(++++) JOURNEYS TO THE WILD WORLD

The Manatee Scientists: Saving Vulnerable Species. By Peter Lourie. Houghton Mifflin. $18.99.

The Secret Journeys of Jack London #1: The Wild. By Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon. Illustrated by Greg Ruth. Harper. $15.99.

Inside Out & Back Again. By Thanhha Lai. Harper. $15.99.

Purple Heart. By Patricia McCormick. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $8.99.

     One of the most interesting books in the always interesting series called Scientists in the Field, Peter Lourie’s The Manatee Scientists offers up-close-and-personal views of a genuinely strange animal that is both well studied and very little known: the manatee. This aquatic mammal, a distant relative of the elephant, has thick elephant-like skin (sometimes sparsely covered with hair) and only two limbs, which are generally tipped with nails (again, as in elephants). The limbs, toward the front of its ungainly body, propel the manatee through the water, usually at a slow pace (although the animals can swim quickly when they wish to) and usually with little regard for what is going on around or above them (manatees have few natural predators, although certain big cats, such as jaguars, are thought to hunt them from time to time). Because manatees are not so much fearless as fear-ignorant, and because their entirely aquatic life brings them into close proximity with humans using boats, collisions between manatees and human craft are common, with many manatees bearing scars and many others (at least in the past) having suffered fatal blows from propellers. Lourie not only studied manatees for this book but also photographed them, and the pictures are simply wonderful. There are three manatee species: West Indian (of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies), Amazonian and Antillean. The first type has been very extensively studied, and a great deal is known about it; it is also well protected by law and (increasingly) by custom in Florida, where it lives year-round. The other types, which live in more-remote locations and more-brackish water, are less well understood, although Lourie explain what is known about them and is able to show pictures of them as well. Lourie follows scientists who study manatees to remote and more-accessible locations alike, and discusses the way the marine mammals are regarded by natives of some of the areas where they live: “Some [West African] villagers believe the breath of the manatee can kill a person,” and a manatee hunter in the small village of N’Tutu knew a great deal “about their habitat use and their distribution in the area…[but] would never stop hunting [them].” Lourie concludes with a discussion of continuing controversies about manatees – for example, whether allowing people to swim with them puts a strain on them or helps them by giving people more knowledge of and respect for the animals. A thought-provoking, information-packed book, The Manatee Scientists reveals a great deal about a highly unusual creature – and, through its resource list, opens the door for interested readers to find out even more.

     A famous real-world adventurer and author, Jack London (real name: John Griffith Chaney) traveled from the South Pacific to the Klondike and wrote a considerable amount of fiction based on his wanderings (as well as a considerable amount of nonfiction in furtherance of the social causes in which he believed). London’s works have not all worn very well, but his life story has elements of the cinematic about it, and that is the basis of the new series, The Secret Journeys of Jack London. The idea is that London (1876-1916), in addition to the trips that he chronicled and on which he based his fiction, made others that were even more adventurous but that he could not or would not write about. The Wild, the first of these made-up adventures, is set in 1893, when 17-year-old London and his brother-in-law head for Alaska to join the gold rush (this is a variation on what really happened: London and his brother-in-law did indeed join the rush to the northern gold fields, but not until 1897). Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon tell a story in which the genuine roughness of the Klondike is made even more so by slavery, kidnapping and the supernatural. The creature from beyond here is the Wendigo, the malevolent Native American spirit that can inhabit humans and that is associated with wintry cold and cannibalism. Through chapters with titles ranging from “City of Hope and Greed” to “Unto the Hands of Beauty,” the authors follow Jack on an outward journey that – as usually happens in books for preteens and young teenagers, such as this one – is an inward journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge as well. The writing here is often self-conscious to the point of clunkiness: “He heard the wolf’s howl nearby but could not respond to the call of the wild. Not this time.” And the motivations tend to be clunky, too: “Simply being near the girl confused his thoughts. He wanted to build something, to hunt something, to defeat another man to win her affections.” An encounter with the Wendigo is inevitable, and a struggle with forces both internal and external equally so. There are other frightening events, too, although the prose is not always equal to describing them: “And now a little tremor of true fear was seeded in his heart.” The few illustrations, by Greg Ruth, are effectively atmospheric, but the book as a whole is rather tame, for all its attempts to horrify: “He fell from astride the shrinking corpse, reached out with his right hand, and cut a flap of bloody flesh and skin from the thing’s chest.” As a surface-level action/adventure novel, The Wild works well enough to earn a (+++) rating, but the tie-in to the real life of Jack London is a shaky one at best.

     Inside Out & Back Again, on the other hand, is a real-life story – the lightly fictionalized tale of author Thanhha Lai’s escape from Vietnam and relocation to Alabama. Intended for the same age range as The Wild, Lai’s debut novel is wild in a very different sense. Lai tells and dramatizes her own life through the story of 10-year-old Hà, who flees Saigon with her mother and three older brothers. Needing sponsorship to live in the United States, the family receives it from a car dealer whose interest is piqued because one brother, Quang, was studying to be a mechanic in Vietnam and is good at car repairs. A fairly straightforward adaptation-to-a-new-life and coming-of-age tale, the book gets a (+++) rating in large part because Lai tells it so interestingly – in free verse rather than prose. Thus, “Our Cowboy,” about the man who makes the family’s new life possible, reads, “Our sponsor/ looks just like/ an American should./ Tall and pig-bellied,/ black cowboy hat,/ tan cowboy boots,/ cigar smoking,/ teeth shining,/ red in face,/ golden in hair./ I love him/ immediately/ and imagine him/ to be good-hearted and loud/ and the owner of a horse.” Each poem bears a date (“Our Cowboy” is listed as “August 8”), and each advances the story a little bit. “Letter Home,” dated “August 25,” for example, begins, “As soon as we have an address/ Mother writes/ all the way to the North/ where Father’s brother/ anchors down the family line/ in their ancestral home.” And, as Hà learns English, “Spelling Rules” (dated September 30) begins, “Sometimes/ the spelling changes/ when adding an s./ Knife becomes knives.” Adaptation is hard; there are bullies at school; Hà shoulders responsibility for the family’s plight because she violated some superstitions back in Vietnam; but eventually, Hà does adapt, though with difficulty (“Ours is a silent/ Christmas Eve”). The final realization is: “Our lives/ will twist and twist,/ intermingling the old and the new/ until it doesn’t matter/ which is which.” Not a great revelation, perhaps, but certainly a very important one, especially in this context.

     Different war, different circumstances, but many similar issues: Patricia McCormick’s Purple Heart is about Iraq and a soldier named Matt Duffy, who wakes up brain-injured in a hospital to receive a Purple Heart and try to deal with a very disturbing memory of a small Iraqi boy named Ali, his friend, being shot in the chest. How? By whom? Under what circumstances? These questions become part of a puzzle: while Hà seeks to retain and absorb memories, Matt seeks to recapture and integrate them. Intended for an older group of readers, ages 12 and up, Purple Heart tackles some difficult political and moral issues, and McCormick does not feel obliged to give easy or pat answers. Matt returns to combat, seeking only to resume his life as a soldier, but finds himself with a whole batch of new worries, especially fear of not being able to shoot when he must – because he has a nagging suspicion that he had something to do with the boy’s death. McCormick writes well, but the plot of this (+++) book is a trifle too neatly poised to have the grittily realistic effect that is clearly intended. With elements of thriller interlaced with some from a war novel, Purple Heart needs to keep the reader guessing for its full effect; but that requires revealing only so much about what is going on, and not more – an approach that starts to seem a little manipulative after a while. Still, there is genuine feeling in the portrayal of Matt, and McCormick’s willingness to show how difficult questions of guilt and innocence are in wartime is admirable. “Matt was a fool. He’d thought he was a good guy, the kind of guy who handed out art supplies to little kids and played soccer with them. But it was his friendship with Ali that had gotten the boy killed. …[B]y befriending Ali, Matt had actually put the whole squad at risk.” There is no epiphany, and no strong pro-war or anti-war message, either. There is just a journey to a truly wild world, a world of pain and hurt and failed understanding, a world of abyssal differences between people more difficult to bridge than those between humans and animals.

(++++) MAKING A LISZT

Liszt: Années de Pèlerinage (complete). Louis Lortie, piano. Chandos. $18.99 (2 CDs).

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 1-6; Dante Symphonie; A la Chapelle Sixtine; Symphonic Poems—Les Préludes, Orpheus, Mazeppa, Hungaria; Rákoczy-Marsch for Orchestra; Rákoczy-Marsch (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15) for Piano; Festmarsch zur Goethe-Jubiläumsfeier; Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. Budapest Symphony Orchestra conducted by András Kórodi (Rhapsodies); Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Hartmut Haenchen (Dante, Chapelle); Vienna Symphony conducted by Yuri Ahronovitch (Les Préludes); Ungarische Nationalphilharmonie conducted by János Ferencsik (Orpheus, Mazeppa, Hungaria, Tasso); Ungarische Nationalphilharmonie conducted by Gyula Németh (Rákoczy, Festmarsch); Jenö Jando, piano (Rákoczy/Rhapsody). Capriccio. $19.99 (4 CDs).

     It is a mistake to think of Franz Liszt as the greatest virtuoso pianist of the 19^th century – not because the characterization is wrong but because it is incomplete. To most listeners, and even to most of the public during his lifetime, Liszt was indeed the consummate virtuoso and consummate Romantic, dressing and looking the part of the intensely driven “poetic soul” and living a highly unconventional life in which he created and performed astonishingly virtuosic music – until, as he aged, he became more involved in religious matters and his compositional style became more transparent, significantly bleaker and so forward-looking that even today, many of his late works have a peculiar and very modern sound.

     It is in some of his less spectacular (although still spectacularly difficult) works that the true soul of Liszt the artist emerges – for example, in Années de Pèlerinage, a nearly three-hour pianistic odyssey with its origin in Album d’un Voyageur, written when the composer was in his mid-20s. Revisions over the next two decades led to the final version of the first two parts of Années de Pèlerinage, a cycle that Liszt himself said (in words referring to Album d’un Voyageur but even truer of the final work) was “written for the few rather than for the many.” So personal, so inward-looking are these works, yet so technically demanding, that it is easy to see why Liszt did not think of them as designed for a wide audience. Yet French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie clearly sees them as capable of reaching out: his remarkably well-knit performance of the complete cycle is filled with elegance, eloquence and nuance. The music soars and descends, speeds and slows, entrances and withdraws fluently under Lortie’s fingers, whether in the wistful homesickness of “Le mals du pays” or the highly dramatic tone poem of “Vallée d’Obermann,” both from the first year of the cycle. The emotional content of the three Petrarch Sonata movements of the second year is fully explored here, and the huge “Après une lecture du Dante” (“Dante Sonata”) that caps the year is fully explored both as sonata and as broad-ranging fantasy – its effect is dramatically overwhelming. The third year of pieces, written much later, when the composer was in his 60s, and in his very austere and difficult-to-hear late style, also comes across effectively in Lortie’s recording: this is neither easy nor lovable music, and it is deeply felt in a very different way from that of the earlier pieces in this sequence, but Lortie is as comfortable communicating the religious sentiments of several pieces as he is with the funeral march for Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. Chandos has accorded Lortie’s Années de Pèlerinage several distinctions, including pricing the two-CD set at the usual cost of a single CD and managing to get more than 80 minutes of music on each disc, even though 80 minutes is generally considered the outer limit of what a CD can accommodate. And the sound is bright, transparent and clear.

     Sonic quality is scarcely the main selling point for a new four-CD set of Liszt’s music: the value here is not only in the set’s very reasonable price but also in its revelation of yet other sides of Liszt beyond that of virtuoso pianist. Liszt was, after all, a considerable composer of orchestral works, including 13 symphonic poems. The Capriccio set re-releases recordings of many vintages – recording dates are not given, but the performances’ age may be judged by the fact that, for example, conductor János Ferencsik died in 1984. Everything here is workmanlike or better; Ferencsik and Hartmut Haenchen have a particularly strong grasp of the pieces they conduct. The set includes five of the symphonic poems as well as all six orchestral Hungarian Rhapsodies – which Liszt himself did not orchestrate, although he worked with Franz Doppler on five of them. The second CD, including the Dante Symphonie and A la Chapelle Sixtine, is musically the meatiest, although the Hungarian Rhapsodies have always been the biggest crowd pleasers for most audiences. The fourth CD includes the little-known Festmarsch zur Goethe-Jubiläumsfeier and an interesting contrast between the orchestral and piano works that are both known as Rákoczy-Marsch – the keyboard one fully justifying the usual vision of Liszt as pianist extraordinaire. Neither this set nor Lortie’s Années de Pèlerinage provides a full picture of Liszt the man and Liszt the composer, but taken together, the two go a long way toward showing why Liszt was such an extraordinarily important force in 19^th-century musical life – and, through the sheer weight of his personality and strength of his beliefs, in 19^th-century political life as well.

(++++) VOCALS AND STRINGS, COMMON AND UNCOMMON

Schubert: Winterreise. Konrad Jarnot, baritone; Alexander Schmalcz, piano. Oehms. $16.99.

The Vanishing Nordic Chorale: Music of Bach, Buxtehude, Charpentier, Crüger, Grieg, Hassler, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Pachelbel, Pederson, Praetorius and Scheidt. Musik Ekklesia conducted by Philip Spray. Sono Luminus. $16.99.

Vita: Music of Monteverdi and Scelsi. Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Sarah Iancu and Matthieu Lejeune, cellos. Naïve. $16.99.

Brahms: Double Concerto; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto. Itzhak Perlman, violin; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Apex. $6.99.

Mendelssohn: Sonata for Viola and Piano; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Trio for Violin, Viola and Piano. Ana Chumachenco, violin; Hariolf Schlichtig, viola; Eduard Brunner, clarinet; Adrian Oetiker, piano. Tudor. $19.99.

Alessandro Rolla: Sonatas for Viola and Piano, Op. 3, Nos. 1 and 2; Duetto for Violin and Viola, Op. 18, No. 1; Sonata in C for Viola and Piano; Esercizios Nos. 1 and 2; Esercizio e Arpeggio. Jennifer Stumm, viola; Connie Shih, piano; Liza Ferschtman, violin. Naxos. $8.99.

     The admirable recording of Die Schöne Müllerin by Konrad Jarnot and Alexander Schmalcz now has its counterpart in an equally admirable – perhaps even better – disc of Winterreise. Written in 1827, four years after Schubert’s first song cycle on poems by Wilhelm Müller, “Winter Journey” is a darker work and a more mature one – not only in Schubert’s writing, which essentially gives the piano and voice equal weight in telling much of the story, but also in Müller’s poetry, which lacks the headiness of youthful exultation that appears early in Die Schöne Müllerin and is subsequently dashed. In Winterreise, all is bleak from start to finish – and it is precisely this bleakness at which Jarnot excels (his few weaknesses in the earlier recording were in the more exuberant songs). This is more a work of middle age, or at least maturity, than is the earlier cycle, which is clearly all about youth and young love (and loss). Schmalcz, whose contribution to the earlier recording was exemplary, comes fully into partnership here, as Schubert and the music demand, and Jarnot’s sensitive, nuanced singing blends beautifully with the piano to produce a heartfelt and heartbreaking performance of a work that, while well known, is understandably less popular with audiences than the brighter and more naïve story of the miller’s daughter. There are, however, some flaws in the production of this CD that undermine the excellence of the performance: there are no notes about the music included at all, and while the texts of all 24 songs are provided, they are offered only in German. Listeners deserve better.

     The curiously titled CD called The Vanishing Nordic Chorale combines vocal music that is quite well known (such as Bach’s Lobe den Herren) with some that is virtually unknown (Hassler’s Herzlich lieb) and some that is known only in certain circles (the traditional Swedish song Der mange skal komme, “Many Shall Come”). The objective here is to present chorale settings by a variety of northern European composers and perform them in Nordic Chorale tradition (although with American singers). The works are of widely varying quality and interest, and the arrangement of the CD is odd (for instance, there are three Nielsen pieces separated, between the second and third, by a Buxtehude setting). The interest of some of the music and the quality of the singing gain the disc a (+++) rating, but it is strictly a limited-interest disc that lacks cohesiveness or a clear reason to appeal to anyone other than those who simply love chorales.

     A similar oddity of arrangement appears on another (+++) CD, the very well played but programmatically odd cello disc called Vita. Here French cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, along with Sarah Iancu and Matthieu Lejeune, presents some music (much of it arranged for cello) by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), interlaced with works by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), whose music is separated from that of Monteverdi by more than the 300 years or so separating their lives. Scelsi generally wrote music based around a single pitch, altered by using microtonal oscillations and changes in timbre and dynamics. The relationship of this music to Monteverdi’s is far from apparent, and the reasons for interconnecting the composers are personal ones for Wieder-Atherton that, while intriguing, are not especially convincing from a strictly aural perspective. The CD is certainly well played, and the juxtaposition of very dissimilar composers is experimentally interesting, but this is really a specialty disc for fans of Wieder-Atherton who are interested in her arrangements of old music and her “take” on some unusual newer works.

     The cello came to the forefront neither in Monteverdi’s time (when it and its predecessors were primarily continuo instruments) nor in Scelsi’s, but in between, as for example in its pairing with the violin in Brahms’ large-scale and still-fascinating Double Concerto, which is heard in a (++++) live performance from 1997 on an exceptionally well-priced Apex CD. The grandeur and warmth of this concerto are fully in evidence in the partnership of Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, with neither of these superstars of strings insisting on overshadowing the other – and with Daniel Barenboim leading the Chicago Symphony with flair and understanding. The now-well-known work, which was quite innovative in its day, comes through with a wonderful combination of virtuosity and musicality. And so does Mendelssohn’s ultra-familiar Violin Concerto, here in a Perlman/Barenboim performance recorded live in 1993. This concerto has been famously described as easy for a virtuoso to play, but extremely difficult to play well, and this recording shows why: the concerto requires far more than getting the notes right – the performer most provide sweetness (but not too much), exuberance (but, again, not too much), and exceptional purity of tone, giving the work Classical-era size and balance with Romantic emotional sensibility. Perlman’s performance shows just why he is one of the world’s great violinists: he takes nothing for granted in this music and never gives it short shrift, performing it as if it is a newly discovered gem – with the result that it sounds like one.

     Other works by Mendelssohn are newly discovered gems, or will be for many listeners. A new (++++) Tudor chamber-music recording includes three of them – all wonderful and all very rarely performed. These are works by a very young Mendelssohn indeed: the Trio from 1820, when the composer was only 11, and the two sonatas from just a few years later (1823-24). Just as Mendelssohn’s String Symphonies, which date to this same time period, showed tremendous precocity and understanding of musical form – together with a remarkable gift for melody – so these early chamber works are well structured, tuneful and remarkably beautiful. Their formal design is not always as well-thought-out as the structure of Mendelssohn’s later works would be – the scherzo movement of the Trio is almost over before it begins, and the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata is far weightier than the other two – but the unfailing creativity, the sure understanding of the compass and special tonal attributes of the instruments, and the sheer pleasantry of the themes (including an extended theme-and-variations in the Viola Sonata) make for utterly delightful listening. And the performers here do an exemplary job of involving themselves in the music while avoiding overweighting it – they handle all the pieces with delicacy, fine balance and excellent instrumental interplay.

     Violists may be surprised to find out that Mendelssohn, at any age, wrote a viola sonata – many believe the instrument really came into its own for solo purposes only in the 20^th century. But anyone of that opinion, and anyone not expecting a sonata by Mendelssohn, may be even more surprised at an entire CD of still-earlier viola music – not arrangements, but works originally written for the instrument – by Alessandro Rolla (1757-1841). Rolla was a teacher of Paganini and performed with him in concert; but in addition to being a violinist (and conductor), he was a considerable virtuoso on the viola – an instrument that, it should be remembered, Paganini also favored (he commissioned Harold in Italy from Berlioz, then rejected it because there were too many sections in which the soloist stayed silent). Rolla’s viola works feature Classical-era poise and charm, as well as virtuoso demands in the faster movements and (in the case of the Duetto for Violin and Viola) a fine, idiomatic interplay of instruments. The three works called Esercizios are practice pieces as well as showpieces, somewhat in the manner of Paganini’s Caprices although not at the same level of difficulty. Jennifer Stumm is a wonderful advocate for this music, playing with a sure sense of rhythm, unfailingly warm and beautiful tone, and (where appropriate) a genuine sense of playfulness. None of these Rolla works can really be called “great” music, but this CD nevertheless fully merits its (++++) rating for its fine playing, its introduction of listeners to worthy and unfamiliar repertoire, and the overall pleasantness and skill of its presentation. Even non-violists will enjoy hearing it; violists may well want to track down the pieces and perform them.

(++++) STUFF TO DO – FOR MANY AGES

The Klutz Guide to the Galaxy. By Pat Murphy and the Scientists of Klutz Labs. Klutz. $19.99.

Clackers: Crocodile; Monkey. By Luana Rinaldo. Robin Corey Books. $5.99 each.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: A Counting Nursery Rhyme. By Salina Yoon. Robin Corey Books. $6.99.

Go, Dog. Go! Party Book. Random House. $6.99.

Go, Dog. Go! By P.D. Eastman. Random House. $8.99.

     There are books to read, and then there are books for more than reading. For older kids, ages eight and up, there is Klutz, which actually claims to create things for ages three to 103 (but why discriminate against 104-year-olds?). The Klutz Guide to the Galaxy would seem to be tailor-made for Klutz konstructions such as galactic maps and amusing aliens and parodies of Douglas Adams’ famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But in fact it is a pretty serious book, not counting the illustrations, which are Klutzily amusing. There really are star maps here, and there really is good, solid information on where Earth fits within the solar system, which fits within the galaxy, which fits within the universe, and so on (well, there’s no “and so on” beyond the universe, but you get the idea). There are also things to build here, and as usual with Klutz, pretty much everything needed for the building is built into the book itself. There’s a sundial, with all parts included except a pencil (Klutz assumes you can get one of those easily enough). There’s a night-sight flashlight, an object that not only has a rhyming name but also has genuine astronomical-observation value, since its dim red light makes it easy to see at nighttime – unlike white light, which interferes with night vision. Most intriguingly of all, there is a telescope – yes, a real, working one (albeit with hard plastic lenses rather than glass ones) that you assemble from the parts bound into the book, then use to look at heavenly bodies and other interesting stuff. Tabs in the book direct reader-participants to sections called “Sun Time,” “Tour the Moon,” “Explore the Planets,” “Steer by the Stars,” and “What’s Where When?” The last of these includes a “Lunatic Wheel” for figuring out when and where to see the moon, plus an age-on-other-planets page in which you look at your age in Earth years, then see how old you would be on other planets – based on the notion that a year always contains 52 weeks, but as a totality is the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit the sun (a 10-year-old would be three weeks old on Neptune and 16 years old on Venus, for example). The Klutzniks bury lots of legitimate science amid their Galactic Passport, Map of the Milky Way, Grand Tour of the Solar System postcard and other features – giving readers lots to do and lots to learn, all wrapped Klutzily together.

     For much younger kids, up to age three, the Clackers books offer participatory fun of a very different (and very age-appropriate) sort. These little 14-page books are a step beyond board books (or a step before them): the cardboard pages are attached to foam cores that make a not-too-loud clacking noise when you grab the books by their handles and shake them back and forth. The handles have holes in them that are a good size for small fingers, so babies and toddlers will quickly learn to “clack” the books on their own. And the stories are very simple and enjoyable: in Crocodile, the little croc looks for her mother, finding her by the waterfall, where the two splash together playfully; in Monkey, the title character swings through the trees, observing other animals (each given a sound effect that an adult can make for a baby) and eventually landing on a banana plant for lunch. Both parents and young children will find something to do here.

     They will find things to do in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe as well. Aimed at the same very young kids, Salina Yoon’s count-to-10 book has an unusually attractive layout that includes cutouts within pages and two foldouts for the numbers nine and 10. The number “three” gets three colorful horizontal stripes, for example, while the number “four” gets a cross shape (two intersecting lines) on the next page – that shape seen through a square cutout. Turn the page, and the rhyme is completed: “knock at the door,” with the three stripes now part of a door and the four lines part of a window. The whole book is filled with bright colors and clever illustrations, although parents may wonder why the rhymes have been altered from the traditional version (not only “knock at the door” instead of “open the door” but also “a good fat hen” instead of “a big fat hen,” although the picture certainly shows a very large hen indeed). This board book is very sturdy, and its overall scenario – which involves a circus – fits the counting rhyme well and gives Yoon plenty of chances to create attractive illustrations.

     Also for the youngest children – although not the very youngest ones, who would be tempted to put inappropriate things in their mouths – is the Go, Dog. Go! Party Book, which includes stickers, construction projects and games based on P.D. Eastman’s well-known 1961 dogs-on-the-move book, called simply Go, Dog. Go! Parents can help kids make the party hats and snack cups included here, and kids can use the stickers to decorate the “dog party” poster. There is also a game board, with 30 game cards to cut out – in fact, the entire book will be a mass of shredded paper when parents and kids are finished with it, but it (or rather its remnants) will still contain plenty of fun. Whether that will be more fun than Eastman’s original book will be a matter of opinion – and of age, since the book is intended for slightly older children (ages 5-8). The new “50^th-anniversary party edition” of Go, Dog. Go! – which has a foil-enhanced cover – shows why this popular book has remained such a favorite for decades: it builds carefully from the single word “dog” into a tale of dogs of all sizes, shapes and colors rushing to a big tree for a big party, and there is even a subplot about whether or not one dog likes another dog’s hat (on several occasions, no, but at the party at the end, yes). Simple but not too simple, Eastman’s book may not provide specific activities beyond reading itself; but reading alone is, after all, a wonderful activity, and even 21^st-century early readers will enjoy this book, which uses a mere 75 words to tell a colorful, amusing and thoroughly enjoyable story. And a timeless one.

(++++) HEARTWARMERS

Rain Brings Frogs: A Little Book of Hope. By Maryann Cocca-Leffler. Harper. $9.99.

Mamá and Me. By Arthur Dorros. Pictures by Rudy Gutierrez. Rayo/HarperCollins. $16.99.

The Trouble with Chickens: A J.J. Tully Mystery. By Doreen Cronin. Illustrated by Kevin Cornell. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $14.99.

     Put aside cynicism and the cares of daily life before picking up any of these books, and you will be rewarded with a sense of magic, uplift and even humor. Retain even an ounce of that cynicism, though, and you will find the books distinctly overdone and may call their sincerity into question. That would be a shame, because Rain Brings Frogs, for one, is simply a celebration for young children (up to age seven) of the positive things inherent in potentially negative experiences. Mom may hate rain, and she does look thoroughly miserable as Maryann Cocca-Leffler portrays her, but Nate is dancing around on the opposite page while asserting that it is rain that brings the frogs – and the smiling frogs all around him certainly seem to agree. Ben may think he does not have enough ice cream, even when eating a supersized banana split, but there’s Nate on the opposite page, with a single-scoop cone, finding that he has enough to share and giving a very happy dog a little lick. Yes, yes, persistent sunny optimism can be as wearing in its own way as unceasing gloom, but there is plenty of doomsaying out there and no real reason to subject our kids to more of it than necessary. Or ourselves either, for that matter. So try, just try, to see some of life from Nate’s point of view, and maybe things will be better for adults and kids alike. It is certainly possible to empathize with a tearful Casey, who is holding her second-place swimming medal and feeling as if she lost despite trying so hard. But on the opposite page is a joyous Nate, with his fifth-place medal, smiling and splashing and saying loudly, “I FINISHED!” And couldn’t competitive sports (and other parts of life) use a little more of Nate’s attitude and a little less of Casey’s? It may be pushing things to look up at a depressingly grey sky, as Nate does, and smile at the unseen sun above the clouds, but certainly Cocca-Leffler’s “Little Book of Hope” offers some thoughts and ideas that should inspire the inner Nate in all of us. Assuming we have one…and heaven help us if we do not.

     There is equal warmth, albeit of a different sort, in Mamá and Me, which is for ages 4-8 and is narrated by a young bilingual girl who is enjoying a simple day with her mom. They work in the garden, where Mamá pulls weeds, while “I pick flowers that Mamá likes and save them for later.” Mother and daughter bake cookies together, their conversation flowing naturally between English and Spanish as Mamá helps with the baking but understands that her daughter wants to do all the eating herself. The two shop together, Mamá for paint to brighten a room and the girl for “a great piece of cloth” that she will use to make Mamá a scarf for a special day. Just what day that is will be revealed at the book’s end, as other people show up for the first time to enlarge the feeling of loving familial life surrounding this mother and daughter. Arthur Dorros makes the story into one of independence vs. togetherness, but weaves the narrative so skillfully that the two seem to be closely related, not opposites. And Rudy Gutierrez’ paintings, heavily influenced by graffiti, give mother and daughter alike a sense both of realism and of a kind of urban fairy tale. In one picture, for example, the daughter’s head, face and right arm are portrayed quite realistically, but her left arm is just a quickly sketched yellow line, as in a stick figure. The result of the approach of author and illustrator is that Mamá and Me is distinctive both in its narrative and in its visual impact.

     What especially distinguishes Doreen Cronin’s The Trouble with Chickens is not the illustrative prowess of Kevin Cornell – or not only that (the pictures actually fit the story well and are often hilarious). What makes this first book of a series for ages 8-12 so much fun is the underlying premise – and the way Cronin carries it through perfectly from start to finish. J.J. Tully, a onetime search-and-rescue dog, is retired now and looking forward to well-earned relaxation after all his years as a lifesaver. But some people just won’t let him rest. Or some chickens, that is: two chicks named Dirt and Sugar and their mom, Moosh, insist that J.J. help them find the chicks’ missing siblings. J.J. cannot resist a heartfelt plea, or the promise of a cheeseburger, so he agrees to help out. This leads to absolutely hilarious writing: “While I was taking inventory of what I knew about Vince, Moosh kept herself busy by losing her mind.” “Dirt was all ears. Moosh was all mouth.” “We have to be half strength, half perseverance, and half obedience. Do your own math, tough guy – I’m making a point here.” Indeed, Tully is. And so is Cronin, with the use of such words as perseverance, behooved and rendezvous. There is some real vocabulary building going on amid all the twists on noir style and the general hilarity of the plot. Toss in the priceless portrayal of expressions such as J.J.’s look at birdbath-bathing Sugar – who wears huge glasses – as the chick kicks a pebble at the pup, and you have a real winner of a mystery (although the “mystery” part isn’t really much, a fact that barely matters at all). This is Cronin’s first novel for young readers, and certainly won’t be her last: the successor is already planned, and will be called The Legend of Diamond Lil. Parents and kids alike should rejoice at Cronin’s plan to produce plenty of these tall tales. Or Tully tales. Call them what you will – they’re a hoot, or will be if they’re all on the level of The Trouble with Chickens.

(+++) PROFESSING

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic. By Professor X. Viking. $25.95.

     A little too full of himself and a little too enamored of his own cleverness (even to the “Professor X” pseudonym), the author of this most recent critique of higher education is shocked, shocked, to learn, when he becomes an adjunct at a small private college and a community college, that the students are not at the very highest levels and that the college system itself is deeply flawed. This revelation is comparable to the one in which he is shocked, shocked, to find out that he cannot afford the overlarge and over-expensive house he has bought – a state of affairs that brings him to adjunct teaching in the first place.

     Readers will likely not be shocked, much less shocked, when Professor X explains that the first essays he received in English 101 (“Introduction to College Writing”) were really, really bad. It would have been nice if Professor X had shared some examples of how bad they were, but he declines to offer anything beyond his own remarks: “The essays were terrible, but ‘terrible’ doesn’t begin to convey the state these things were in. My God. Out of about fifteen students, at least ten seemed to have no familiarity with the English language. …I could quote broken sentences all day, but I won’t.” Too bad he doesn’t, because instead he decides to show his own erudition (or pseudo-erudition) through false modesty: “Perhaps, dear reader, you think the main issue is the arrogance and superiority [sic – not “alleged superiority”] of the aforementioned teacher rather than any problem with the students. Perhaps you think of me as Guy Crouchback, the protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, who during World War II censors letters…” Uh, well, no, the comparison probably never occurs to the reader, but Professor X wants it to, so he pulls it out of nowhere so he can then claim the moral, or at least intellectual, high ground. This is distinctly unappealing, and is by no means the only instance of this sort of thing.

     If Professor X did not write so entertainingly (when not involved in self-aggrandizement and the creation of self-important phraseology about misspellings “chasing one another around in a fugal counterpoint of inaccuracy”) and if he did not have some legitimate and even important points to make, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower would be easy to dismiss. But he does, and it isn’t. For example, he explains that grade inflation, so easy to condemn, is not as simple as it appears: “My students…are up against it. The clock is ticking. The pressure is on. They need, desperately, to get through their programs. …When I give a failing grade to a student, I am not just passing judgment on some abstract intellectual exercise. I am impeding that student’s progress, thwarting his ambition, keeping him down, committing the universal crime of messing with his livelihood – not to mention forcing him to pay the tuition charge all over again. …[A]ny poor grade I issue may mean disastrous economic consequences.” For another example, he discusses trendy teaching methods that denigrate such “old-fashioned” ideas as emphasizing the right answers (“Who in God’s name ever thought that would be any good?” asks Professor X with a dose of his typical sarcasm) – and he remarks, “I’ve never heard of any other professors, adjunct or tenured, who actually do any of this [trendy, ‘wait on the students’] stuff.”

     Professor X also gets into issues of college financing, the college “industry,” and the various groups with different but related stakes in higher education, and he does it all while occasionally turning out a genuinely creative metaphor: “We writing teachers could do a lot worse than to start turning out classes of skilled syntax mechanics, their hands soiled with the filth of discarded adjectives and the grease of potent verbs.” Behind the entertaining writing, behind the sometimes desperate attempts to show how much he and his teachings matter, Professor X is onto something when he ferrets out the minuses of the educational system (many of them already well known) and contrasts them with the pluses, including those he himself experiences (such as his discovery that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is not, after all, a terrible poet). Not an advocacy book but a memoir steeped in wished-for self-importance, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower offers enough behind-the-scenes looks at adjunct teaching and the students who encounter (or endure) it to make a reader question the current university model as higher education lurches uneasily from being the province of the elite toward the imagined utopia in which everyone is above average and, while all are created equal, some are not more equal than others. Those are two literary references. Looking them up is left to the reader as an exercise.

(+++) SUPERNATURAL WONDERS

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group. By Catherine Jinks. Harcourt. $16.99.

Father of Lies. By Ann Turner. HarperTeen. $16.99.

Body Finder 2: Desires of the Dead. By Kimberly Derting. Harper. $16.99.

Evernight, Book Four: Afterlife. By Claudia Gray. HarperTeen. $16.99.

Angelfire. By Courtney Allison Moulton. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

A Touch Mortal. By Leah Clifford. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     There are so many supernatural creatures out there in teen-oriented novels that it is a wonder to find any ordinary humans teens at all peopling these books. Oh, yes, there are some standard teen types here and there, but they are mostly foils for the protagonists – or prey. Sometimes both. The real focus in all these works is the supernaturally blessed (or cursed) central characters, such as Toby (that is, Tobias Richard Vandevelde) in The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group. Catherine Jinks, whose The Reformed Vampire Support Group took an unusually interesting approach to vampirism by having the vampires be weak and rather mousy until one of their own was staked, here rings some similar changes on werewolf legends by turning the shapeshifters into rather sickly insomniacs. It turns out that being a werewolf runs in families – but being a vampire doesn’t. Oh yes, there are vampires here, too, and while some of the complications that occur as Toby and various other characters run and drive around the Australian Outback are intense and scary, others are (intentionally or perhaps not) hilarious. Such as this dialogue: “‘That guy’s a doctor, Mum! And I’ve got a sore foot!’ ‘Yeah, but he’s a vampire, too, isn’t he?’ Sergio objected. ‘Can a vampire be a doctor? Or is he just a doctor for vampires?’” Toby goes through a lot without ever (until late in the book) quite believing any of it: “I almost expected to look up and spot a camera crew, because nothing seemed real. Werewolves? Vampires? Dead people? Get outta here.” There is eventually an intersection between the vampire group and the werewolves who are the focus here, although Toby explains, “To be honest, we haven’t had much to do with the vampires since then, even though they’ve been a big help. It’s partly because they’re only awake at night and partly because they’re kind of annoying.” So after kidnappings, gunplay, violent fights, car chases and crashes, and all sorts of confrontations, Jinks retains some humor in this book, even to explaining that “when you mix a werewolf with a vampire, you get a zombie,” which seems far-fetched even for this genre. But accepting what is far-fetched is exactly what readers of these books are supposed to do.

     Take the story of Lidda, for example – she being the 14-year-old protagonist of Father of Lies, a book set in 17^th-century Salem and focused on the witch trials there. In Ann Turner’s retelling, Lidda (an invented character) becomes a key figure in those trials, because she hears a voice in her head commenting on the events. For instance, when the Reverend Parris (who was real) tells the congregation that “the Devil and his minions surround this village, yes, surround it, circling like wolves ready to bite and harry and destroy,” Lucian, the name the voice in Lidda’s head gives himself, comments that the preacher’s call for “righteousness” means “doing things his way, girl – never kicking up your heels under the apple trees or singing wild songs. Wearing your stays and always obeying your elders.” But it is precisely because Lidda does not accept this definition of righteousness, because she does not do all the prescribed things, that Lucian says he has come to be her “friend.” That is, if he is truly a friend and not the Devil himself. “She was just a fourteen-year-old girl in the village of Salem, without power, except the power to tell truth from lies,” Lidda realizes as the witch hunt progresses. “And that made her more alone than ever.” Indeed, Lidda’s attempt to do something about the “witch-fever, vengeance, and cruelty” leads to an accusation against the girl herself, and the departure of Lucian, and eventually Lidda’s own departure from the town – a hopeful note in a story that, historically, had very little brightness about it. Indeed, Father of Lies draws on historical sources and actually uses some transcripts dating to the time of the Salem witch trials in a few chapters – a factual story decked out in fictional guise and with a supernatural element more in keeping with 21^st-century thinking than with that of the 17^th century.

     The Body Finder is up-to-date, too. Kimberly Derting’s first book about Violet introduced her as a girl with the ability to sense echoes from the murdered and match those remnants to killers. The second book in the series, Desires of the Dead, finds Violet trying hard to conceal her ability even as she discovers the body of a young boy and the FBI gets involved in the search for the boy’s murderer. This book also traces the changes in the relationship between Violet and her boyfriend, Jay, who is actually spending less time with her now that they are officially a couple rather than moving toward couplehood as they did in the first book. A reason for their partial estrangement is that Jay has made a new friend, Mike, and is with him frequently – leading, quite naturally for the curious Violet, to an exploration by the girl of Mike’s history…leading in turn, because of the sort of book this is, to the discovery of a dark secret in Mike’s family’s past. And so the entanglements become ever more…well…entangled. “She was damaged, sure,” Violet thinks to and about herself at one point, “but she was stronger than that. She wasn’t broken. She would survive this. She had to.” And of course she does – turning 17 in the midst of all the events, and having “the worst birthday of her life” because of a rift with Jay. The story here follows much the same arc as in the earlier book, with uncertainty and blind alleys and an eventual discovery by Violet of what is going on – at the cost of considerable danger to herself. And there are hints here about new aspects of Violet’s power, or at least ones not yet fully explored: “She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever fully understand her strange ability.” But understood or not, Violet’s ability leads to a frightening confrontation that weaves together Mike’s family’s tragedy with several puzzling events that have directly affected Violet’s own life. Further Body Finder stories are sure to follow.

     The Evernight saga reaches its fourth installment with Afterlife, and here too the story arc is familiar even though the specific events are, of course, different from those in the earlier series entries. The series title refers to the vampires’ Evernight Academy, former home to Bianca, who is now a wraith rather than a vampire – which means Evernight is at war with her and all her kind. But Bianca goes there because of Lucas, who is a vampire – unwillingly – and who can obviously no longer hunt vampires, as he was trained to do before becoming vampiric. Evernight is yet another twist on the age-old Romeo and Juliet story (which really is old: even Shakespeare picked it up from earlier writers). It just happens to be a twist in which the lovers are dead…or undead. Claudia Gray (pseudonym of Amy Vincent) includes pretty much all the heartthrob elements as well as the excitement and suspense that are de rigueur in this genre, plus some occasionally amusing lines: “I would’ve done a fist pump of victory if I’d been solid.” The amusement helps counter the clichéd, such as this dialogue: “‘Even if you pull it off, even if you give yourself a heartbeat, you’ll still be dead inside.’” The eventual solution here – or resolution, anyway – leads to one of those bittersweet endings so typical of this genre, although not before one character delivers one of the book’s funniest lines: “‘You’re the most amazing supernatural creature in the world, and I’m just some guy who’s going to get old eventually.’”

     Supernatural tales for teens remain so popular that they keep attracting new authors, such as debut novelists Courtney Allison Moulton and Leah Clifford. Moulton’s Angelfire and Clifford’s A Touch Mortal are superficially different, but the underlying similarities of their approach are quite clear. Moulton’s book is the start of a trilogy about Ellie, a 17-year-old who turns out to have lived many lives and to be a force of angelic good in the never-ending battle against the evil “reapers.” Ellie is awakened to her powers, and to the start of an understanding of her many past lives, by her intense, immediate connection with Will, whom she first meets (right at midnight) on her birthday – but instantly feels she has known for centuries. As, of course, she has. How does all this happen? Simple, really: “‘When you die, you are reincarnated,’” Will explains. “‘Your body and soul are reborn over and over in the same human form. I find you again, usually when you’re just a small child, and guard you as you grow up. When you’re seventeen and ready to face your true identity, I wake you.’” And there you have it. And there follows an adventure novel that is also a coming-of-age story and a love story, including evil creatures such as the vir, ursid, lupine and nictarid (forms of the reapers) – all arrayed against the Preliator (that would be Ellie, who gets such lines as, “It was good to know that when swords failed, simple girl tactics always worked – even on monsters”). The mystery here – not an unexpected one – is why it took so long for Ellie to be reincarnated this time, and what that means for the ongoing war between the angels and the Fallen. More to come – two books more.

     Clifford’s book also involves humans and angels, but the world of A Touch Mortal is certainly different from that of Angelfire. Clifford’s protagonist, Eden, falls in love with a fallen angel who, like Ellie’s Guardian, hesitates at first to kiss her, although for different reasons. The primary scenario here involves Siders, lost souls that do not enter either Heaven or Hell after death. As it turns out (and why it turns out that way is an important plot point), Eden becomes one of them – but not just any one. She has some sort of power in the tips of her fingers – a power that not only acts on humans but also may affect other Siders. And she may be the key to this book’s light-against-darkness struggle, just as Ellie is the key to the same struggle in Angelfire. Both books play to teens’ simultaneous needs to belong and to be one of a kind, and both include soul searching (well, both involve souls, after all), romance, self-discovery and a host of other elements that form the foundation of innumerable supernatural-genre books targeting teenage readers. Dialogue that seems to be unintentionally funny is in A Touch Mortal, too: “‘You’re dead,’” says one character. “‘Live with it.’” Another example: “‘This isn’t the afterlife, sweet pea. It’s the Bronx.’” There are alliances and misalliances here (and if that seems a lot like, say, high school, just consider the audience for this genre); and there are questions of loyalty and power and how to make a life (or afterlife) for oneself – all typical subject matter for such books as A Touch Mortal, and all satisfactorily worked into a frothy concoction with plenty of room for sequels and without the slightest shred of believability. But belief, except in something (or some set of things) beyond death, is not required for enjoyment of any of these books. A willingness to read and reread the same themes, in somewhat different settings, is all that is really needed.

(++++) SYMPHONIC PORTRAITS

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (“The First of May”). Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir conducted by Vasily Petrenko. Naxos. $8.99.

D’Indy: Orchestral Works, Volume 4—Symphonie italienne; Poème des rivages. Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rumon Gamba. Chandos. $18.99.

Nielsen: Symphony No. 4 (“The Inextinguishable”); Cupid and the Poet; Genrebillede; Ariel’s Song; Hjemlige Jul; Symphonic Rhapsody. Jan Lund, tenor; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Douglas Bostock. Scandinavian Classics. $12.99.

Brahms: Serenades Nos. 1 and 2. Chamber Philharmonic of Bohemia conducted by Douglas Bostock. Scandinavian Classics. $7.99.

     Symphonies may not only communicate emotion and structure but also tell listeners quite a bit about their composers – whether they are especially known as symphonists or not. The latest CD in Vasily Petrenko’s Shostakovich cycle provides considerable insight into the reasons Shostakovich remained controversial and hard to pin down both musically and politically even after his death in 1975. Shostakovich’s First Symphony, begun when the composer was 18 and first played in 1926, when he was 20, is a great deal more than a school work – although it is that, having been started at the Leningrad Conservatoire. The work, especially its highly innovative first movement, already shows the sardonic humor, cleverness of instrumentation, and harmonic and rhythmic intensity that would mark all 15 of Shostakovich’s symphonies. It is on a much smaller scale than most of the later ones, but seems in some ways to anticipate major elements of them all. Petrenko, who has already recorded the Eighth, Tenth and (on a single CD) Fifth and Ninth, brings to this CD the same attention to detail and willingness to push the music (especially through highly dramatic contrasts between softer and louder passages) that he displays in his other performances. The result is a piece that seems larger than its 33-minute length – and more indicative of where the composer would later go. But where he went was not on a straight path: his Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 were composed to celebrate the Soviet regime and to celebrate what it wanted celebrated. This makes the pairing of No. 1 with No. 3 quite interesting – but Petrenko’s handling of the Third makes this CD more interesting still. Petrenko brings out the stylistic elements of No. 3 that clearly reflect Shostakovich’s personality, which was never entirely subsumed beneath revolutionary rhetoric (a fact that later caused the composer considerable difficulty). Petrenko’s Third has much of the same brashness and youthful spirit as the First, written three years earlier; and even though the title “The First of May” makes it clear that this symphony is intended to celebrate the “workers’ holiday,” the music itself never makes that connection until the final tacked-on choral section to words by Semyon Kirsanov. Together, these symphonies convey a telling and fascinating picture of the young composer just starting to come to terms with himself and the political system around him.

     Vincent d’Indy is not generally thought of as a symphonist, but the two works in Volume 4 of Chandos’ excellent d’Indy series show him thinking symphonically – and handling symphonic issues very differently at different points in his life. Nearly a half century separates the youthful Symphonie italienne from the late Poème des rivages, which the composer called a “symphonic suite.” Symphonie italienne, perhaps inevitably, calls up thoughts of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphony, but in fact this work from 1872 is more of a travelogue, and closer conceptually to Poème des rivages of 1921 than it is to Mendelssohn – except that d’Indy’s finale is also an exuberant saltarello. The symphony’s four movements refer to four Italian cities – Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples – and are intended as impressions of those urban areas within a symphonic construct. This is rather a lot for a young composer to attempt (d’Indy was 21 when he finished the work), and the symphony sprawls and loses its way several times despite the recurrence of certain unifying thematic material. Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony have clearly studied d’Indy’s output carefully for this series, and their performance is exemplary, with the special attention given to d’Indy’s orchestral colors reaping particularly happy rewards. And Poème des rivages sounds even better. This too has four movements connected with specific locations – Agay, Miramar in Mallorca, Falconara and La Grande Côte – and the instrumentation is exceptionally fine, including four saxophones, xylophone, piano and celesta, all deployed to fine effect within a highly colored and beautifully painted impressionistic canvas. Lasting even longer than the early Symphonie italienne but sounding far more tightly knit, Poème des rivages is a major work, symphonic in all but name while also being reminiscent of (but not unduly indebted to) Debussy. It is also, in this performance, a major success.

     The fourth of Carl Nielsen’s six symphonies, which Nielsen called “The Inextinguishable” – an adjective he said applied to both music and life – is a wartime work, first performed in 1916, and its affirmative nature (despite recurrent conflict, including between major and minor keys) likely reflected the time of its composition. But there is nothing specifically programmatic in this symphony, an intense and tightly knit work whose strong rhythms and sonic contrasts are well brought out by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Douglas Bostock, who also did a fine job with Nielsen’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 in a previous Scandinavian Classics release. Like the latest Chandos d’Indy CD, this disc provides an opportunity to compare mature and youthful symphonic works: Bostock includes the Symphonic Rhapsody, which dates to 1888 (when Nielsen was 23) and was intended as the first movement of a never-completed symphony. The work does feel like a symphonic first movement, and it contains a few characteristic harmonic and rhythmic elements even though, as a whole, it is not very distinctive. More interesting is the Cupid and the Poet suite, quite a late work (first performed in 1931, the last year of Nielsen’s life), written in the composer’s spare and transparent late style and in mostly moderate tempos. The CD also includes three songs that sound quite pleasant in Jan Lund’s mellow tenor, but unfortunately no texts are provided.

     A symphonic portrait of a different kind emerges from Bostock’s recording of the two Brahms orchestral serenades. This might be called a pre-symphonic portrait, since both these lightly scored multi-movement works (with six and five movements, respectively) were written long before the composer’s first symphony finally came forth. But unlike the youthful works of d’Indy and Nielsen, these serenades show a very sure command of melody, harmony and orchestration, and provide evidence of Brahms’ experimentation with sound – especially Serenade No. 2, which (like Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6) omits violins. The Chamber Philharmonic of Bohemia has just the right weight for these pieces, with the result that Serenade No. 1 is bright, upbeat and thoroughly pleasant from start to finish, while No. 2 is darker-hued but never depressing or even particularly deep. Taken together, the two serenades amount to studies by Brahms of the various possible ways to combine orchestral instruments, develop themes, and contrast lyrical passages with dramatic ones. Both serenades had been finished by 1859 (although Brahms revised No. 2 in 1875). The composer’s first symphony was not heard until 1876, after a famously long gestation period. Part of its birth can be clearly heard in these much lighter, less portentous and less firmly structured works, which are simply a great pleasure to hear in this winning performance.

(++++) FAIRY TALES AND FANTASIES

Josef Suk: Fantasy in G minor, Op. 24; Pohádka (Fairy Tale), Op. 16; Fantastické scherzo, Op. 25. Michael Ludwig, violin; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $8.99.

Ernesto Halffter: Carmen—Music for the 1926 silent film by Jacques Feyder. Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald. Naxos. $8.99.

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 13 (“Quasi una fantasia”) and 14 (“Moonlight”); Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op. 17; Chopin: Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49. Ian Parker, piano. Azica. $16.99.

     Because music inspires the mind and heart without actually having any inherent significance – Leonard Bernstein famously commented that music does not mean anything – it is a medium uniquely well adapted to fantasizing. And it has inspired many, many fantasy-oriented works, both better-known and less-known. The ones by Josef Suk on a new Naxos CD do not deserve their comparative obscurity: they are eloquent, tuneful, emotionally evocative and thoroughly enjoyable to hear. The Fantasy in G minor is simply an orchestral tone poem of considerable beauty, not telling any particular story but neatly stirring together the traditional elements of fantasy: romance, boldness, sylvan scenes and ultimate triumph. It is well orchestrated and very well played by the Buffalo Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta, who has been doing an outstanding job of reviving less-known works of the Romantic era. The inclusion of a solo violin will remind listeners of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and Michael Ludwig’s playing is both virtuosic and appropriately emotive. Pohádka (Fairy Tale) is a gem, too – and also somewhat reminiscent of Rimsky-Korsakov. It is an orchestral suite of music that Suk (1874-1935) wrote for a stage play that chronicles the legendary and entirely typical story of a prince seeking the hand of a princess and forced to endure many trials before finally winning her. The suite’s four movements include love music and passages of beauty, bravery and a stylized representation of death – symbolized by swans in the stage play and expressed by Suk in terms somewhat akin to Tchaikovsky’s in Swan Lake. Also on this CD is the very effective Fantastické scherzo, which seems to depict everything from mischievous woodland creatures to an idyllic setting where even the elves and gnomes can relax for a while. This disc is a very fine rediscovery indeed.

     A lesser discovery that gets a (+++) rating, the music to the 1926 silent film Carmen by Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) is appropriately dark and doom-laden, but rather one-dimensionally so. Halffter – whose older brother, Rodolfo, was also a composer of some talent – here produces a series of snippets, many lasting under two minutes and a few less than one, designed to illustrate scenes from Jacques Feyder’s movie, which follows essentially the same course as Bizet’s opera. The story of the seductive gypsy girl has plenty of elements of both fantasy and fairy tale, and its appeal as the basis for a movie is not at all difficult to understand. Presumably the music, which here receives its première recording, highlighted the various scenes appropriately and heightened the intended effects of the story on the audience. But as music, although it is certainly well-constructed and atmospheric, it is not always particularly interesting. By the time the fifth section marked “Mystérieux” comes along (actually, two of them are marked “Triste et mystérieuse”), the point has been abundantly made and over-made: sadness and mystery abound here. There is a certain amount of exoticism, too, and appropriate emotional heightening for “Mort de Carmen” at the end. But heard on its own, the music has only a modicum of emotional impact. Mark Fitz-Gerald leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony with aplomb, and the CD will certainly be of interest to movie buffs and fans of silent films, whose music could be so crucial to storytelling (as opposed to today’s movie music, whose main purpose is to redouble whatever emotion the director puts into a scene). But this is not the sort of disc to which one returns repeatedly for the sheer pleasure of the music itself.

     The Ian Parker CD rather coyly called “Moonlight Fantasies” is one in which the pleasures of the music predominate, but this too is a (+++) disc, simply because Parker handles the well-known piano works admirably but without bringing anything especially new to any of them. Beethoven’s two Op. 27 piano sonatas are both labeled “Quasi una fantasia,” but the second is almost always known by the title “Moonlight,” and Parker does a fine job of evoking the delicacy and refinement that led critic Ludwig Rellstab to give it that label in 1832. Parker plays Op. 27, No. 1 nicely, too, with a similarly delicate touch. But in neither sonata is there any sense of new or unusual ideas, or even any deep affinity for the music – these are solid, respectable performances but not ones of any particular distinction. Parker seems more involved in the Schumann and Chopin fantasies. The Schumann is a knotty work, as long as the two Beethoven sonatas combined, with considerable rhythmic complexity and frequently dense harmonies. Here Parker produces a performance of sweep and some depth. And he handles the Chopin Fantasy in F minor quite well, too, seeming altogether more comfortable with the Romantic emotion and finger work of this and the Schumann than with the balance between Classical and Romantic eras characteristic of the two Beethoven sonatas from 1801. This CD is actually a somewhat odd mixture, given the familiarity of the works: it does not really explore Beethoven, Schumann or Chopin, but instead presents unrelated works from different time periods that have in common only their “fantasy” identification. Listeners who do not yet own recordings of any of these pieces may find the combination appealing, but it is hard to imagine that many people who enjoy classical music will not already possess good performances of these standards of the piano repertoire.