(++++) WAGNER’S QUIET BEAUTY

Wagner: Parsifal. José van Dam, John Tomlinson, Matthias Hölle, Siegfried Jerusalem, Günter von Kannen, Waltraud Meier; Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin and Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Warner. $39.99 (4 CDs).

     One of the best recordings of Wagner’s final opera is available again, thanks to Warner’s reissue in its Teldec Opera Collection of Parsifal conducted by Daniel Barenboim – a 1989-90 recording first issued in 1991. Parsifal is and always has been a strange work, its text so overladen with myth and multiple meanings and controversies that the music tends to get lost in examinations of the libretto and arguments about it. This is a tremendous shame, since the music is utterly sublime, quieter and more elegant and ethereal than anything else Wagner wrote. The plot draws very heavily on central tenets of Christianity, yet Wagner – who, as usual, did his own libretto – studiously avoids mentioning Christ, referring only to “the Redeemer” and “the Savior.” Wagner himself wrote that the work was intended to elevate religious symbols above the literal (as organized religion would have them) into the realm of the figurative – a difficult philosophical concept that seems to fit the very difficult music, even if it is hard to say exactly how.

     But the music, so much of it quiet, is the glory here, and much of the Barenboim-led performance is glorious indeed. Barenboim’s tempos tend to be slow, but not overly so (some conductors really drag the music); and the orchestral detail is very well brought out, despite a recording that was mostly made at a low level (listeners will find that volume settings high enough to bring forth the softest sections are uncomfortably high for the loudest ones).

     The singing ranges from quite good to excellent. As Amfortas, José van Dam eloquently conveys spiritual sadness and suffering with rich, steady, burnished tones. Siegfried Jerusalem’s voice is sometimes pushed to its limits, but he makes a fine, youthful Parsifal, with especially clear phrasing and enunciation – a big help for those who know enough German to follow the singers, since this re-release contains no libretto, although its summary of the action is good. The booklet offers the URL of a Web site where it says the full libretto in German and English can be found, but the site seems to bring it up only in German; however, there are various places to get the libretto with English translation – www.rwagner.net is one example.

     In the crucial role of Kundry, Waltraud Meier plumbs the depths of a part that she has sung many times: her sound is sometimes poignant, sometimes haunting, and always effective. Matthias Hölle is a little weak in the part of Gurnemanz – John Tomlinson, who here sings Titurel, might have been a better choice. But Hölle brings understanding and fine detail to his singing, even if he lacks some vocal color and heft. As for Tomlinson, his Titurel is excellent, well characterized and well sung. Not so the Klingsor of Günter von Kannen – he is not nearly challenging or nasty enough, although his sheer vocal quality is very high. Indeed, this whole Parsifal is exceptionally well sung, with the male voices in the Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin worth singling out for the quality of their work in the Grail Temple scenes.

     Parsifal is not one of Wagner’s more popular operas, and Wagner himself did not even call it an opera but “A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage.” The slow pacing of the story, very long passages of extreme quiet and delicacy (including a Prelude that can easily put a listener to sleep, and perhaps is intended to lull people into a suitably dreamlike state for appreciation of the action), and stereotyped characters – as well as the strong, if not always coherent, religious theme – have kept Parsifal from the sort of success enjoyed by the Ring cycle. This is above all a rarefied work, undoubtedly a masterpiece, but a difficult and very lengthy one (the Barenboim performance lasts nearly four-and-a-half hours). In some ways, Parsifal is better heard in a recording than seen on stage, where its absurdities can clash with its sublimities. In the best recorded performances, the only thing a listener encounters is the sublime; and that is the preponderance of what this excellent re-release has to offer.

(++++) MORE-OR-LESS MODERNS

Alfredo Casella: Symphony No 3; Elegia eroica. Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma conducted by Francesco La Vecchia. Naxos. $9.99.

Ernst Krenek: Symphony No. 4; Concerto Grosso. NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Alun Francis. CPO. $16.99.

Echoes: Classic Works Transformed—Music of David Schiff, Bright Sheng, David Stock, John Harbison, Samuel Jones, Aaron Jay Kernis and Gerard Schwarz. Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Naxos. $9.99.

     The Romantic era is not the only musical period in which significant rediscovery is in progress. The so-called “modern” era (say, from Mahler onward) has become far more readily accepted in concert performances and recordings, with the result that there is increasing interest in offering some works outside what could be called the “modern mainstream.” The symphonies of Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) are examples, and Naxos has now made all three of them available – the first “Casella cycle” ever recorded. The final symphony, written on the eve of World War II in 1939-40, was composed for the 50^th anniversary of the Chicago Symphony and requires considerable orchestral virtuosity. Structured in the traditional four movements and running the traditional length of a Romantic-era symphony (about 45 minutes), Casella’s Third is a throwback in some ways, its melodic and harmonic worlds largely harking back to the 19^th century. It is also a work of considerable emotional scope – again, in line with symphonies of the previous century. The symphony is very well-wrought, and it certainly contains elements showing that Casella was not unaware of 20^th-century musical developments. It would be overstating to say that this is a great work, but it is an impressive one, and the emotional content of the Andante molto moderato, quasi adagio slow movement is particularly affecting. Francesco La Vecchia conducts the symphony with considerable empathy, and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma plays it very well. The ensemble also does a fine job with the extended lament from 1916, Elegia eroica, which Casella said was written in memory of a soldier killed in war – this is distinctly a work of World War I. The single soldier referred to by Casella is intended to stand for all Italian soldiers who had already died in the “Great War,” and the piece is a suitable lament, conveying strong emotions through well-controlled orchestration and a pervasive sense of solemnity.

     Only a few years separate Casella’s Elegia eroica from the Concerto Grosso, Op. 25, no. 2 by Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), but they were years of considerable musical as well as geopolitical turmoil: Krenek’s work dates to 1924, a time at which serialism and atonality were rampant and neoclassicism was on the rise. Krenek himself was in a kind of neo-Baroque period in the 1920s, and this work was decidedly part of it. The title is in no sense ironic: Krenek here revives the form of the Baroque Concerto Grosso, which was the “concerto for orchestra” of its time, and produces a pleasant and elegant work that gives particular prominence to a solo violin (Volker Worlitzsch), viola (Dimitar Penkov) and cello (Nikolai Schneider) while also requiring virtuosity from the NDR Radiophilharmonie as a whole. The orchestra faces even more challenges in Krenek’s Symphony No. 4 (1947), which here receives its world première recording. Krenek wrote eight symphonies, five of them numbered and the other three given titles; but the Fourth was long thought to have been lost – until it was rediscovered five years ago by the Krenek Institute. This is a very complex work that juxtaposes tonal and atonal elements and includes harmonic and other compositional techniques that combine elements of the 19^th century with ones of the 20^th. It is in some ways a hodgepodge, as if Krenek had not fully assimilated all the forms and approaches that he uses or to which he alludes; in other ways, it is a fascinating mid-20^th-century look at all the influences on which a composer could draw. Very difficult to play and not always easy to listen to, it gets a rousing reading under the baton of Alun Francis – but as interesting as the work is, it seems unlikely to become a staple of concerts or recordings anytime soon.

     Krenek was far from the only composer looking back as well as ahead in his works. A new Naxos CD called Echoes deliberately mixes the old and new in ways chosen by conductor Gerard Schwarz, whose Concerto for Brass Quintet and Orchestra (after Handel) is the longest work here and the climax of a CD that includes six other compositions in which contemporary composers consider and reconsider older models. The choice of those models is as interesting as some of the works themselves. David Schiff (born 1945) bases Infernal on Stravinsky; Bright Sheng (born 1955) bases Black Swan on Brahms; and David Stock (born 1939) takes Plenty of Horn loosely from Jeremiah Clarke. But the models, or initial influences, of the other composers are a bit more surprising. For John Harbison (born 1938), Rubies is “after Thelonius Monk”; for Samuel Jones (born 1935), Benediction is based on the only piece for which Peter C. Lutkin (1858-1931) is known today, The Lord Bless You and Keep You (which virtually every church choir sings). The seventh work on this CD, and the only one not written in 2006, is Musica Celestis (1991) by Aaron Jay Kernis (born 1960) and is simply designated “version for strings” – Kernis originally wrote the work for string quartet. All the pieces on this CD are short; only the Schwarz concerto lasts more than 10 minutes. The composers use their models in many different ways, sometimes seeking similar sonority, sometimes using the older composers’ harmonic language, sometimes creating something new that is based at best loosely on what was written before. Except for the theme of transformation of older composers’ works for the 20^th and 21^st centuries, there is nothing in particular that unifies this disc, which is best regarded as a sampler of the styles of some rather well-known contemporary composers. The CD gets a (+++) rating for exposing listeners to an uneven but mostly worthwhile set of short works that collectively show the many ways in which today’s composers build on, or around, the legacy of those who came before.

(++++) SEEKING THE ODD, AND FINDING IT

Magnetic Notepads: The Addams Family; Edward Gorey. Pomegranate. $7.95 each.

Arcimboldo Block Puzzle. Pomegranate Kids. $17.95.

David Sheskin’s Artful Animals Memory Game. Pomegranate Kids. $13.95.

     If you’re going to take notes – real, handwritten notes, not ones on a smartphone or a tablet, laptop or notebook computer – shouldn’t you do it in style? And if your style tends to the, shall we say, outré, shouldn’t you be able to accommodate your, ahem, peculiarities with something appropriate on which to jot down this or that? The folks at Pomegranate would clearly answer “yes” to both those questions (or however many questions are buried in those sentences). For amid the company’s fine-arts offerings and elegantly crafted books, there are a few notepads that ought to be odd enough for just about any taste. Take, for example, The Addams Family magnetic notepad. Its 70 lined pages neatly showcase, at the bottom, one of the drawings by Charles Addams (1912-1988) of his eponymous, ghoulishly adorable (or adorably ghoulish) family – which also appears in all its glory (if that’s the right word) on the notepad’s cover. The self-adhesive magnet makes this a neat notepad to stick on the refrigerator – especially useful if someone in the family who is not an Addams Family fan is trying to lose weight (scare them right off, it will). In truth, Addams was a subtle artist who preferred to imply grisly things rather than show them: a look at the Addams Family characters makes it instantly clear what they could do without actually showing you what they do do. In fact, the Addams clan seems positively harmless beside the far more elegant Edwardians of Edward Gorey (1925-2000), who visit mayhem upon one another in quite exemplary ways, then pop back indoors for a proper cup of tea (which, however, is as likely as not to be poisoned). There is a fine Gorey magnetic notepad available from Pomegranate, too, in exactly the same format as the Addams notepad, but this time with a Gorey drawing settled mischievously (or perhaps ominously) at the bottom right-hand side of each lined page. Gorey’s characters’ expressions are quite marvelous: when you see their faces at all (you often don’t), their wide-eyed look is one of amazement, fear, wonder, horror, expectation or uncertainty, or some mingling of those emotions with a few other unnamable ones. The elegance and care with which Gorey created his drawings pus them well beyond any standard of cartooning: Addams can readily be described as a cartoonist, but Gorey cannot be so easily pigeonholed. One thing is for sure about these offbeat and highly attractive (if somewhat bizarre) Pomegranate notepads: they are intended for adults, not for children.

     Ah, but Pomegranate has some oddities for children, too. Other firms’ kids’ lines do not challenge young people’s minds and perceptions the way Pomegranate’s does. Take the Arcimboldo Block Puzzle, for example. Pomegranate has a series of these puzzles, which draw on the company’s excellent fine-arts offerings for adults, but in a child-friendly way. The works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), however, are very different from most fine art, and this puzzle is accordingly a little, well, strange. Arcimboldo used assemblages of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books to create his portraits of people and mythical characters – that is, each character is made up of parts, each of which is recognizable as, say, a grape or a tree root. Arcimboldo influenced Salvador Dali, among other 20^th-century painters, and it is easy to see why. It is also easy to see how fascinating his portraits are when incorporated into Pomegranate’s block puzzle. There are 12 blocks that, when arranged properly, make six different pictures. Four of them represent the four seasons, and each of those contains objects associated with each season – spring flowers and autumnal fruits, for example. This makes the seasonal portraits somewhat easier for kids to create than the two other puzzles, “Flora” and “Vertumnis (Emperor Rudolf II),” which are both well-known in adult art circles but may be a bit, well, puzzling for kids. No matter – the puzzles of this puzzle are well worth puzzling out, and the quality of reproduction of Arcimboldo’s work is quite high for this medium. But Pomegranate does not look only to the past for child-oriented fun. David Sheskin’s Artful Animals is very up-to-date indeed – it is one of a series of memory games incorporating paired cards and an interesting little booklet. Sheskin’s gently whimsical animals appear in A-through-Z form (although not all letters are represented) in the booklet, which contains small pictures duplicating those on the cardboard cards. The cards themselves – 72 in all, which means 36 pairs – are meant to be matched: kids turn all of them face down and pick two, keeping the pair if they match and returning them to the face-down position if they don’t. Then the next player does the same thing, with the eventual winner being the one who holds the most matching pairs. The game is simple and straightforward, but also challenges memory (and in that respect can be useful for memory-challenged adults as well as for children). As for the booklet, it offers some genuinely interesting information: “Octopi can deliver painful bites laced with venomous saliva” and “Ostrich eggs weigh three pounds,” for example. Education, fun and art, all packed neatly together – Pomegranate has a winner here.

(+++) ALMOST REAL

First Day of School. By Anne Rockwell. Pictures by Lizzy Rockwell. Harper. $16.99.

Hooper Finds a Family: A Hurricane Katrina Dog’s Survival Tale. By Jane Paley. Harper. $15.99.

     Books that capture reality, or almost capture it, offer children a more-ordered view of their life in the world while still staying in touch with everyday occurrences. First Day of School is a matter-of-fact look at preparations for a new school year, from the days before the new term starts until the children actually show up in Mrs. Madoff’s classroom. Intended for ages 3-6, Anne Rockwell’s book keeps the excitement believable and low-key, from the boy narrator’s preschool haircut to shopping for a new backpack to memories of last year’s first-day jitters. Lizzy Rockwell’s pictures make the students determinedly multiethnic: white, Hispanic, black, Oriental, and so on. And the pictures make it clear that everyone gets along beautifully and is friends with everyone else. In fact, the book has so little conflict – none – that its main value will be for families wanting to show first-time students (most likely preschoolers, although possibly kindergartners) just how ordinary it is to make your own lunch, buy new shoes, and gather such supplies as a ruler, markers and pencils. Since there is nothing worrisome here, there is no climax, either: the book ends with the narrator, Nicholas, finding out that he and his friend Charlie are in the same class. First Day of School is, if anything, a little too close to reality: there is nothing special or heightened about it. But that may be just what young children worried about school need in order to approach the first day without fear.

     On the other hand, there is plenty of conflict and worry in Hooper Finds a Family, which TV producer Jane Paley bases on her experiences with the yellow Lab puppy she adopted after Hurricane Katrina. The book, for ages 8-12, includes pictures of the real-life Hooper at the end. But the Hooper of this narrative is the sort of imagined canine who will be familiar to young readers from many other books. Hooper narrates his own story, which begins in Lake Charles, Louisiana, as Hurricane Katrina hits, and eventually ends with the pup settling in with a new family in New York City. Between that start and that conclusion, there is plenty of angst to go around. The pup, named Jimmy in Louisiana, is washed along on a rooftop in a flood, encounters a poisonous cottonmouth snake, has to eat a baby bird to survive, is rescued by a man using a door as a boat, and is taken to a shelter – where he learns some valuable survival lessons from a dog he calls One-Eye. He loses his bark in the midst of all the terror – his regaining it much later, in New York, is an important development. The Jane character in the book (Paley’s fictionalized interpretation of herself) tells the family’s new pup, “Dare to be brave,” and that advice proves crucial to the newly named Hooper as he learns what it is like to be a city dog. Paley allows Hooper time for some amusing observations about her human family – “Jane’s not bad, but Larry is a grump and the kid’s very strange” – but the focus, by and large, is on Hooper’s thoughts as he tries to adapt to new circumstances, a new place and a totally new environment. The lessons learned in Louisiana prove crucial to success in New York, and eventually Hooper settles down and settles in with the family for a big happy ending. In an afterword, Paley tells young readers that many other animals were less lucky than Hooper; but the book itself is filled with warmth and a sense of abiding joy for dog and humans alike.

(+++) SCARY STUFF

Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror. By Jason Zinoman. Penguin. $25.95.

     “Since horror movies tap into hidden anxieties, average audience members read them the same way that psychiatrists do dreams. The inexplicable sits next to the explicable in your nightmares. Questioning the logic may be beside the point.” This is the core of theater critic Jason Zinoman’s analysis in Shock Value, which starts in the ashes of what Zinoman calls “Old Horror,” whose day had passed by the 1970s: “Most of them [the old horror stars] were either dying (Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff) or fading in popularity (Vincent Price, Peter Cushing).” And never mind Bela Lugosi, who had died in 1956 after years of becoming a sad parody of himself – his time might as well never have existed (Zinoman barely mentions him).

     What Zinoman does in Shock Value is chronicle the rise of auteur horror directors and discuss their films with the same sort of seriousness that critics typically bring to more-mainstream fare. In fact, Zinoman argues that horror is mainstream, that scenes such as “the operatic prom massacre in Carrie” are just as central to modern moviemaking as are less gory dramatic elements of non-horror films. Indeed, the line between horror and non-horror seems increasingly blurred, or at least did in the period on which this book focuses: “There was perhaps no more striking illustration of the artistic triumph of the New Horror genre than at the end of the decade, when Stanley Kubrick announced that he was going to make what he called ‘the ultimate horror film.’ …Critics did not call A Clockwork Orange a horror movie, even though it was one of the most violent and disturbing movies ever made. Since then, Hollywood had realized that horror sells.” Kubrick’s “ultimate” movie was The Shining, based on Stephen King’s novel about a writer going mad. Zinoman discusses the film and various reactions to it, but – and this is a significant weakness in Shock Value – he never weighs in on whether it is a good horror movie, or a good movie at all. It is one thing to be descriptive of The Shining as having “a mood of unease, a world of gapingly empty spaces, slow-paced scenes, and strange silences,” and quite another to say whether this accumulation of effects actually works, either in filmmaking terms or in those of the horror genre.

     Zinoman traces a great deal of “New Horror” to King and the film directors who adapted his work. But King in turn was strongly influenced, Zinoman says, by H.P. Lovecraft, quoting King as saying that Lovecraft “wasn’t simply kidding around or trying to pick up a few extra bucks. …He meant it.” This is quite true, although it is a vast oversimplification of Lovecraft; but Zinoman accepts the oversimplification at face value and expands upon it in analyzing a variety of “New Horror” movies. Indeed, he says that “the greatest monsters of the decade, the ones dreamed up by [John] Carpenter and [Dan] O’Bannon in Halloween and Alien, had their roots in H.P. Lovecraft.”

     It is a little hard to figure out where Zinoman himself comes down on the subject of the “New Horror,” since he generally prefers to quote others’ opinions rather than present his own. True, Zinoman says at one point that “it is undeniable that many adults like these movies not because they are good for them, but precisely because they aren’t,” and he makes the wry if scarcely original observation – elsewhere on the same page – that “if Hollywood in the 1970s taught us anything, it’s that trash actually gives us an appetite for bigger and better trash.” Yet although Zinoman finds at least some “New Horror” films trashy, he does not regard them, or the genre as a whole, as trash. He sees it as a legitimate form of filmmaking that developed far beyond what horror films had become in earlier decades. Indeed, Zinoman describes the 1970s as “the golden age of modern horror,” and while he notes that later films ratcheted up some of the themes of that decade into such fields as “torture porn,” he waxes nostalgic for a time before “the rise in stature of effects” replaced the necessary corner-cutting that creative directors turned into an advantage in the days before computer-generated imagery existed. Shock Value contains some intriguing descriptions, some fine quotations from directors and other involved in the horror genre, and enough inside information to interest fans of Night of the Living Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and many other now-famous (or notorious) genre films. It is not particularly revelatory of the underlying reasons for people’s fascination with horror and their changing tastes in it – Zinoman does discuss these matters, but largely in a superficial way. But even though horror draws on some psychologically very deep matters indeed (Lovecraftian horror is worth analyzing using Jung’s studies of archetypes), many horror films operate primarily on a superficial level; and on that level, Zinoman does a fine job explaining them and the people who made them and, in some cases, continue to do so.

(++++) THE MULTIFACETED VIOLIN

Mozart: Divertimento in E-flat, K. 563; String Trio in G, K. 562e (fragment). Henning Kraggerud, violin; Lars Anders Tomter, viola; Christoph Richter, cello. Naxos. $9.99.

Respighi: Violin Concerto in A; Aria for Strings; Suite for Strings; Rossiniana. Laura Marzadori, violin; Chamber Orchestra of New York ‘Ottorino Respighi’ conducted by Salvatore Di Vittorio. Naxos. $9.99.

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Music for Violin and Piano. Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Paavali Jumppanen, piano. Ondine. $16.99.

     The expressive as well as virtuosic potential of the violin is well known, but composers have handled the instrument very differently through the years. One of Mozart’s greatest and most appealing pieces combines the violin with only two other instruments, viola and cello, to produce a work that the composer surely knew was far more than the lighthearted, lightweight one implied by the title Divertimento. This is a six-movement, three-quarters-of-an-hour work of great beauty and profundity, seamlessly interweaving the three string instruments into a gorgeous sonic tapestry while also exploring their individual – as well as combined – sonority and expressive potential. Henning Kraggerud, Lars Anders Tomter and Christoph Richter are not a formally organized trio, and that fact sometimes shows through in ensemble passages that are very well played but that lack the apparently intuitive grasp of what each player is thinking and is about to do that the best trios show. Still, this performance is very well played, and even though the performers (especially Kraggerud and Tomter) are frequently heard as soloists, they do a fine job of subsuming any tendency toward competitive display here, with each player allowing the others their moments to shine. That is exactly what this music requires: cooperativeness at the highest level as well as exceptionally sensitive and skilled playing. This is a short CD, even with the inclusion of a four-minute fragment of another Mozart work for the same ensemble; but the pleasures of this music last a very long time indeed.

     Well over a century later, the violin appears in very different form in the 1903 concerto in A by Ottorino Respighi. The composer never finished this work – the version heard in its world première on a new Naxos CD was revised and completed by conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio, who is himself a composer. This concerto is largely composed with a look backwards, toward the concertos of Mendelssohn and other Romantic-era composers, although its emotional content seems more like the donning of an expected garment than a genuine expression of inner feelings. There is a fair degree of virtuosic display here – all of which Laura Marzadori handles quite well – but not so much plumbing of emotional depths. The work is most interesting for its coloristic handling of the orchestra: written two decades before the Roman Trilogy, it foreshadows some of the effects that Respighi would later use. Also on this CD is another Respighi world première recording: the Aria for Strings, transcribed by Di Vittorio. It is a short and graceful work of no great importance. The Suite for Strings, heard here in a Di Vittorio revision, is more substantial and more interesting, filled with grace and elegance that reflect the music and sensibilities of older times – which always fascinated Respighi, as shown most notably in his three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances. Indeed, this work somewhat resembles the third Ancient Airs and Dances suite, the only one written for strings rather than full orchestra. The fourth work on this CD is a suite of another sort: Rossiniana, which is less known and somewhat less ebullient than La boutique fantasque but carries much of the same verve in this nicely played performance. The CD as a whole offers a pleasant mixture of unknown Respighi works with one whose comparative familiarity helps put the others in perspective.

     The music of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (born 1928) is in general less familiar to audiences, and a new recording of some of his pieces for violin and piano, although very well played, is unlikely to change that. Rautavaara’s larger-scale works (symphonies, concertos, operas) are somewhat more impressive than the miniatures offered here, resulting in a (+++) rating for the CD. Four of the seven pieces heard on this disc are world première recordings: Lost Landscapes (2005), Summer Thoughts (1972/2008), April Lines (1970/2006), and Dithyrambos (1970). All are nicely constructed in a modern compositional idiom that lies more easily on the ear than is often the case with the music of 20^th- and 21^st-century composers. Also on the CD are Notturno e danza (1993), whose two movements are effectively contrasted, and Variétude (1974), a cleverly titled work for solo violin that nicely displays the performer’s technique. The final work on the disc is especially interesting: Pelimannit (The Fiddlers), a suite for piano that dates back all the way to 1952. It is written entirely for piano but based entirely on traditional Finnish fiddle tunes – and in this recording, Pekka Kuusisto plays each of those tunes before Paavali Jumppanen performs each of the movements of the suite. The result is an intriguing opportunity to hear a composer’s sources of inspiration – and how he alters them in his chosen instrumental and compositional idiom. Although Rautavaara’s music has not caught on internationally to the same extent as that of his countryman Sibelius, it is generally interesting and certainly worth occasional hearings, even if most of the short-form works on this CD are somewhat less engaging than Rautavaara’s larger and more ambitious compositions.

(+++) HEAR THIS, SEE THAT

Christopher Theofanidis: Symphony No. 1; Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs. Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano. ASO Media. $18.99.

Christopher Shultis: Openings; Songs of Love and Longing; “a little light, in darkness”; Devisadero. University of New Mexico Wind Symphony conducted by Eric Rombach-Kendall; Leslie Umphrey, soprano; Falko Steinbach, piano; Carrie Koffman, soprano saxophone. Navona. $16.99.

Big Bully (Best Foot Forward series). Big Round Records. $16.99.

Aaron Copland: Fanfare for America. A film by Andreas Skipis. Arthaus Musik DVD. $24.99.

Martha Argerich: Live at Verbier Festival. Martha Argerich, piano; David Guerrier, trumpet; Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy. EuroArts DVD. $24.99.

     When Peter Lieberson died in Israel in April at the age of 64, he was officially a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Few in the general public likely took note of his death from complications of lymphoma, but his passing reverberated in both the musical and Buddhist worlds. A longtime student of Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa, Lieberson brought Buddhist sensibilities to a considerable amount of his music once he began devoting himself full-time to composition in 1994. Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, written for his second wife, mezzo-soprano Hunt Lieberson, have an illustrious history, which includes performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra (which co-commissioned the work) and receipt of the 2008 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. The new Atlanta Symphony recording cannot feature Lieberson – she died in 2006 – but Kelley O’Connor handles the five songs with sensitivity and emotional directness, their many moods of love coming through clearly and effectively. The songs are paired on the Atlanta’s Symphony’s new CD with the world première recording of Symphony No. 1 by Christopher Theofanidis (born 1967), which Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony commissioned. Completed in 2009, the work is in the traditional four movements, is solidly structured within the form, and offers a well-considered mixture of accessibility and modernism, both of which Spano brings out effectively in this recording.

     Like Lieberson, Christopher Shultis (born 1969) has a connection to New Mexico – and his in fact stronger than Lieberson’s. Shultis writes music deliberately intended to evoke the landscapes of the state, much as Georgia O’Keeffe made those vistas and the details within them the subject of her art. Shultis reaches for emotional connection with the listener, and if he does not always find it or sometimes seeks it in over-obvious ways, he connects often enough and effectively enough to make his music interestingly different from that of many other contemporary composers. Hearing Shultis’ Songs of Love and Longing (2001-03) not long after listening to Lieberson’s Neruda Songs gives a listener quite a contrast in approach, with the Lieberson works timeless and without specific sense of place, focusing on interpersonal relationships, while the Shultis songs are about geography rather than people, their longing being for open space and the emotion evoked by New Mexico vistas rather than for a strong person-to-person connection. Leslie Umphrey and Falko Steinbach perform the Shultis cycle with sensitivity and involvement, which are also in evidence from the University of New Mexico Wind Symphony and Eric Rombach-Kendall in the four-movement Openings (2004-07), a suite whose focus is as personal as that of the songs is external: the four movements are “Mouth,” “Mind,” “Eye” and “Ear.” The whole work is, of course, heard with the ear, and Shultis’ woodwind writing is attractive, even if the relationship between the movements’ titles and the music itself is not always evident. Also on this Navona CD is “a little light, in darkness” (1995-2000), whose uncapitalized title includes the quotation marks. This is a work for soprano saxophone and winds, essentially a fantasia/concertino, and is well played here if perhaps a little over-long for what it has to say. The final work on the CD, the piano suite Devisadero (2002-07), includes six short descriptive movements that neatly and enjoyably (if not always very originally) portray such New Mexico scenes as the wind blowing, an ant running, a bird chirping and a rustling leaf. This is pleasant rather than challenging music – and that is just fine.

     Music meets challenges of a different kind in Big Bully, a very short (36-minute) CD intended to address a very big problem: bullying of children by other children. The 15 tracks here, ranging in length from a minute and a half to four minutes, are intended to help kids who are bullied understand that they are not alone, that it is possible to do something, and that they are important and valued even if a bully makes them feel small and insignificant. The CD’s intentions are unexceptionable, but the music itself is unexceptional, hitting all the expected angles (“Bully Bubba,” Vicious Vinnie,” “Don’t Bully Me,” and so on) but – perhaps inevitably – vastly oversimplifying a significant and complex societal issue. The disc may make some bullied children feel better simply by acknowledging their hurt and fear, but the ones whose behavior really needs to be changed – the bullies themselves – are unlikely ever to listen to it, much less alter their actions as a result of it. The first release in a series called “Best Foot Forward,” Big Bully has commendable aims and some pleasant songs that strike the right notes both musically and educationally. But the songs’ notions of how to deal with bullies are simplistic at best, and whatever reassurance the CD provides to bullied children is, unfortunately, unlikely to survive their next encounter with a real-life bully.

     Children might be more inspired if they could watch Andreas Skipis’ documentary, Aaron Copland: Fanfare for America, for this is the story of a Russian-Jewish New Yorker who overcame a whole set of challenges in life to become one of the best-known and most popular composers of Americana. Various compositions by Copland are heard (in excerpts) during the 60-minute film, which also includes an interview with the composer himself and comments by his biographer, Howard Pollack, and conductor Hugh Wolff. It is fun to see musical celebrities engaging with Copland’s works – Martha Graham dancing Appalachian Spring, Leonard Bernstein conducting A Lincoln Portrait, Benny Goodman playing the Clarinet Concerto (which he commissioned) – but the excerpts are too short to give the full effect of the music or of these particular performances. Nevertheless, the film has many attractive elements, even though (like so many works about Copland) it gives short shrift to his later, more difficult, less accessible works – focusing on pieces that have become iconic but beyond which Copland moved many years before his death in 1990. Intended for adults, Skipis’ film should also appeal to at least some children, who may enjoy the jazzy rhythms of the musical selections and the story of an unlikely purveyor of heartland Americana.

     There is a good deal to enjoy as well in Martha Argerich: Live at Verbier Festival, although there is little reason to have the Argentine pianist’s performances on this DVD rather than on CD. There are actually two Verbier Festivals here: Argerich plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Scarlatti’s D minor sonata, Kk. 141, at the 2009 festival, and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the 2010 festival. The latter also includes Bizet’s Symphony in C, designated a “bonus” even though, without it, the DVD would barely last an hour (and even with it, it comes in at less than an hour and a half). Argerich (born 1941) is a fine performer who brings flair and understanding to everything she plays here, and the festival chamber orchestra backs her up well – although Gábor Takács-Nagy has nothing especially interesting to communicate in the Bizet. The performances are well done, the relaxed atmosphere of the festival comes through nicely, and the video direction (by Philippe Béziat in 2009 and Anaïs Spiro in 2010) is not overly intrusive. However, there is no particular rationale for owning these performances or this repertoire on DVD except as a souvenir, for those who attended the Verbier Festival in Switzerland or, perhaps, those who wished they were there.

(++++) WHERE THINGS ARE GOING

The Norumbegan Quartet, Volume 3: The Empire of Gut and Bone. By M.T. Anderson. Scholastic. $17.99.

Movie for Dogs. By Lois Duncan. Scholastic. $5.99.

     It turns out that M.T. Anderson had been constructing a four-book series about a peculiar interstellar war, featuring two Earthbound friends and two different but equally obnoxious alien races, all along. Who knew? Apparently not Anderson, who only reveals in The Empire of Gut and Bone that the two previous books were the first half of The Norumbegan Quartet. Those books, The Game of Sunken Places and The Suburb Beyond the Stars, seemed to veer wildly and not always coherently from place to place and time to time. The first, Anderson’s revision of a book he originally wrote in the days of “Dungeons and Dragons,” introduced friends Brian Thatz and Gregory Stoffle, “two lobes of the same brain,” and took them through an elaborate role-playing game that turned out to have Earth hanging in the balance because the game was, in reality, being played with the boys as surrogates for two alien races. Luckily, Brian realized that and the game ended in a way that saved Earth and put Brian in charge of the next game. But then Anderson shifted gears, abandoning the “game” idea altogether and turning the second book into a weird but foundationally ordinary alien-invasion story – since the losing race from the first book (the Thusser) had decided to cheat, rendering the whole “game” superstructure irrelevant. In The Empire of Gut and Bone, Anderson seems finally to have discovered the direction in which he wants these books to go, with the result that this third volume knits together many of the unclear elements of the earlier books while advancing the story neatly. Here, Brian and Gregory have gone through a portal to the world of the Norumbegans (the winning race from the first book) to enlist their help in dealing with the rule-breaking Thusser (whom the boys fought in the second volume). Trouble is, the Norumbegans turn out to be very slimy indeed: far from heroic, far from helpful and far from admirable. In some senses, they are literally slimy, since their entire empire exists within what appears to be a colossal body of some sort, possibly a dead one or possibly one functioning on so vast a time scale that those living inside it, essentially as parasites, cannot possibly figure out what the creature is doing. This is a very clever setup, not entirely original but handled in some very original ways, and often with Anderson’s peculiar sense of humor slipping in at what seem to be inopportune moments, as when one character explains to the boys, “‘There are seven major fluids in the Great Body: ichor, yellow bile, the hard aliment, the sublime aliment, flux, lux effluvium, and brunch.’” Anderson layers plot upon plot here, mingling them skillfully: the old robots-rebelling-against-their-masters notion is made more complicated by the robotic creatures being more admirable than the snooty backstabbers whose ancestors long ago created intelligent artificial beings but who themselves have long since lost the ability to do so. Also here are some court-and-courtiers parody, some “can anyone here be trusted?” plot elements, and a murder mystery. Complex and convoluted, the plot ends up coming together rather neatly – or rather, the multiple plots are well assembled by Anderson, and even if the seams sometimes show at the joinings, there is enough fun and adventure here so readers will sweep by the occasional awkwardness and barely notice it. By the end of The Empire of Gut and Bone, readers will have a good sense of where Anderson is going – a better sense than he seemed to have himself in the earlier books. All signs point to the conclusion of The Norumbegan Quartet being a real winner.

     Movie for Dogs, originally published last year and now available in paperback, is not a winner at this level, but this (+++) book will be fun for readers who enjoyed its predecessors, Hotel for Dogs and News for Dogs. Lois Duncan’s summertime story has Bruce and his sister, Andi, learning about a filmmaking contest whose theme is dogs, and deciding to make Red Rover a celluloid star. The plot requires Bruce and Andi to get through a scam perpetrated by their nemesis, Jerry Gordon; some serious competition from an unexpected source; and some pushy Hollywood types, who keep getting on the kids’ nerves. There is certainly nothing wrong with this combination of familiar plot, familiar characters, a twist in which the bad guys almost get away with their evil scheme, and of course a feel-good ending. Readers of the two previous books will enjoy this one, even if they realize it is no more than another variation on the same theme presented in the first two books. In fact, that may be the biggest attraction of Movie for Dogs: like a Hollywood film sequel, it provides nothing very unusual or surprising, but lets fans revisit familiar territory that they have already decided they want to see again.

(+++) FOOD STUFF

Just Tell Me What to Eat! The Delicious 6-Week Weight Loss Plan for the Real World. By Timothy S. Harlan, M.D. Da Capo. $25.

Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet – All on $5 a Day or Less. By Linda Watson. Da Capo. $17.

     An exceptionally clever idea marred by imperfect execution, Timothy Harlan’s Just Tell Me What to Eat! starts from a premise that is the opposite of that in most diet books. Instead of telling people what to avoid eating, he explains what people should eat in order to lose weight. And he gives specific, day-by-day recipes. And he makes sure the foods can be cooked in 30 minutes or less, in most cases, since he knows how busy people are. And since he realizes that some readers may be too busy even for 30 minutes of cooking, he offers convenience-food and restaurant-meal alternatives to many home-cooked dishes. At last, it would seem, there is a diet book that resides firmly in the real world. And Harlan seems the perfect person to write it, being a medical director at Tulane University School of Medicine, a practicing internist, and a chef and TV personality. Unfortunately, although all this makes the book seem good enough to eat (so to speak), the execution of the concept does not quite live up to the idea itself. This is a cluttered book. The main narrative is fairly easy to follow, but first you have to find it. A short discussion of body-mass index, for example, is followed by a recipe for a dinner dish (blackened redfish) and then a page containing three boxes, the first from “Chef Tim” saying to use a cast-iron skillet, the second from “Dr. Tim” saying to eat brown rice more often, and the third from “Chef Tim” (again) saying to eat rice. Then come recipes for dirty rice and maple-sweetened collard greens, followed by two suggestions for convenience meals and two for restaurant meals – as alternatives to the home-prepared one. The layout itself is not pleasing to the eye, with multiple typefaces and type sizes that do not always go well together. And the “Chef Tim” and “Dr. Tim” hats that the author keeps using (and changing) come to seem gimmicky and wear out their welcome quickly, especially when – as in the “rice” example – the two “hats” are simply discussing different aspects of the same subject. This sounds like a book whose straightforward approach will take little work: just follow Harlan’s prescription and you will have healthful meals that will also help you lose weight. In practice, though, it is not always easy to follow, even if you use the “goals” set out each week as a guide to the narrative that will be presented for that week. Furthermore, some of the more tempting recipes are really nowhere near the 30-minute range: “pizza with Thai peanut sauce and scallops,” for example, takes 30 minutes to cook but also requires 60 minutes of preparation time, while “spring barley salad” requires 60 minutes of cooking time. Also, the sequence of the narrative is sometimes rather odd: Harlan calls measuring ingredients “one of the simplest tips for reducing calories and eating healthy [sic],” but he does not get into the subject until Day 19. And Harlan is rather self-promotional in much of the book – at one point, on a single page, he twice refers readers to his Web site (once for dessert recipes and once for product reviews). The idea of a book that lays out, simply and straightforwardly, what a person should eat at every meal for six weeks – resulting in better food habits plus weight loss – remains attractive. But Harlan’s book, as commendable as it is in some ways, isn’t it.

     For those whose tastes run to organic food but whose budgets do not, Linda Watson’s Wildly Affordable Organic is a guidebook of a different sort. About half the book is recipes, which are fine, if nothing special. The other half is more interesting, with the most intriguing section of all being a season-by-season set of recommendations for shopping and recipes – including cost estimates. These once-a-month shopping lists are really excellent, showing, for each item, its food category, how much to buy, what to expect to spend at a “green price” and “thrifty price”, and what percentage you will likely have left at the end of the month. As for the money-saving concept, it is mostly pretty straightforward (“watch the unit price, not the package price”), but there are some useful approaches that readers may not have thought of. For instance, Watson warns against believing that “bigger is better,” saying that “you’ll often pay less for several medium jars of peanut butter than one big jar with the same amount.” And she points out that buying foods in specialty portions of a market, such as the Hispanic aisle, can be a big money saver – real vanilla cost $5.95 for two ounces in one baking aisle vs. $3.59 for two ounces in the Hispanic aisle, a 40% saving…while sesame seeds, $3.43 for one ounce in the baking aisle, cost $0.59 for 1.5 ounces in the Hispanic aisle – 89% less. Watson also explains that some types of food buying may be counter-intuitive from both a cost and ecological standpoint: “Smaller packages of preshredded cheese let you buy close to the amount you need. [And] you’ll save water and time by not scrubbing a grater.” Where does the “organic” element come into all this? Many of Watson’s ideas can be used by anyone who buys any type of food. But she does have a strong interest in promoting the use of organic foods, although tempered with an understanding of the very high price at which they often come: “Buy certified organic ingredients when you can afford to and when doing so makes sense.” She suggests, for example, using store-brand organic olive oil to save money, then applying the savings “to get good vinegar.” Her “scrimp or splurge” table is helpful: scrimp on maple syrup but splurge on honey; scrimp on tea but splurge on coffee (a real judgment call, that one); scrimp on rice but splurge on eggs; and so on. Neither Watson’s specific recommendations nor her overall orientation will please readers who are not already predisposed to buying and preparing organic foods – even though a good deal of what Watson advises applies as well to traditionally grown and prepared food. Wildly Affordable Organic is most useful for its shopping information and its well-constructed once-a-month, seasonal shopping lists; these are what elevate it above standard advocacy books and above other cookbooks containing recipes similar to the ones here.

(+++) REALITY RETHOUGHT

Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race. By Todd G. Buchholz. Hudson Street Press. $25.95.

Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens. By Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke. Zest Books. $14.99.

     It’s been said before: even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat. Harvard economics professor and former White House economic-policy director Todd Buchholz thinks that’s just fine. In fact, he argues, the rat race – setting and achieving goals in a competitive environment – is what life is all about. Give it up because of some belief in a mythical Eden where life was slow, easy and altogether better, and you will vegetate. “Simpler times” are as much a myth as the “noble savage” was in an earlier era. Buchholz’s Rush is part analysis, part intellectual argument, part sheer hyperbole – and, for the most part, an effort at debunking the “happiness industry.” Buchholz worries that many researchers are far too willing to extrapolate small-group findings onto society at large, then urge actions based on an inadequate sample and faulty assumptions. “It is one thing to observe limbic brains light up in a few dozen graduate students; it is another to want to tear up social and economic systems affecting hundreds of millions of people,” he writes, commenting on certain other economists’ use of studies of human kindness as a basis for arguments that people in general are born to be nice. Buchholz believes that it is impossible – and, if possible, would be undesirable – to avoid the sort of anxiety that work and freedom bring: “There is an exhilaration in facing up to the twists of life. …We are, simply put, programmed to take risks, to create something better out of chaos.” Thus, Buchholz cites a variety of studies that show a drop in people’s cognitive abilities after retirement – although it is not 100% certain that such drops are caused only by the cessation of work rather than by internal physical causes. Still, Buchholz has a point – quite a few points. He does, though, sometimes make them a little irritatingly. On one page, for example, he writes, “When we see a pattern repeat, bumps literally grow on the dendrites, reinforcing the recognition. If you watched dendrites through an electron microscope while a patient listened to a repetitive, catchy tune…you might literally witness the dendrites transform.” And on the next page: “Neural pathways make good metaphors, but they literally reflect social pathways.” Now let us literally wait a minute and then, 60 seconds later, think through all those “literally” uses, from the accurate to the insipid to the exaggerated. Buchholz’ style does him few favors. Nevertheless, he offers some solid thinking and some genuinely interesting ideas – often, if not always, well expressed. Take the distinction that Buchholz (and others) make between positive and negative stress. Buchholz sums this up neatly, and in a way to which readers will readily relate: “Dangerous stress does not come from engaging in a free-ranging, flexible, and ever-changing economic system. Dangerous stress arises when you come home from work to a home vibrating with rage and disappointment. It is not the rushing that hurts your soul, it’s the thud of a paralyzed situation.” Of course, work itself can be “a paralyzed situation,” and many studies have found that people with little control over their jobs develop a variety of health problems as a result. So Buchholz is not saying that all work is good or all relaxation bad. What he is saying is that humans are not built for vacations, long-term relaxation, or a return to a mythical time of lower stress. Biology, psychology, evolution and economics, he says, all point to humans as doers, needing activity and work to keep their minds sharp and their bodies functioning at optimal levels. The proposition may be arguable – the whole book is, after all, an argument for it. And this is an argument worth having at a time when advocates of bubble baths and yoga persist in telling people that if they would only slow down enough, for a long enough time, they would be better. Better vegetables, maybe, Buchholz would retort; but not better human beings.

     Human beings come in all shapes and sizes, and with all sorts of predilections, so exceptions to Buchholz’s arguments are easy enough to find: exceptions to any wide-ranging argument are easy enough to find. But the old saying that the exception proves the rule remains valid – “proves” in the sense of “puts to the proof,” or “tests.” Societally, one of the things that tests a nation’s claimed openness and commitment to freedom is its handling of people who live in ways that are well outside the mainstream – such as people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT). Queer is a book designed to help teenagers, who are most likely to be developing their adult sexuality and coming to terms with it, understand and cope with a realization that they are members of the LGBT community. Indeed, one of the most important things Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke do is show teens that there is an LGBT community: both authors are members, and both share some of their own histories as well as offering teens methods of coping with their non-majoritarian sexuality. The book’s seven chapters do not offer enough depth to justify the authors’ calling Queer any sort of “ultimate” guide, but it is a good introduction to LGBT life and to ways of living within a society that is not fully comfortable with sexual minorities. Belge and Bieschke do not begin with sex – it is their last chapter, not their first. This is refreshing, allowing the book to be mostly about societal issues rather than private ones. The authors cover deciding whether you are queer; when and how to “come out”; finding other LGBT people; dealing with “queerphobia”; dating; relationships; and, finally, sex. Their point is that being queer is not something teens will necessarily find out only after they start having sex: “Most people say that if you are queer, you’ll know it on a much deeper level. …Obviously, sex is part of the queer equation, but it’s definitely not the whole thing.” This is quite a healthy attitude and, when you think about it, quite a logical one: most people would not define someone’s entire being because that someone was heterosexual, so why do so when someone is homosexual? But society does not see things the same way where majority and minority sexual preference is concerned – and that is a big part of this book’s point. In fact, boxes called “On the Queer Frontier” specifically deal with such societal issues as gays in the military, historical lesbian socializing and activism, queer marriage, and more. Queer is full of suggestions on managing in society, managing with one’s peers, managing with potential lovers and actual ones, managing life in general. It also offers the message that there are “cool people in the world to balance out the jerks” – which should be reassuring to teens just discovering their minority sexual orientation. Queer is, however, stylistically a little too earnest, a little too determinedly upbeat. For example, the authors urge political participation in these terms: “Always try to stay positive and make good connections with people – both queer and straight – who are on your side. In the end, if your campaign loses, remember that it’s just one battle. Real change often takes a few tries. So don’t give up hope. Instead, know that you did everything you could to stand up for what you believe. And the next time the issue is up for a vote, jump back in again and go for the win.” This is all a bit Pollyanna-ish, as are many of the fairly rosy scenarios painted in the book for teens grappling with bullying, parents who do not understand, difficult peer groups, and hormones. Still, Queer does provide LGBT teens with a good starting point for self-analysis and interaction with the world at large. It is far from an “ultimate” book, but it is certainly a useful starting point.

(+++) SUMMER SOJOURNS

Tía Lola Stories No. 3: How Tía Lola Saved the Summer. By Julia Alvarez. Knopf. $15.99.

Junonia. By Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $15.99.

The Last Little Blue Envelope. By Maureen Johnson. HarperTeen. $16.99.

     The irrepressible Tía Lola returns for a third time in Julia Alvarez’ new book for ages 8-12. This time Alvarez creates a summer story rather than the school-year one in How Tía Lola Learned to Teach, which in turn followed How Tía Lola Came to Stay, a book in which a temporary visit from the Dominican Republic turned into something long-term and altogether wonderful. Everything Tía Lola does has a certain sense of wonder about it: Tía Lola is endlessly creative and always seems to know the right kind of fun to keep young children happy. This time, Tía Lola has to deal with a very unhappy Miguel, whose mother has agreed to let another family – a father with three daughters and a dog – live with them temporarily. The Espada (“sword”) family is trying to decide whether or not to move to Vermont, so their temporary residence with the Guzmans is a sort of trial run; but Miguel wants none of it. To the rescue comes Tía Lola, who decides to create a summer camp packed with games, treasure hunting, barbecues and a special end-of-summer surprise. Miguel is at first unconvinced: “Tía Lola loves everyone, boys and girls, so what would she know about girls getting in the way?” But of course it is just that -- Tía Lola’s love for everyone – that saves the summer for everyone. She is a kind of Mary Poppins figure: “Tía Lola being Tía Lola, she has a way of turning even a ridiculous contribution into something worthwhile.” The problems here are minor, the solutions heartwarming, and the overall family values presented straightforwardly and with emotion. There is nothing complicated or particularly deep about How Tía Lola Saved the Summer, which makes the book a good choice for summer reading.

     Junonia is also a good summer selection for the same age group. Kevin Henkes’ book is about Alice Rice, who will turn 10 during this summer’s family visit to Florida and who hopes, really hopes, that she will find a flawless junonia shell – a beach rarity. Alice hopes especially hard because the summer is not starting out very well: some of her favorite fellow vacationers are not coming this year, and one who is coming, “honorary aunt” Kate, is bringing along a new boyfriend who has a difficult-to-manage six-year-old daughter, Mallory, “such a sad little girl.” The junonia becomes something of an obsession for Alice: “Finding a junonia would be the perfect gift [for her 10^th birthday]. She picked up one of her new tulip shells and turned it in the light. It was covered with bluish gray and brown markings. Its inner surface was lustrous. It was even more smooth than the lambs at the cemetery. It was many things, but it wasn’t a junonia.” This is one of those books deliberately written in a gentle, lyrical style, which can be as alluring and as lulling as the motion and soft noises of small waves at a beach. Eventually, Alice does find a junonia, but it turns out not to be what she expects, and everything goes wrong, until everything is reversed and goes right; and by the end of the book, after the family has packed up for the trip home from the beach, a very content Alice is left thinking, pleasantly if wholly unrealistically, “I will never be old. I will never die. It’s right now. I’m ten.” The book’s emotional ebb and flow will appeal to some preteen readers even as its lack of significant activity and rather narrow focus will make it rather dull reading for others.

     There is not supposed to be anything dull about the adventure that Ginny Blackstone has in The Last Little Blue Envelope. This is a summer-after-the-summer-before story for ages 12 and up. Ginny spent the previous summer following tasks laid out for her by her aunt in a series of letters written before the aunt died. Maureen Johnson chronicled those adventures in 13 Little Blue Envelopes, at the end of which Ginny’s backpack – containing the final little blue envelope – was stolen. So Ginny would never know what the last letter said, but would always remember the adventures she did have and the growth she experienced (“the adventures of the summer had been a triumph of imagination”). Fast-forward to this sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope, in which the title object is in the hands of an English boy named Oliver, who contacts Ginny and says he has the envelope and the backpack. Now a sophisticated world (or at least European) traveler, Ginny, who has turned 18, picks up and heads from New Jersey to London and another adventure, this one taking her to England, Ireland, Belgium and France. It also takes her places emotionally, back to the thoughts of her artist aunt and forward into her own future in college…although where she will go to college remains uncertain until the very end of the book. Characters are actually better developed here than in the previous book, although the mysterious (and, of course, very attractive) Oliver is pretty thinly sketched. The book does not stand on its own – it will make little sense to anyone who has not read the previous one. But for those did read the first book, this one does a good job of answering a lot of questions left unanswered in 13 Little Blue Envelopes. It also offers a combination of new things with revisiting old places and old friends (although Ginny’s aunt had said you can never really go back, because each return is an entirely new experience). A satisfying followup for readers disappointed by not knowing what Aunt Peg’s last letter said or where it would have sent Ginny, The Last Little Blue Envelope will be enjoyable summer reading this year for teen girls who enjoyed the previous book last year.

(++++) SYMPHONIC ENDINGS

Mahler: Symphony No. 9. Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich conducted by David Zinman. RCA. $17.99 (2 SACDs).

Mahler: Symphony No. 10. Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich conducted by David Zinman. RCA. $12.99 (SACD).

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8. Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. Arthaus Musik DVD. $24.99.

     Mahler’s and Bruckner’s final completed symphonies, the Ninth and Eighth respectively, are monumental works in every sense: huge, long, emotionally fraught, deep, emotive and very difficult to sustain in performance. It is testimony to the quality of modern conductors that so many have essayed these gigantic works and have done so well with them. And among them, David Zinman ranks particularly high, having produced in his new Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich recording a forward-looking, harmonically adventurous and very austere Mahler Ninth. This work does not dwell on inward emotion to the extent of many performances, dating back at least to Leonard Bernstein’s. Instead, this becomes a symphony that both looks backward to Mozartean roots and glances ahead to Schoenberg and his disciples – a piece that stands as a crucial linchpin of symphonic development, not merely an outpouring of highly personal emotion. But this is not to say that emotion is lacking, especially in the finale, which Zinman conducts with intensity that verges on the wrenching. The one thing this highly controlled rendition does not do is “cut loose” in any meaningful way. The second movement flows beautifully but perhaps a touch too expansively, and the Rondo-Burleske never reaches the heights of hysteria that make the final Adagio so overwhelming in contrast. Zinman nevertheless makes a very strong case for his approach to the symphony, which is a very thoughtful one that strips the work of some emotional intensity in return for showing the strength of its musical foundation and the consistency of its musical thought. It would have helped, though, to split the work differently between discs: only the final Adagio is on the second, but the symphony and this performance would have been better served if the first two movements had been on the first SACD and the last two on the second one.

     Mahler’s Ninth is the capstone of Zinman’s cycle of all the composer’s symphonies; the Tenth comes across as more of an addendum. The reason is that Zinman, who in the past has conducted the Deryck Cooke performing version of this uncompleted work, here turns instead to the very first attempted completion of the symphony, by Clinton A. Carpenter. Carpenter (1921-2005), an American musicologist, worked on this score from 1946 until1966; the first performance was in 1983. The main effect of hearing Mahler’s Tenth this way is to make one grateful for Deryck Cooke’s comparatively modest work, which sounds very much like late Mahler even though it is certainly not the way Mahler himself, had he lived, would have finished the symphony. Carpenter’s Mahler Tenth does not sound much like late Mahler at all, for several reasons. For one thing, Carpenter thickens the orchestration and enriches the harmony, robbing the work of the extremely spare lines hinted at in other late Mahler works (the Ninth and Das Lied von der Erde). Furthermore, to avoid composing material to fill in blank spots in the score, Carpenter pulls in excerpts from earlier Mahler symphonies – an approach with which it is easy to sympathize, but one that it is very difficult to approve or enjoy. The Tenth is not the Sixth or Seventh, after all, and hearing bits of those earlier works in Mahler’s final symphony is unnerving, jarring and dislocating – it is all too clear that this is not Mahler’s Tenth as the composer would have wanted it to sound. Zinman’s conducting is less agile and involved here than in the rest of the symphonies, too. The recording gets (+++) for high-quality playing (the orchestra is excellent) and for providing the chance to hear an unusual, if deeply flawed, version of the symphony. But this Mahler Tenth will not likely be any listener’s first choice.

     As for Bruckner’s Eighth, the (++++) live recording by Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra may come as a surprise to those who know this conductor for his intellectual approach to music – which often produces well-played but rather unemotional readings. Welser-Möst turns out to have a real affinity for Bruckner: this is a carefully controlled but scarcely unemotional reading of the symphony, with top-notch orchestral playing and a welcome use of the 1887 Leopold Nowak version of the score – which runs a full hour and a half. There is elegance, refinement and considerable intensity throughout this performance, whose relatively few metronomic moments are more than compensated for by conducting that, the majority of the time, lets the music flow naturally and allows the musicians a chance to shine with truly beautiful tone. It is worth pointing out that the 1887 version of this symphony will not please all lusters: the first movement ends loudly, not softly as in later versions, and the third contains six cymbal clashes rather than the two heard elsewhere. Many critics believe the 1887 version is significantly flawed because of these matters – the first-movement triumph seeming premature and the many cymbal clashes simply vulgar. But the fact remains that this is how Bruckner originally saw the symphony, and it is a view that modern listeners rarely have the opportunity to experience (although Georg Tintner recorded the 1887 version in his Bruckner cycle for Naxos). The big question about this DVD, as always when it comes to visualizing classical music, is whether the pictures enhance the listening experience or not. There are no significant bonus elements to this video presentation – just a pre-concert talk that is fine but not especially illuminating. And certainly there is enough drama in the music itself so that director William Cosel’s changes of focus and camera angle can be intrusive. On the other hand, some may enjoy the feeling of experiencing this August 2010 recording (assembled from two tapings) almost as if it were a live concert. There is, in any case, something exhilarating in hearing Bruckner’s final finished symphony sound the way he originally wanted it to, and played with as much intensity as it receives here.