby Giles, whose life takes a turn that Kat never expects but that teen readers will see coming a mile away. The book is cliché-packed in terms of plot but very entertainingly told, thanks to the notes, journal entries and quotations sprinkled throughout and the various numbered “Facts of Life” that appear here and there. Oh – and it doesn’t really spoil anything to reveal that Fact of Life #31 is: “There are no facts of life.” That passes for depth here; but in fact Vega’s book is at its best when it focuses on the interpersonal relationships of the characters, not when it tries so hard to give their stories real meaning. There’s no there there.

(++++) STRINGS THAT SING

Nielsen: String Quartet in F Minor, op. 5; String Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 14. The Young Danish Quartet. Dacapo. $16.99 (SACD).

Mendelssohn: String Quintet No. 1 in A Major, op. 18; String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, op. 87; Minuetto (original third movement of String Quintet No. 1). Fine Arts Quartet (Ralph Evans and Efim Boico, violins; Yuri Gandelsman, viola; Wolfgang Laufer, cello); Danilo Rossi, viola. Naxos. $8.99.

Haydn: Violin Concertos in C Major, A Major and G Major. Augustin Hadelich, violin; Cologne Chamber Orchestra conducted by Helmut Müller-Brühl. Naxos. $8.99.

      The second volume of Nielsen string quartets by the Young Danish Quartet (violinists Frederik Øland and Rune Sørensen, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard and cellist Carl-Oscar Østerlind) is as amazingly well played as the first; together, the two volumes include all four of Nielsen’s works in this form. This volume includes what would be called the “middle” quartets if Nielsen had numbered them: the F Minor is his second and the E-flat Major his third. Both are fairly early works – from 1890 and 1897-8 respectively – and both receive absolutely stunning playing from four youthful performers who seem to have no trouble at all with the works’ very considerable technical difficulties. The F Minor, as befits its key, is intense and storm-tossed, filled with harmonic surprises and near-constant modulations. The E-flat Major has intensity of a different sort, with harmonic and rhythmic complexity, a stirring Presto section midway through the third movement (played with wonderful precision on this SACD), and a strong finale bearing one of Nielsen’s very personalized tempo indications: “Allegro Coraggioso.” The four Nielsen quartets are not heard often. The Young Danish Quartet’s renditions show why not – and also argue that in the right set of eight hands, these pieces are packed with beauty and drama just waiting to be expressed.

      Mendelssohn’s expressiveness, it has often been said, changed little in his lifetime, and this is why he is not more highly thought of as a composer: everything he wrote was at a high level, but the level changed little from start to finish. This is a somewhat unfair characterization of Mendelssohn, but certain of his pieces lend it credibility – such as his two string quintets. They have a quite wonderful and quite similar level of intensity, and although the instruments share the music more equally in the second (posthumous) quintet than in the first, the overall sound world of both pieces is quite similar. The Fine Arts Quartet and Daniel Rossi give the works lovely, well-balanced readings that fully bring out their tunefulness and emotions. The first quintet dates to 1826, when Mendelssohn was 17 – the same year in which he composed his Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture. Originally a light work, with a second-movement scherzo and third-movement minuetto, this quintet was revised and deepened in 1832 after the death of Mendelssohn’s friend, the young violinist Eduard Rietz. The minuetto was dropped, the scherzo became the third movement, and a lovely “Adagio Sostenuto” was written to be played second, in Rietz’s memory. This CD offers the minuetto as an addendum, making it clear just how much the revision altered the quintet’s character – bringing it closer to that of the second quintet, whose extended “Adagio e Lento” third movement is heartfelt, and the heart of the piece. This quintet’s finale, though, is rather odd, with a stop-and-start quality not characteristic of Mendelssohn, and may be the reason that he did not have the work published in his lifetime. The players on this CD handle all the music quite well, including that problematical “Allegro Molto Vivace,” but there is no getting around the fact that this finale is a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

      There is something a bit unsatisfying about the Haydn Violin Concertos, too, and in fact the recording by Augustin Hadelich and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Helmut Müller-Brühl, despite many felicitous touches, gets only a (+++) rating. Part of the problem is the music itself: unlike Mendelssohn, Haydn did develop very substantially as a composer throughout his career; but these are early works that have a largely Baroque feeling to them (especially the G Major concerto), and they are simply not distinctive. They are certainly worth owning for Haydn lovers – the composer wrote only four violin concertos, and only these three have survived. But Augustin Hadelich may not be the ideal performer for them. He is a virtuoso player given little chance to display his full range of skills here, with the result that he creates cadenzas that – although not entirely inappropriate – go beyond anything Haydn was composing for these instruments at this time in his life, in the 1760s. These concertos are works that would really benefit from original-instrument performances, which would showcase their intimacy and modest scale, but Müller-Brühl’s ensemble no longer uses period instruments (as it did when it was called Capella Clementina). Conductor and orchestra do still follow period practices in terms of tempos, vibrato and more, but these particular Haydn works would come across better if played more in accordance with the sound as well as the techniques of the time in which they were written.

(+++) NARROWING THE NICHE

Michael Nyman: Mozart 252. Michael Nyman Band conducted by Michael Nyman. MN Records. $16.99.

Michael Nyman: Love Counts. Andrew Slater, bass; Helen Williams, soprano; Michael Nyman Band conducted by Paul McGrath. MN Records. $33.99 (2 CDs).

      For many years, orchestras could count on recordings to bring in a significant percentage of their annual budgets. Signing with a major record label and making records – principally LPs – that sold well could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Orchestras came to count on this money; when it began to dry up as classical music became more of a niche product and the availability of multiple versions of the same music skyrocketed, orchestras suffered financially. In recent years, realizing that it is better to obtain a larger percentage of a smaller number of sales than to abandon recording altogether, a number of orchestras have formed their own recording labels. Some performers have picked up on the same idea and created their own CDs – Gil Shaham’s Canary Classics label, featuring his own violin performances, is one example. But all these niche products (for people who want to hear works played by a specific orchestra or specific soloist) pale beside what Michael Nyman has done in forming MN Records. He has created a label solely to perform his own music.

      Nyman is himself a performer, principally as pianist but also as conductor. In addition, he is a librettist and a thoughtful musical theorist. And he has something of a following, largely because of his score for the film The Piano and the many scores he created for movies by Peter Greenaway (such as A Zed & Two Noughts and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover). Whether Nyman’s particular abilities in minimalism and reuse of other composers’ works are sustainable for an entire set of CDs is an unanswered question; but certainly MN Records is going to give Nyman the most definitive performances of his works possible – with the composer himself fully in control of all elements of each release.

      Mozart 252 is a good choice for people who may have heard some Nyman music in films and are wondering whether it works on its own. The CD’s name reflects its release 252 years after Mozart’s birth. The 11 tracks are drawn from two sources. The first is the 1988 Greenaway film Drowning by Numbers, in which a grandmother, mother and daughter – all named Cissie Colpitts – play a series of invented games, and all eventually drown their husbands. All the film’s music is drawn from the slow movement of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K. 364, modified and dubbed over and otherwise altered in accordance with the minimalist techniques that Nyman employs. The second source is a 1991 BBC homage to Mozart called Letters, Riddles and Writs, in which Nyman not only modifies Mozart’s music but also changes the words of some of his opera arias to reflect circumstances about which the composer wrote during his lifetime. The blend of occasional familiarity with frequent strangeness through tonal and rhythmic manipulation is characteristic of Nyman. Listeners who like it may well decide to search for other MN Records releases.

      That search may lead to full immersion in the Nyman chamber opera Love Counts (2005), to a libretto by Michael Hastings, who was also librettist for Nyman’s Man and Boy: Dada (2003). In Love Counts, Nyman uses a wide variety of modifications of Riemenschneider’s collection of 371 Bach chorale harmonizations to tell a love story in which numbers – one of Nyman’s perennial focuses – play a major part. The story is about a woman math professor who has divorced her physically abusive husband, and an end-of-career boxer who risks being counted out not only in the ring but also in life: he can neither read nor recognize numbers. The drawing together of this unlikely pair in a numerical setting (one of the arias is “Forty-seven, sixty-three”) is the point of this work. The recording is of a 2006 production at the Almeida Theatre in London, with Andrew Slater and Helen Williams as the lovers. The opera has an air of artifice and artificiality about it, as do many of Nyman’s works, and it has elements of a fairy tale as well (also a recurrent reference point for Nyman). It is well sung and nicely played, but never really makes an emotional connection with the audience – although whether it is intended to is debatable. Nyman’s skill at extracting and manipulating the music of earlier composers is quite clear. Listeners who believe the resulting works reflect a genuine vision from Nyman himself will appreciate the concept of MN Records (the second word of which can be read as both verb and noun), and will look forward to additional releases.

(++++) HOW CUTE CAN YOU GET?

Dogs: 101 Adorable Breeds. By Rachael Hale. Andrews McMeel. $24.99.

Dig It! Buried Treasure. By S.K. Dunn. Illustrated by Daniel Jankowski. Designed by Bill Henderson. Tangerine Press/Scholastic. $9.99.

      Looks may not be everything, but they are a big part of the reason people will want to own these two books – and that’s fine, since the books’ selling points have more to do with appearance than with information. Photographer Rachael Hale’s Dogs: 101 Adorable Breeds delivers exactly what its title promises: every dog pictured here is adorable, whether it is an enormous Great Dane (shown as a bright-eyed puppy with a stuffed animal in its mouth) or a tiny Chihuahua (Hale shows the long-coated one, not the “hairless” variety that would be, to many people’s eyes, less cute). There are no pit bulls here, but the Bullmastiff is represented – as not one but two puppies, both looking intelligent and one with its head cocked just so. Hale is an excellent dog photographer, capturing the animals’ personalities winningly and occasionally creating laugh-out-loud poses that may make readers want to own dogs they never before heard of: the Leonberger, a German breed created in the 19^th century, is represented by two puppies posed as bookends in Hale’s most perfectly charming photo. Hale does a good job with brief histories of each breed – including some mixes, such as the spoodle or cockapoo and the labradoodle. But she is not to be relied upon for recommendations on pets for the family – she describes nearly all the breeds she photographs as fine pets, including some that can be difficult for many people, such as the Chow Chow (“a fashionable pet and guard dog, admired for its loyalty and devotion to its owner”). The point of the book, of course, is to celebrate dogs in their many varieties, not make specific recommendations on good ones for particular families. Some breeds are inherently photogenic – the Pomeranian, peeking out of a pocket, is almost too adorable for words – but even ones not thought of as traditionally attractive have a certain grace and majesty here, such as the wrinkly Chinese Shar-pei. Dogs: 101 Adorable Breeds is a wonderful picture book for dog lovers, and if it inspires families to learn about unfamiliar breeds in addition to well-known ones before making a choice, so much the better. But however great these mostly purebred pups look, it’s worth remembering that you’ll get just as much love – and a great deal more gratitude – by adopting a mixed breed at your local animal shelter.

      The cuteness of S.K. Dunn’s Dig It! is of a different type. This is one of those book-and-box combinations with a 48-page book of information on a particular subject – buried treasure, in this case – attached to a box from which a drawer pulls out to reveal a small treasure chest and a deck of cards that kids can use to play a game called “Fame or Fortune?” A number of these book-and-activity combos have been published in recent years, usually in a fairly large (and sometimes cumbersome) size, with books that include envelopes, flaps and a variety of other clever elements that unfortunately can easily be torn or lost by over-eager children or ones who get tired of the activities after trying them a couple of times. Dig It! is a smaller and cuter package – seven inches high, six-and-a-half wide, and two deep (most of which is the box with pullout drawer). Dunn’s book, nicely illustrated by Daniel Jankowski, is more straightforward than gimmicky, with information on such places as El Dorado and the Spanish Main and such treasure-related people as King Tut and Captain Kidd. There are facts here both well-known (the burying of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) and less-known (the similar burial of the village of Boscoreale). There is information on treasure-hunting tools, the sorts of people who search today (from nautical archeologists to salvage groups), and much more – not a lot of information on any one subject, but enough to whet an interested child’s appetite for more. Add in the treasure chest for burying your own small valuables and the card game for two kids to play together, and you have a package that not only looks cute but also provides some interesting information on treasure, the people who buried or lost it, and the people who look for it nowadays.

(++++) LIVES RETHOUGHT

In Mozart’s Shadow: His Sister’s Story. By Carolyn Meyer. Harcourt. $17.

Thumbelina, Tiny Runaway Bride. By Barbara Ensor. Schwartz & Wade. $12.99.

      The protagonist of one of these books is real, that of the other fictional, but both authors treat their subjects with considerable caring and sensitivity. In Mozart’s Shadow is a semi-biography, semi-historical novel about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s highly talented older sister, Nannerl, who performed duets with him when both were children but who faded into obscurity in later years, hemmed in both by the expectations of society and by her brother’s utterly astonishing genius. Carolyn Meyer is no musician – indeed, she discusses Mozart’s works only as a way to indicate the times at which various events happen in Nannerl’s life – but she is a writer of real warmth, casting the book (which is written in the first person) as Nannerl’s look back at what became of her life and what might have become of it if the times and her autocratic father, Leopold, had been different. “My keyboard technique was already excellent [in childhood],” Meyer has Nannerl write, “and I worked diligently to improve it even more. There was a difference, though: I worked hard, always pushing myself, but music poured effortlessly – almost magically – out of my brother’s mind, heart, and hands.” This observation accords with historical reality, as indeed do many of the specific events in the book: numerous Mozart letters have survived, and are an excellent source of biographical information on the composer, although much less so on his sister. Indeed, Nannerl sees herself, as a woman (who would not be able to make a career out of keyboard playing in her time), pushed again and again into the background, and even kept from personal happiness by her father, whose word was law when it came to matters of travel, career and marriage – denying her the chance to wed the man she loves, then pushing her to marry one she does not. “You are a superlative clavier player, but you’re not a great singer, Nannerl!” her brother says at one point. “The archbishop didn’t send you to study because he would not have considered hiring a female clavier player, no matter how talented.” Nannerl, after tossing some blame for her situation back at Wolfgang, then observes, “I do understand it’s Papa who’s the real cause of my disappointment. And now he’s forbidden me to marry Armand.” Nannerl eventually gains a small musical triumph, within her own family, only after Wolfgang’s death, in one of many scenes created by Meyer to try to show readers how a talented young woman might have felt when she had so few options in life. Teenage girls of a musical bent will find In Mozart’s Shadow an affecting, sad story of a life largely wasted by modern standards because it was lived in conformity with those of an earlier age.

      Thumbelina, Tiny Runaway Bride is more of a romp and is intended for younger readers – ages 7-11 – but it too is a story told with considerable sensitivity, as indeed is the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale on which Barbara Ensor’s book is based. And this tale too contrasts the expectations of an earlier time with those of today. The basic events of the original story are all there, from the young girl grown from a witch’s barley seed to her adventures in the real world and near-marriages to Mr. Toad and Mr. Mole. Ensor creates wonderful illustrations for the book by cutting up black paper with scissors – the same technique that Andersen liked to use to illustrate his stories. But Ensor adds a flavor of her own to Thumbelina’s tale, and not just in the title. There are letters and diary entries throughout the book (Thumbelina calls her diary “Dot”), typeset in handwriting-like style, in which Thumbelina explains her feelings far more thoroughly than the original Andersen character ever did. Also, Ensor gives names and nicknames to various characters: Thumbelina’s mother calls her “Tulip” and “Petal,” the toad is named Sylvester, and so on. And Ensor paints scenes more vividly than Andersen (who was writing a different sort of story) ever did: “The odd sight of a tiny human being drifting down the river on a lily pad began to attract attention from every direction. Butterflies flitted toward her. Birds sitting on nests craned their necks to see. A spider, too shy to stare openly, gave Thumbelina a sidelong glance as she pretended to study her web for flies.” The result of Ensor’s work is a reconsideration and broadening of the Thumbelina tale into one of discovery and wonder, with her eventual meeting with the tiny King of the Flowers as charming as in Andersen’s original – except that Ensor then strikes a note that is intended as modern and liberating but that some readers (certainly those who know the original story) will find jarring. She decides to have Thumbelina decide not to marry the king, because she does not love him – instead, Thumbelina returns home to live with her mother. Happy ending? Happier than Andersen’s? That may depend on who is reading Ensor’s book and in what context. Certainly this is a charming work; whether a reader thinks the ending smacks of modern-day political correctness will determine how charming it turns out to be.

(+++) SHORT AND SWEET (OR SILLY)

What’s That, Mittens? By Lola M. Schafer. Pictures by Susan Kathleen Hartung. HarperCollins. $16.99.

My Little Pony: Tutus and Toe Shoes. By Ruth Benjamin. Illustrated by Lyn Fletcher. HarperTrophy. $3.99.

My Parents Think I’m Sleeping. Poems by Jack Prelutsky. Pictures by Yossi Abolafia. Greenwillow/HarperTrophy. $3.99.

Jamberry. By Bruce Degen. HarperCollins. $7.99.

New York, New York: The Big Apple from A to Z. By Laura Krauss Melmed. Illustrated by Frané Lessac. Collins. $6.99.

Magic Pickle. By Scott Morse. Graphix/Scholastic. $9.99.

      There are plenty of quick-read books that can help children along the road toward reading on their own, and give them pleasure once they develop the confidence to select things for themselves. Among the many offerings in the HarperCollins I Can Read! series are ones for a variety of reading levels. What’sThat, Mittens? is at the “My First” stage, for use by parents before children have started reading on their own. It’s a cute, simple story about a kitten that hears a scratching sound in the back yard and tries to find out what it is – eventually making a new friend. My Little Pony: Tutus and Toe Shoes is a “Beginning Reading/1” book, for kindergartners and advanced pre-kindergartners who are just starting to try to read for themselves – and who are fans of the My Little Pony franchise. It’s a ballet story, of course, with pictures used in place of some words so young readers can follow the action more easily. My Parents Think I’m Sleeping is a “Reading Alone/3” book, featuring 14 nighttime poems by Jack Prelutsky, dealing with issues from curiosity (“What happens to the colors/ when night replaces day?”) to difficulty falling asleep (“Tonight is impossibly noisy,/ it’s filled with a horrible sound,/ as if dozens of ogres and tigers/ are stuck on a merry-go-round”). Yossi Abolafia’s amusing illustrations are a big part of the fun here.

      Beyond the books that come in stages, developing readers have a world of pleasure to explore. The 25^th-anniversary edition of Jamberry shows the book to be as delightful today as it was in 1983. It’s a boy-and-his-bear story filled with delicious nonsense rhymes: “Hatberry/ Shoeberry/ In my canoeberry” – that illustration showing boy and bear in a berry-filled canoe, the bear wearing a hat out of which berries are bursting. Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and more make the book berry wonderful indeed.

      Or a young reader may want to try something nonfictional, such as New York, New York: The Big Apple from A to Z. From the American Museum of Natural History, through Jones Beach, to Rockefeller Center and the Zoo (Bronx Zoo, that is), Laura Krauss Melmed takes kids on a tour of the city’s sights, with basic information given in simple poetry and a lot more details offered on each page, in smaller type, for kids and families to enjoy if they want to explore New York’s attractions in greater depth.

      Or perhaps young readers would rather see something completely silly than something serious. Then they might gravitate to graphic novels, such as the thoroughly ridiculous Magic Pickle, whose hero is…yes, a pickle. Named “Weapon Kosher,” the pickle is given powers by Doctor Formaldehyde so he (it?) can fight the Brotherhood of Evil Produce, among whose members are the Phantom Carrot and Chili Chili Bang Bang. Kids won’t get the Ian Fleming reference (he wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as well as the James Bond novels), but they won’t need to in order to enjoy Scott Morse’s superhero sendup and watch the battles between Weapon Kosher and the Romaine Gladiator (that’s Romaine, not Roman). And Jo Jo Wigman, the human sidekick who wants to be called the Sweet Tomato, is a lot of fun, too – as is all sorts of reading for kids of all sorts of ages.

(+++) POLITICS AND POKER

Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties. By Kenneth D. Ackerman. Da Capo. $17.50.

Ghosts at the Table: Riverboat Gamblers, Texas Rounders, Internet Gamers, and the Living Legends Who Made Poker What It is Today. By Des Wilson. Da Capo. $26.

      Those interested in the story behind the headlines – way behind them – will find Kenneth D. Ackerman’s biography of J. Edgar Hoover’s rise to law-enforcement prominence fascinating. Those who barely know who Hoover was or who consider his era long past (born in 1895, he died in 1972) will likely find less of interest in Young J. Edgar, despite the author’s attempt to connect the Red Scare of 1919-1920 (and the attendant loss of civil liberties) with today’s Islamic terrorism (and the unacceptable, to some, abridgment of civil rights that has resulted). Ackerman, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, sees Hoover’s actions after bombs exploded in nine American cities in 1919 – a time of social unrest and union agitation – as a key to Hoover’s personality and later career. “Edgar began to see his anti-Red mission as more than a job. It was fast becoming his life’s crusade. He refused to let anything distract him, either at home or at work. …He saw his country at war with radicals, a pernicious enemy capable of unspeakable evil.” The parallels with the United States after the vicious al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, are quite clear even in the early pages of Ackerman’s book, although in fact those parallels are more than a little strained. Ackerman comes back to them continually, though, as he chronicles Hoover’s rise and provides a fair amount of celebrity-legal-circles information along the way: “Felix Frankfurter was happy to listen to [Oliver Wendell] Holmes and put politics aside that Christmas season. He had happier things on his mind. On December 20, 1919, he married Marion Denman, the daughter of a Congregational minister from Longmeadow, Massachusetts.” On and on the book goes, exploring the Red Scare and its excesses, the tying together of inflammatory pamphlets with Communist Party leaders, and the infighting within Woodrow Wilson’s Cabinet. Ackerman sprinkles his book with period photos, cartoons of the times and notes on contemporary entertainment: “Crowds flocked to see Helen Keller, billed as ‘The Famous Blind, Deaf, and Formerly Dumb Girl,’ appearing onstage with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, in a musical cabaret called Vanity Fair.” This scene-setting is consistently well done – although sometimes overdone in the amount of detail – and Ackerman’s understanding of the labor conflicts and societal pressures in the early days of Hoover’s career clearly runs deep. Indeed, Hoover himself seems to drift to the periphery of events from time to time, being yanked back by Ackerman at appropriate moments. The book certainly explores a seminal period in Hoover’s career, for those strongly interested in it; and certainly it is true that that period involved “one of the most difficult questions a democracy can face: how to balance civil liberties with public safety.” The direct parallels with today are strained, however, making Ackerman’s book of more interest to political historians than to those struggling to answer today’s questions about terrorism and how to respond to it.

      The questions are less lofty and the stakes far different in Ghosts at the Table, but this too is a book about where events stand in the United States today and how that relates to where they stood in the past. Des Wilson, a British journalist and poker aficionado, takes an across-the-pond look at the roots of the current American fascination with poker, and finds them in the nation’s Western expansion of the 1800s. Wilson spices his narrative with interviews with poker legends and not-so-legendary players in their own settings – told in a pseudo-folksy way that, stylistically, doesn’t quite work: “While Slim has been chatting away, it has got real hot under the Texas sun, and he’s sweating and suddenly he appears to gasp for breath. I give him my bottle of water and he gratefully gulps some down. Then he points to the skeleton of a heifer – just white bones lying in the dust.” The atmosphere readers of this book are likely to want, though, is of smoke-filled rooms and high-stakes games; and literary style is unlikely to be a determinant of whether someone likes the book or not. Wilson certainly delivers a cast of colorful characters. There is Benny Bilson of Dallas, who “was involved in every racket in town and, over twenty-three years, rose to be the undisputed crime boss of Dallas, the Al Capone of the city, police and judges in his pocket, killers ready to deal with any ‘problem.’” And there’s Puggy Pearson, “the extrovert gambler from Nashville, Tennessee,” who was involved in the fixing of the World Series of Poker in 1972. And Donnacha O’Dea, “a polished aristocrat compared with some of those who had come up from rougher backgrounds, a cool and relatively cautious player by Irish standards, but the first European competitor the Americans came to fear.” The ups and downs of these and many other players are intriguing, and the discussions of poker’s largely less-than-reputable roots and its metamorphosis into a big-time, big-money game (whose traditional form is now threatened by the rise of Internet gambling), will be fascinating to poker players and viewers of the game on TV. Ghosts at the Table knows its audience – a limited one, to be sure, but one that will find much of Wilson’s explication thoroughly captivating. You can bet on it.

(++++) CONSIDERED AND RECONSIDERED

Bach: Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001-1006. Ilya Kaler, violin. Naxos. $17.99 (2 CDs).

Rossini: Péchés de vieillesse—Volume VII, “Album de chaumière” (complete); Volume IX, “Album pour piano, violin, violoncello, harmonium et cor” (excerpts). Alessandro Marangoni, piano. Naxos. $17.99 (2 CDs).

Bizet: L’Arlésienne—Suites and Incidental Music; Carmen: Prélude and Entractes. Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble and Choeur de l’Opéra de Lyon conducted by Marc Minkowski. Naïve. $19.99.

      Violinists never tire of playing and re-playing Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, although the works are in fact immensely tiring to play – and, for that matter, to listen to straight through (not really a good idea: the full set lasts two-and-a-half hours). These are among the most difficult solo-violin works ever written, differing from other pieces of supreme difficulty – such as Paganini’s 24 Caprices – in that they are not showpieces but in-depth explorations of the violin’s technical and emotional range. Their virtuosity is understated but pervasive, and Ilya Kaler understands this well: his performance is carefully structured, emotional without being overly (and inappropriately) swooning, and tremendously attentive to details. He not only gets the many rhythms and ornaments right but also knows the importance of long-sustained notes, which end a number of the selections. His bowing is impeccable, and his use of double-stops – which at times are unceasing during these works – is so effective that it frequently sounds as if two violins are playing. This is a masterly performance, not only in such supreme pieces as the lengthy Ciaccona that concludes Partita No. 2 in D minor, but also in the enjoyable lesser works, such as the dance tunes (some of them quite well known) of Partita No. 3 in E major. There is and can be no single definitive version of these works, but Kaler’s certainly registers at the very highest level.

      Rossini’s Péchés de vieillesse (“Sins of Old Age”) are far lesser pieces – the composer created 14 volumes of them, for voice and a variety of instruments both solo and in combination, after retiring from opera composing at age 37. Many of the works are not intended to be taken seriously – some of the little songs are hilarious miniatures – but there is also no need to trivialize the pieces, as some performers do (except, of course, when Rossini wants them trivialized). Alessandro Marangoni proves a very worthy interpreter of more than two hours of these short works: the entire Volume VII, known as “The Cottage Album,” which is the first volume devoted to the solo piano, plus four solo-piano works from Volume IX, which is for a variety of instruments in various mixtures. Marangoni has a deft touch, particularly affecting in such charmers as “Petite valse de boudoir” from Volume VII and “Chansonette” from Volume IX. Rossini was fond of giving his Péchés de vieillesse thumb-your-nose titles, such as “Prélude inoffensif,” which indeed meanders blandly enough until its final surprising chord, and “Petite valse, ‘L’huile de Ricin,’” whose jumpiness may reflect the castor oil in its title. If Marangoni lacks anything, it is a certain level of playfulness: a little more would be welcome in such pieces as “Impromptu tarantellisé.” The more serious pieces are uniformly effective, though, as are the out-and-out charming ones. Perhaps Marangoni will take himself (and the music) a trifle less seriously in future volumes of what is planned as the release of the complete Rossini piano music.

      The reconsideration of Bizet’s music for L’Arlésienne by Marc Minkowski is an altogether different sort of project. This is a single, rather brief CD (lasting just an hour) whose packaging and music are equally big reasons to buy it. Bound as a 118-page book with a front compartment in which the CD nestles, this offering includes the original short story that became the basis for the play L’Arlésienne, for which Bizet wrote his incidental music, plus three essays on the work, including one by Minkowski. There are also numerous reproductions of paintings giving artists’ impressions of Arles – especially those of Van Gogh. In addition to the two well-known suites – the first by Bizet, the second arranged after Bizet’s death by Ernest Guiraud – the CD includes eight excerpts from the music as it was originally incorporated into the play, two of them using chorus. This rare opportunity to hear the music as Bizet originally wrote it is a big plus for the CD, although the excerpts are all short and not in themselves a sufficient reason to buy the disc. Minkowski’s performances are excellent, both sensitive and idiomatic, and the inclusion of four short pieces from Carmen – as originally used in the opera, not in the form of a suite – is a nice bonus. This is a CD for those curious about the context of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne and interested in owning a handsome multimedia look at Arles through both the visual and the aural arts. It is a collector’s item rather than a must-have, but collectors will be very pleased with it.

(++++) STYLISH BEETHOVEN

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3; Symphonies Nos. 5 and 8. Royal Flemish Philharmonic conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. PentaTone. $19.99 each (SACDs).

      The question – “Who needs more Beethoven symphonies?” – is inevitable whenever a new set appears or, as in the present case, is in progress. The answer, of course, is that there are innumerable ways to perform Beethoven and innumerable things to be learned about his music by listeners and players alike; so there is always room for new performances of his symphonies if the conductor has something new to say about them. Philippe Herreweghe clearly does – but it is not what you might expect. Herreweghe is a longtime specialist in original-instrument performances of music up to and including the Romantic era, and it would be reasonable to expect them here – but the Royal Flemish Philharmonic plays on modern instruments. However, Herreweghe’s special understanding of performance techniques in Beethoven’s time leads to renditions of the symphonies that sound quite different from today’s norm – in tempos, instrumental emphasis and articulation.

      Symphony No. 1, for example, has very good balance and unusually prominent brass and timpani. The second movement is quite fast – although Herreweghe makes the tempo convincing – while the finale is particularly genial. The handling of Beethoven’s famously emphatic chords is unusual here and in all Herreweghe’s performances: the chords are punctuation points, but they are closer to semicolons than exclamations – Herreweghe does not allow them to slow the forward impetus of the many movements in which they appear.

      This is immediately evident at the start of the “Eroica,” whose opening chords are emphatic but not heavy and whose first movement is taken at a brisk pace throughout. The second movement is lighter than usual – no Romantic-era tragedy foreshadowed here – and perhaps a touch too fast. The third movement is taken at a more moderate tempo than a listener might expect after the first two; and it is quite well balanced, with especially good brass. The finale features fine handling of the scurrying strings, emphatic but not overly dramatic chords (again), and a speedy coda.

      In Symphony No. 5, the first movement is dramatic but not overdone, with good instrumental detail but a distinctly odd handling of the oboe cadenza. The second movement offers genuine respite, even though it flows fairly quickly and is by no means placid. The third movement strides strongly along, with especially good cellos in the trio and prominent timpani in the transition to the finale. And that fourth movement offers a strong but, yet again, not overdone opening, the chords distinct and insistent, after which the movement’s pulse sweeps effectively ahead to a very strong coda.

      In some ways, though, the most interesting performance on these discs – and the best – is of Symphony No. 8, which (along with No. 2) is something of a stepchild in Beethoven cycles. Not here. Herreweghe has clearly thought this symphony through from start to finish, realizing that it is not a throwback – it was written at the same time as the Seventh – but a commentary on the past, a summing up, and a rejection (or surpassing) of what came before. Herreweghe, always a stickler for detail, is hyper-focused on it here. The first movement is quick and light, but with emphatic chords, and amusing instrumental balance – especially in the timpani – is integral throughout. The second movement is light, well balanced and well paced. The third is quick, but with outbursts quite deliberately interrupting the flow, and the horns are especially good. The finale percolates along brightly, and the timpani near the end are particularly impressive. What Herreweghe does here is to find the little instrumental touches that Beethoven used to comment on – not duplicate – the shorter, lighter symphonies of an earlier (but not much earlier) time. The result is a very impressive reading that actually makes the symphony as amusing as Beethoven intended it to be.

      The sound is good on both these SACDs, but it is not the same: the two were recorded in different venues, and it shows. There is a lighter, more transparent quality to the sound of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 than to the recording of the later works. On both SACDs, though, instrumental detail comes through quite clearly, and both recordings sound very good on standard CD players as well as on multichannel units. It will be most interesting to see where Herreweghe goes with his recordings of the remaining five Beethoven symphonies.