(+++) FORMULAS FOR ROMANCE

Epic Fail. By Claire LaZebnik. HarperTeen. $9.99.

Bright Young Things. By Anna Godbersen. Harper. $9.99.

     Modern romances – whether set in today’s prep schools or yesterday’s flapper era – are not designed to challenge readers with intricacy of characterization or plot. They are intended to be swiftly paced and not-very-demanding escapist books that allow readers (mostly teenage girls) to identify with one character or several, live vicariously through a set of fictional ups and downs, and eventually emerge with a sense of completion, if not catharsis. Within this formula, both these books do a creditable job. Epic Fail is the one set in a school: Coral Tree Prep in Los Angeles (that oh-so-superficial city where author Claire LaZebnik herself lives). The central character is Elise Benton, and she has a problem: she is the daughter of the school’s new principal, so she is of course an immediate outsider. Yes, outsider, not insider – she may be “inside” in terms of the school itself, but what matters in this superficial pecking order is (of course) who the students’ parents are. And Elise cannot compete with, for example, Derek Edwards, hottest hunk in school and coolest guy of all by virtue (if “virtue” is the word) of the importance of his parents in Hollywood circles. Elise and her three sisters are fish-out-of-water types at Coral Tree until Derek’s best friend and one of Elise’s sisters become an item, which means Derek and Elise start to spend more time together. There are the usual complications of this sort of thing: difficulties within Elise’s family (including other students’ expectations that the principal’s daughters will intervene to prevent punishments and embarrassments), revenge-motivated phony text messaging, and comparatively innocent make-out sessions. There is some with-it Hollywood commentary: “Yeah, right. I could just picture my mother, Madonna, and Angelina Jolie all trooping off to Malaysia together and becoming besties on the way.” And there is the eventual discovery of true love (true for the time being, anyway): “I got lost in him, and it was the kind of lost that’s exactly like being found.” And so the various paired people reach their happy endings without an Epic Fail after all. Total superficiality, to be sure – but pleasant enough in its own formulaic way.

     Bright Young Things differs mainly because of its Jazz Age setting. The first book in a planned series, it interweaves the stories of three young women who, Anna Godbersen tells readers, are deeper than they seem on the surface. Good thing she makes that point, since the characterizations don’t. Astrid Donal is portrayed as the quintessential flapper hiding secrets, Cordelia Grey as the obsessed-with-dad searcher for a family connection, and Letty Larkspur as the fame seeker. Those very brief descriptions are all readers need to know about the characters, who otherwise behave in thoroughly expected ways and do thoroughly expected things. For example, Letty and roommates Fay, Kate and Paulette pore over Weekly Stage looking for leads: “They all hoped to make it on the stage one way or another, but Fay was currently the only roommate who earned money at it, as a chorus girl in one of the big variety shows. Glimpsing her long, coltish legs crossed and dangling from the edge of the couch, Letty found herself wondering if she would ever have the height for a job like that.” Ambiguous reference aside – Godbersen must have meant to write that Letty was glimpsing Fay’s coltish legs – this is just one of numerous entirely typical scenes that are intended to make it clear that the book is set in 1929 rather than, say, 2009. The scene-setting pervades the book: “He was wearing the tweed trousers of a knickerbocker suit, his rust-colored socks visible to his knees, although the jacket was nowhere in sight. That was what they called ‘natty,’ Letty supposed, except that everything about him was just slightly askew.” As Bright Young Things veers here and there with the stories of its three central characters, there is plenty of time for “a hot, salty torrent” of tears and other entirely unsurprising emotional ups and downs. There is little to make the characters interesting to modern readers except for a certain exoticism of the time in which their stories are set. This means that readers have to get used to the 1920s meaning of such lines as, “I’m very happy to be someplace like this, where everything is gay.” And then they have to care enough to see beyond the gaiety to the supposed emotional upheavals of the central characters. Bright Young Things is a period piece whose setting tends to be more interesting than the characters appearing in it.

(++++) ELEGANCE WRIT LARGE AND SMALL

Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Christiane Oelze, soprano; Michaela Schuster, mezzo-soprano; Kartäuserkantorei Köln, Bach-Verein Köln, Madrigalchor und Kammerchor der Hochschule für Musik Köln, Figuralchor Bonn, and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz. Oehms. $29.99 (2 SACDs).

Johann Strauss Sr., Edition, Volume 18. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer. Marco Polo. $9.99.

Johann Strauss Sr. Edition, Volume 19. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Christian Pollack. Marco Polo. $9.99.

Christian Sinding: Violin Concertos Nos. 1-3; Legende, op. 46; Romanze, op. 100; Suite, op. 10; Abendstimmung, op. 120. Andrej Bielow, violin; NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover conducted by Frank Beermann. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

     In small works as well as grand ones, there can be a level of elegant construction that makes the music’s emotional connection come through especially clearly, and makes listening to the pieces highly pleasurable. If the performances of those works are themselves poised and elegant, the pleasure is doubled.

     The words “poise” and “elegance” are more often associated with Haydn and the Classical era than with Romantic and modern works, but they fit newer music equally well, although in different ways. There is tremendous elegance in the construction of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony, which, for all the work’s vastness, creates a brilliantly tied-together structure that bridges from the heroism and cloud-storming intensity of the First to a conclusion of affirmation – in a religious but decidedly non-orthodox sense – that there is something to come even beyond death. The first movement, originally conceived by Mahler as a standalone tone poem, harks back quite deliberately to the First Symphony; the composer said it represented the funeral for that symphony’s hero. But the mood of the remaining movements of the Second is quite different – so much so that Mahler said there should be a pause of at least five minutes between the first and second. Sensitive producers are attentive to this: they put the first movement on one disc and the others on a second; and that is what happens in the new Oehms recording. Sensitive conductors also pay attention, allowing the first movement to storm the heights and then presenting the second as a naïve pastoral scene; and Markus Stenz gets this contrast just right. There is little that is acerbic in the “Resurrection” symphony – the bitterness of Mahler’s later scherzos is a far cry from the mildly sardonic comparable movement in the Second. What this symphony does have is anguish in its “Urlicht” movement, which is very well sung by Michaela Schuster, and in much of the sprawling finale – the uplift of the vocal sections does not occur until quite late in the more-than-half-hour-long movement. Stenz has considerable experience in operatic and choral conducting, and he marshals the members of five different choruses to very fine effect in this recording, creating a warm and focused sound picture in which, despite the sheer number of singers, the words come through quite clearly (thanks in part, no doubt, to the fine SACD sound). The sole significant disappointment here is that Oehms provides the texts only in German – although listeners can find translations easily enough. Musically, this is a sensitive and, yes, elegant performance, with warm and fully committed playing by the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln that pulls listeners along through intense drama, to mildness and uncertainty, to an eventual feeling of relief and joyous affirmation. Surely those are the valleys and peaks through which Mahler wanted his audiences to journey.

     The vistas are much smaller, by design, in the music of Johann Strauss Sr. The great master of the most popular music of the 1840s was, after all, writing occasional pieces – for a wide variety of specific circumstances – and was not designing his works for longevity: the constant production of something new was his hallmark, and he was so good at what he did that critics of the time said that every new waltz by the elder Strauss was his best. Within his chosen field, though, Strauss Sr.’s music is every bit as carefully constructed and beautifully assembled as the works of Mahler – or, for that matter, of Haydn, to whose minuets it owes a great deal of its poise and rhythmic certainty. The outstanding Marco Polo survey of Strauss Sr.’s music has been showing, CD after CD, just how well-made this music is – and how unjustifiably neglected it has been in favor of the admittedly stronger works of Strauss Sr.’s sons, Johann Jr. and Josef (who brought symphonic structure and deeper emotion to their ostensibly-for-the-dance-only music, turning many of their works into tone poems in miniature).

     Volume 18 was recorded by Ernst Märzendorfer in late April and early May 2009, shortly before the conductor died that September at the age of 88. It would be stretching things to say that conducting this music helped keep Märzendorfer sprightly right to the end, but certainly his handling of the material shows no indication that he was tiring or, indeed, that his own creativity had declined at all. There is one polka on this CD – the lovely Marianka – and it shows that Strauss Sr. had compositional skill even in forms for which he did not care very much. He preferred the quadrille – a formulaic type of music in which Strauss Sr. excelled through the sheer joy of his themes and the apparent ease with which he assembled them. Märzendorfer here conducts Die vier Haimonskinder, a quadrille on themes from the once-popular opera The Four Aymon Sons (by long-forgotten Irish composer Michael William Balfe), and the effective Musen-Quadrille (“Muses Quadrille”). The remaining pieces here are waltzes: Rosen ohne Dornen (“Roses without Thorns”), Wiener-Früchteln (“Viennese Fruits”), Willkommen-Rufe (“Shouts of Welcome”), Maskenlieder (“Songs of the Maskers”), Eunomien-Tänze (“Eunomia Dances,” named for a daughter of Zeus who was thought to direct human legal affairs – and written for law students), and Odeon-Tänze (“Odeon Dances,” created for the opening of the eponymous gigantic, opulent new dance hall). These are works written by Strauss Sr. at the height of his creative powers, beautifully played by an orchestra that handles this music with expressiveness and constant attention to detail, and led by a conductor whose enthusiastic handling of these ebullient works belies his age and the imminent end of his life.

     Volume 19 in the Strauss Sr. cycle includes seven waltzes and three quadrilles; the quadrilles here – Flora-Quadrille, Stradella-Quadrille (on themes from Friedrich von Flotow’s hugely popular opera, Alessandro Stradella), and Amoretten-Quadrille, are all highly melodic, very well orchestrated and handled with great verve and style by the orchestra under Christian Pollack – a real specialist in this music. The waltzes on this CD offer more-substantive music and an interesting insight into Strauss Sr.’s dedication: most were written just as Johann Strauss Jr. was beginning, against his father’s wishes, to establish himself as a composer and conductor; yet despite the incipient rivalry between father and son, there is no heaviness, much less any bitterness, in these bright and beautifully balanced works. Two of the waltzes are written in the style of the Ländler, the folk dance of the 18^th and early 19^th century in which Joseph Lanner excelled (Strauss Sr. had played in Lanner’s band before becoming Lanner’s rival). These Ländler-influenced works are Faschings-Possen (“Carnival Antics”) and Die Landjunker (“Country Squires”). The remaining five waltzes here show Strauss Sr. at the height of his powers, creating ballroom celebrations that are eminently danceable and also highly listenable: Geheimnisse aus der Wiener Tanzwelt (“Secrets of the Vienna Dance World”), Österreichische Jubelklänge (“Austrian Sounds of Rejoicing”), Sommernachts-Träume (“Summer Night’s Dreams,” with an especially endearing and hummable final waltz tune), Heitere Lebensbilder (“Merry Pictures of Life”), and Concordia-Tänze (“Concordia Dances”). It is easy, on the one hand, to dismiss this music as frivolous, facile and at times formulaic; but on the other hand, its manifest beauties and ever-present grace provide as sure a tonic for the cares of everyday life in the 21^st century as they did for those of the 19^th.

     The elegance of the music of Christian Sinding (1856-1941) lies somewhere between that of Mahler and Strauss Sr. in terms of scale. Sinding was a major Norwegian composer and, apart from Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull and Johan Svendsen, the only one of his time to have an international reputation. But his works fell into obscurity for largely political reasons: late in life, he expressed approval of the aims of the National Socialists in Germany, with the result that his music was embraced by the Nazi regime when it assumed full power – while the rest of the world turned its collective back on it. Seventy years after Sinding’s death, it is at last possible to evaluate his music on its own terms – and it turns out that, in his works for violin and orchestra, there is a great deal of dignity, serenity and expressive power, although his later works are not quite the equal of his earlier ones. Like Sibelius, Sinding wrote very little late in life – in Sinding’s case, after 1920. But his compositions before that time show strength of orchestration, frequent whiffs of Norwegian spirit despite their avoidance of actual folk tunes, and a strong sense of the capabilities of the solo instrument. Like Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Sinding’s first concerto is in three movements but is really a one-movement structure, distinguished by its finely honed use of older forms (notably the passacaglia) and its use of a first-movement theme as the basis for one in the slow movement as well (an approach used by Sinding in all three of his violin concertos). Concerto No. 1 work is strong, dramatic and lyrical by turns, and easy to listen to – although not to play. Concerto No. 2 is longer and more conventional in form, with three clearly differentiated movements; it ends with a highly danceable finale that sounds as if it is derived from folk music even though the tunes are all original. Concerto No. 3 is relatively late Sinding (1916-17) and was never published – it exists only in a single manuscript. It displays no hint of its wartime origins and is somewhat more straightforward than the earlier concertos, offering the soloist plenty of opportunities for display (especially in first-movement double-stop passages) but giving the orchestra a lesser role and a generally less-interesting one. The shorter works on the new two-CD CPO recording are played by Andrej Bielow with as much attentiveness and as lovely a tone as he brings to the concertos. Legende is a nicely constructed, well-orchestrated piece featuring a prominent trumpet part; Romanze is more extended and more dramatic; the Suite in A minor offers three short movements that hark back periodically to Bach and Vivaldi, with the slow movement including a solo viola and cello as well as violin; and Abendstimmung, which is comparatively late Sinding (1915), presents a fairly simple violin part in a poised but not overly sentimental overall structure. Frank Beermann leads the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover with sensitivity and skill throughout all these pieces, and if none of them quite establishes Sinding as a first-rate composer, the best of them show him bringing structural skill, nicely honed emotive balance, and a kind of suave serenity to music that deserves to be far better known and more frequently performed.

(++++) HAPPY APPROACHING HOLIDAYS!

Holiday Cards 2011: Sierra Club—Nature’s Details; Creature Comforts; Gorey Holidays; “She Knitted Mufflers Endlessly.” Pomegranate. $15 each (Details; Comforts; Gorey); $12 (Mufflers).

     ’Tis the season to be premature. Or ahead of the times. But what is wrong with considering winter-holiday cards in the warmer months of the year? After all, it is winter right now in the Southern Hemisphere; and given the amusement and attractiveness that winter-holiday cards from Pomegranate can deliver, it is tempting to get them earlier in the year than the season for which they are intended – giving you more time to enjoy them yourself before sending them on their way. So why not “think outside the box” (a hackneyed phrase if there ever was one) by thinking about what is inside the boxes of cards that Pomegranate is offering for the upcoming winter holidays? You could, for example, think of the many animal-and-nature-focused Sierra Club cards – a portion of the proceeds from their sale goes to further Sierra Club objectives. Nature’s Details is a particularly attractive set of four winter scenes (five cards of each scene) in which nary an animal is to be seen. The photos (by Art Wolfe, Patrick J. Endries, Jan Vermeer and Larry Michael) are all about detail and the elegant simplicity of frost-tinged foliage. Vermeer’s “Frost-Covered Leaves” showcases the red-and-green color combination traditionally associated with Christmas, with green the dominant color and bits of red peeking through. Endries’ “Bearberry with Frost” is the reverse: red dominates here, in big splashes, with green surrounding it and sometimes emerging from it. Wolfe’s “Frosted Aspen and Oak Leaves” is more of a late-autumn scene than a dead-of-winter one, with yellows and oranges – as well as green, red and brown – making up an attractive color palette. And the main color is purple in Michael’s “Dogberry Leaves with Frost,” in which green and red make their appearance with very considerable subtlety. All the cards say “Season’s Greetings” inside, and all are lovely expressions of warmth designed for a chillier time of year.

     The colors are red and white, and the designs very different, in Creature Comforts, a set of 12 beautifully embossed cards (three each of four designs) in which each scene is shown in white, with just a few splotches of red to add pinpoints of interest and a touch of the whimsical. “Bear in the Woods” shows a bruin amid stylized trees, with three red birds perched neatly among the bare limbs. “Holly Owl” shows the bird front and center, surrounded by white foliage – with a few red berries peeking out at the ends of branches. “Penguins in Mufflers” shows just what it says: a group of the cold-loving birds, shown all in white rather in their usual tuxedo colors, with three of their number sporting bright red neckwear. And “Graceful Reindeer” portrays a very white deer – with bright red button nose – with two birds perching on the ends of its antlers and two red-and-white Christmas ornaments on the snowy ground. These cards too say “Season’s Greetings” inside, and they represent a burst of seasonal warmth and pleasure for anyone who enjoys the lighter side of winter holidays.

     The work of Edward Gorey (1925-2000) can provide light moments for the holidays, too. Yes, it can – despite Gorey’s well-deserved reputation for focusing on the outré and fantastic rather than the warm and cuddly. There is some Gorey work that fits the holiday season very nicely indeed, although admittedly in a somewhat offbeat way. The 20 cards in the Gorey Holiday box – five each of four designs – will tickle the funnybones of people whose funnybones are more responsive to the wry and outlandish than to the ho-ho-ho tradition. Two of the cards feature seasonal decorating themes that incorporate a cooperative crocodilian creature into Christmas customs. A third card, in which the meticulous detail of Gorey’s cross-hatched art shows to particularly good effect, shows a family wrapping (or attempting to wrap) a tree whose bare branches are festooned with the occasional leaf and an odd critter here and there. And the fourth card shows a huge polar bear, wearing ice skates, making a presentation to a little boy in old-fashioned dress – all illustrating the caption, “A Future Unremembered Poet of the Seventeenth Century Accepts a Christmas Cookie from the Great Veiled Bear.” Utter absurdity…along with utter charm of a uniquely Gorey-an cast.

     Seasonal cards by Gorey are also available from Pomegranate in single-design packs, such as the 12 included in “She Knitted Mufflers Endlessly.” All these cards are the same on the front (and all, like the other Gorey cards, say “Season’s Greetings” inside). Here the highly detailed picture is of a dressed-for-winter, six-person Victorian or Edwardian family, out for a cold-weather stroll, with each family member wearing a muffler that is very long indeed, if not quite endless. The people and background are in black-and-white, as usual in Gorey’s drawings, but the mufflers provide splashes of color: green, red, green-and-red, purple, lavender and blue-and-black. Not all of these are seasonal colors, to be sure, but then, not all of Gorey’s seasonal drawings will seem fully appropriate to the time of year for which they are employed. This particular illustration comes from Gorey’s The Glorious Nosebleed (1975), but there is no blood in evidence here, or even implied. Nevertheless, both sender and receiver need to be people who look beyond the ordinary, past the straightforward, in order to appreciate the Gorey cards intended for the upcoming season. You know who you are. And if you are the sort of person you know yourself to be, you will know at once whether Gorey’s unmistakable art will delight you in seasons cold or seasons warm. Or both.

(++++) FRIGHTFUL FUN, STILL TO COME

The 13 Nights of Halloween. By Guy Vasilovich. Harper. $16.99.

Pumpkin Trouble. By Jan Thomas. Harper. $9.99.

Pumpkin Cat. By Anne Mortimer. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $14.99.

Halloween Howlers: Frightfully Funny Knock-Knock Jokes. By Michael Teitelbaum. Pictures by Jannie Ho. HarperFestival. $6.99.

Never Kick a Ghost and Other Silly Chillers. By Judy Sierra. Pictures by Pascale Constantin. Harper. $3.99.

Pinkalicious: Pinkie Promise. By Victoria Kann. Harper. $3.99.

     It may seem a tad early in the year to be thinking about Halloween – all right, more than a tad – but quite a few Halloween-themed books have been appearing this summer, giving parents plenty of time to pick them up and have them on hand for a holiday that remains a favorite among American children. The 13 Nights of Halloween, for ages 4-8, is particularly clever, as Guy Vasilovich applies the well-known “12 days of Christmas” approach to a different holiday (somewhat along the lines of the 1993 Halloween-and-Christmas film A Nightmare Before Christmas). The adorable, huge-eyed little girl whose mummy (who really is a mummy) gives her 13 nights of gifts starts out by presenting the child with a skeleton key, then moves on to a two-headed snake, three baseball bats (flying mammals wearing baseball caps), four icky eyeballs, and so on. As in the Christmas rhyme, each new gift is followed by a repeat of the previous ones, which in Vasilovich’s illustrations leads to a series of parades, with the little girl proudly carrying the skeleton key at the front. The girl is so adorable and the gifts so ridiculous that there is nothing at all scary here – the child’s enjoyment of the singing skulls, corpses caroling, goblins gobbling, and so forth, is delightful to behold. And the final picture, in which all the creatures are crowded into a barn whose doors the delighted little girl has just opened, is a wonderfully silly climax.

     Pumpkin Trouble is wonderfully silly, too. Intended for ages 2-5, it is the simple story of Duck, who decides to make a jack-o’-lantern to show to his friends, Pig and Mouse…but runs into a little trouble when he falls into the hollowed-out pumpkin. As Duck stumbles around seeking help, Pig and Mouse see what they think is a pumpkin monster, and stuck-in-pumpkin Duck gets scared, too, since he thinks there must be a monster chasing everyone, and hilarity ensues – until Duck runs into the side of a barn and smashes the pumpkin, getting credit for fighting the monster and winning. So Duck decides to make a jack-‘o-lantern to celebrate, and…well, you can probably guess what happens next. Jan Thomas makes sure all the happenings are light and amusing from start to finish.

     Pumpkin Cat is also a short book, but it is a more serious one, showing how pumpkins grow by telling the story of friends Cat and Mouse, who work together in the garden watching seeds become plants that become flowers that become – eventually – pumpkins. Although the characters are anthropomorphic, Anne Mortimer draws them very realistically, and she also gives the feeling of reality to everything the friends do and everything they handle – watering can, flower pots, scarecrow and, eventually, a great big pumpkin. This is a simple and charming story for kids ages 4-7; there is nothing even slightly scary about its Halloween theme.

     There are, however, some mild frights in the (+++) Halloween Howlers, for ages 5-8. A book of knock-knock jokes that also includes some flaps to lift, it has a little bit of a story attached to the punch lines, beginning as kids shop for costumes and ending as they unload bags of candy and look forward to next year’s Halloween holiday. The jokes themselves are the main point here, though. “Knock, knock! Who’s there? Bury! Bury who? Bury scary, all these ghosts and monsters!” Or: “Bat! Bat who? Bat you can’t guess where we are going next!” And: “Disguise! Disguise who? Disguise giving me the creeps!” Also: “Water! Water who? Water you doing here?” And so it goes, from start to finish – a bit too much sameness, perhaps, but a nice helping of amusement from Michael Teitelbaum and some pleasant illustrations by Jannie Ho.

     Judy Sierra actually goes for a chill or two in the (+++) Never Kick a Ghost, a Level 2 book in the “I Can Read!” series. The title story features an unfortunate man who keeps kicking a ghost that keeps growing bigger until it nearly scares him to death. There is also a story of a pirate bride who gets accidentally locked in a treasure chest and emerges a century later as a skeleton. Neither tale is told super-chillingly, but they may be a bit frightening for at least some kids in the target age range of 4-8. There is lighter fare here as well, though, including silly epitaphs, a ghost-story parody about a big slobbery monster, and more. Pascale Constantin’s illustrations fit the stories well, although they do not really add much to them.

     And if young girls are tired by now of all the orange-colored, Halloween-themed books, they can always turn elsewhere in the “I Can Read!” series and find something pink: the Level 1 book, Pinkalicious: Pinkie Promise. Here, Victoria Kann’s pink and popular character uses up all the pink paint she borrows from her friend, Alison – and also all the red and white (which mix to make pink). But Pinkalicious has specifically promised not to use up all these colors, so Alison gets angry and the friends have a spat – but soon make up and make a “pinkie promise” to stay friends forever. The very simple (and very pink) story will suit Pinkalicious fans just fine, and serve as a reminder that there is still plenty of time before Halloween-mania overtakes everything.

(+++) REAL-WORLD COPING SKILLS

Clark Howard’s Living Large in Lean Times: 250+ Ways to Buy Smarter, Spend Smarter, and Save Money. By Clark Howard, with Mark Meltzer and Theo Thimou. Avery. $18.

Freshman: Tales of 9^th Grade Obsessions, Revelations, and Other Nonsense. By Corinne Mucha. Zest Books. $12.99.

     Whether you are an adult or a proto-adult (that is, a teenager), there are books out there designed to show you that you can make your life better, that you can handle everyday stresses more effectively, and – perhaps most important of all – that you are not alone. That is the underlying message of both these books: there are many others like you, and they have learned or can learn to cope with the vicissitudes of daily life, and you can, too. In the case of Clark Howard’s Living Large in Lean Times, it helps to be a big Clark Howard fan in order to get the most benefit from his ideas. The ideas are actually quite sound most of the time, and can help whether or not you know anything about Howard, but everything is presented with a veneer of folksy Howard-isms that will quickly wear thin for people who do not know and love Howard’s radio and cable-TV shows. You have to get through plenty of Howard anecdotes to get the Howard advice: “I recall buying the first computer for my travel agency back in 1982. At the time, I needed specialized software to do travel accounting, plus specific hardware.” “I have always been cheap, which I define as being willing to accept lower quality for a lower price. That’s just me. But sometimes, my cheap tendencies have come back to bite me.” “If you’ve listened to my radio show anytime during the past twenty years, you know that an annuity is a four-letter word in my mind.” Now, celebrity endorsements sell products and certainly sell books and other reading matter; the now-classic example is the Oprah Winfrey magazine that always features her on the cover. So Howard’s fans will consider the ideas in this book pre-endorsed and certain to be valuable. Others may understandably be more skeptical, wondering where the self-aggrandizement ends and the help for readers begins. The good news is that there is plenty of useful information here, whether you know anything about Howard or not; the bad news is that sorting it out from the frequent “me” passages can get irritating. It is worthwhile to try, though. Just a few samples among many of the helpful ideas here: The best discounts at warehouse clubs are specifically coded – at Costco, their prices end in 97, while at Sam’s Club, they end in the number 1 or are marked with a C. When a printer signals that a cartridge is empty, the cartridge generally still has about 60% of its ink left – and you can use that ink by simply removing the cartridge and shaking it, then reinserting it. Buying a store’s in-house brand of organic food can significantly cut the price premium – and a particularly good source for relatively inexpensive organic foods is Wal-Mart. So far, so good; but in some other ways, not so good; and it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. For example, Howard (or one of his coauthors) talks about federal insurance pools that exist in some parts of the country and allow individuals to buy relatively low-cost health insurance: “In order to qualify to buy coverage, you must have been uninsured for at least six months.” Now, this is a huge, huge red flag, forcing people who want to enter these pools to take the risk of going without any insurance whatsoever for half a year. But Howard’s book mentions the issue only in passing and presents no suggested solutions to it. Follow this insurance advice at your peril. Indeed, there is plenty of peril as well as plenty of opportunity for saving money in this book – good, solid advice mixed, apparently rather randomly, with questionable comments and once-over-lightly remarks that may mislead readers or create as many problems as they solve. People familiar with Howard may know enough about his style to decide how many grains of salt to add to the advice here; those who do not know his shows have a significantly greater risk of getting things wrong.

     “Getting things wrong” is a major issue for teenagers, although the “things” are comparatively unimportant by the standards of most adults. But they matter a lot to teens, especially teens starting high school and worrying about how to dress, how to behave in class and between classes, whom to hang out with, what activities to do, and much more. Freshman is a graphic novel that is all about getting things wrong – or the fear of getting them wrong, which for many high-school freshmen amounts to the same thing. Told as the chronicle of the freshman year of a girl named Annie, Corinne Mucha’s book is so close to reality that it almost deserves to be called graphic nonfiction. The characters may be made up, but their thoughts and experiences are clearly drawn from life – so clearly that the target audience of the book is a little hard to define. It would seem to be for young teens who are worried that no one could possibly understand what they are going through in their worries about school and their social life. On that basis, Mucha seems to be showing that she does understand and that many, many other teens have gone through the same things and emerged just fine, as rising high-school sophomores. That is just what happens to Annie, who manages to cope with uninteresting teachers, weird class assignments, the ups and downs of friendship with fellow freshman Katrina and former best friend Beth, an unrequited crush, and a role in a school play that turns out to be a bigger deal than Annie expects. A parallel story involves Annie’s friend and fellow freshman, Richie, who tries to handle charisma advice, the film club, reporting for the school newspaper, and joining a rock band. The two stories intersect from time to time, as when Annie sings with the band and Richie and Annie almost share a kiss during a dance. And that is that: everyday freshman high-school life, exaggerated perhaps slightly from time to time but not exaggerated at all through much of the book. Former high-school freshmen may find parts of the book amusing; teens who have not yet endured this particular rite of passage may deem it more worrisome and find fewer of its events to be what the subtitle calls “nonsense,” even though everything comes out pretty much all right in the end for pretty much everybody.

(+++) THE BITTEREST OF ENEMIES

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. By Richard Miles. Viking. $35.

     This is how exhaustively University of Sydney ancient-history teacher Richard Miles researched Carthage Must Be Destroyed: nearly 30% of the book consists of footnotes, bibliography and index (about 150 pages out of almost 530). Beginning with the utter destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War, in 146 B.C., Miles then reaches back to the glory days of the Carthaginian empire (which at one time controlled most of the western Mediterranean) and traces the civilization to its heights, then back down to its depths. In the final battle, the city was utterly destroyed (although the land was not then salted, as is frequently claimed) and the remaining 50,000 inhabitants were sold into slavery and dispersed by the Romans, whose relationship with Carthage stretched back to before 500 B.C. and was one of near-constant commercial, economic and military battles.

     To the victors belongs the right to write the history books, and Rome’s triumph over Carthage was so complete that digging out truth (rather than Roman opinion) about the Carthaginians is a monumental task – hence the extent of Miles’ notes and bibliography. The Romans were nothing if not efficient: they destroyed Carthage itself, took over all its economic power, assumed its political hegemony, and systematically dismantled its reputation – although “the Romans were not the first to develop the powerful negative stereotypes of Carthaginians as mendacious, greedy, untrustworthy, cruel, arrogant and irreligious. As with many aspects of Roman culture, the hostile ethnic profiling of the Carthaginians originated with the Greeks.” That is, the Greeks too had axes to grind with Carthage, with Sicily in particular rivaling Carthage for commercial and political leadership in the Mediterranean.

     But it was to be the Rome-Carthage confrontation that resonated through the ages, partly because it led to Carthage’s total destruction and partly because of the towering reputation of Carthage’s greatest military general, Hannibal, whose strategy and tactics are still studied today. So crucial was Hannibal to the enmity between these powerful states that the Romans actually called the Second Punic War “the war against Hannibal.” They won, eventually, but it took 16 years, and even in defeat, Hannibal remained a towering figure in Carthage and a source of constant anxiety to Rome – to the point that he eventually took poison rather than allow himself to be handed over, at around age 65, to a Rome that still feared him and what he might yet accomplish.

     The Rome-Carthage relationship was one of near-equals in some ways, of “necessary enemies” in others. Indeed, when Cato the Elder – who did not say delenda est Carthago, the spurious but very famous phrase that gives Miles’ book its title – argued strongly for a new war against Carthage, he was opposed by senators “who reportedly argued that to destroy Rome’s greatest enemy would be simultaneously to destroy its political equilibrium. Without a great enemy like Carthage, they predicted, the common citizenry would refuse to obey the authority of the Senate and, drunk with greed and power, would drag Rome into a series of ill-thought-out and potentially disastrous adventures.” This was not an entirely fanciful fear, as was demonstrated many years later in the time of medieval Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354), when the populace turned on the tribune himself when he was no longer seen as defending Rome against a powerful enemy. And the anti-Cato forces’ argument is certainly an interesting one, akin to the “balance of terror” viewpoint of our own time: that it is better to have a powerful enemy that is nevertheless a known quantity than to remove that enemy and create uncertainty and the possibility of turning the distress of a restive populace inward.

     Miles writes with verve of “The Last Age of Heroes,” “The Road to Nowhere” and “The Revenge of the Losers” (three of his chapter titles) and other subjects, and is at his best when ferreting out little-known material that casts an interesting light on Roman attitudes toward Carthage. His excerpts from the play The Little Carthaginian, based on an earlier Greek play and written by the Umbrian playwright Plautus in 194 B.C., are both revelatory and hilarious, as when a Roman soldier abuses a Carthaginian by saying he is “stinking of garlic and onions worse than a bench of Roman rowers.” The 16 pages of color illustrations, one of them showing the ruins of Carthage, are unusually interesting, and the maps (as of the Second Punic War) are helpful for understanding the detail of the various troop movements and battles. For the general reader, the level of detail that Miles offers may easily become overwhelming, and some of his sentences will require parsing and careful study: “Yet if Hannibal had spent a little longer studying the history of Pyrrhus’ Italian escapade, he might better have understood the difficulties which swiftly arose between the cities of Magna Graecia and the Epirote interloper.” Miles knows his subject so well that he sometimes lets his enthusiasm run away with him. Yet the enthusiasm itself is highly admirable, and if Carthage Must Be Destroyed is scarcely a book for all readers, it will be most welcome to those who have always wondered what more there was to ruined Carthage than Hannibal and his elephants – and just why Rome felt it had to, in the end, delete Carthage from the map.

(++++) STRIVING FOR COMPLETENESS

Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 1-6, 8 and 9. The Hanover Band conducted by Roy Goodman (Nos. 1-4); Camerata Salzburg conducted by Sándor Végh (Nos. 5-6, 8, 9). Brilliant Classics. $19.99 (4 CDs).

Mendelssohn: Complete Works for Cello and Piano. Emanuel Gruber, cello; Arnon Erez, piano. Delos. $16.99.

     It is not always easy to figure out what “complete” means in classical music, and Schubert’s symphonies are a particularly thorny case in point. He wrote all or parts of at least 10 symphonies, but only one recording, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, has ever tried to capture everything, including several small symphonic fragments; and it required considerable editing and reconstruction of several works (by Brian Newbould, who among other things “completed” the “Unfinished”). Schubert’s Seventh is particularly difficult, since he completed the work but did not orchestrate it. It exists in several versions and in many ways looks forward to his Ninth, but is very rarely heard in any form. More often, “complete” Schubert symphonies leave out the Seventh altogether (as well as the Tenth, which was about half-finished), offering six early symphonies, the “Unfinished” (which of course is not Schubert’s only unfinished symphony) and the “Great C Major.” This is an expedient approach that unfortunately leaves a huge gap between No. 6 and No. 8, as if Schubert suddenly attained a level of symphonic maturity through the grace of Euterpe herself. In any case, the new Brilliant Classics compilation follows this tried-and-true approach, re-releasing the first four symphonies in Roy Goodman’s interpretations (licensed from Nimbus) and Nos. 5-6, 8 and 9 conducted by Sándor Végh (licensed from Capriccio). The result is an uneven but generally very fine Schubert set, quite well priced and having one really significant advantage: all the works, even the Ninth, are played with small enough ensembles so that they sound as they would have in Schubert’s time (although several of them were performed only after the composer’s death). There is no gigantism here, and the distinctly Mozartean flavor of the early symphonies comes through particularly well under Goodman, whose interpretations have a touch more verve and ebullience than do those of Végh, as well as somewhat better playing. The differences are closer to quibbles than to significant interpretative matters, though. All the performances are well done, the interpretations thoughtful and generally well-paced – although Végh is perhaps a trifle too speedy in the final two symphonies, making some elements of them seem perfunctory. For a reasonably priced, good-sounding set of most (but not all) of Schubert’s symphonies, this is a very fine choice.

     There is no argument about Mendelssohn’s complete music for cello and piano: all of it fits nicely on a single CD. There are two sonatas, a set of Variations Concertantes, and two very short works: Song without Words, Op. 109 and Assai Tranquillo. The most interesting pieces are the Variations Concertantes, whose considerable technical demands indicate that the composer’s brother, Paul – for whom the work was written – was a highly accomplished amateur cellist; and the Sonata No. 2, a four-movement work that includes reflections of Bach and very considerable playfulness, especially in the finale – even though Mendelssohn was under considerable stress when he wrote it in 1843. Emanuel Gruber and Arnon Erez fit their instruments seamlessly together in these works and the others on the CD: the men play with great appeal and so sure a sense of camaraderie that they seem to have an intuitive connection. There is no awkwardness at all in any of the phrasing, tempo changes or interpretative elements – everything flows smoothly and naturally, with the result that the music’s uplifting and outgoing character comes through clearly from start to finish. When there is profundity, or at least sadness or a touch of melancholy – and there is some in these works, if not much – Gruber and Erez bring it forth effectively as well, not dwelling or swooning but expressing the darker emotions and then moving on. Mendelssohn wrote all his cello-and-piano pieces for specific cellists whom he knew; they are therefore, in a sense, occasional works. But thanks to the warmth and elegance of Gruber’s and Erez’s playing, they become something more: glowing examples of music that, if not very well known in Mendelssohn’s oeuvre, deserves to be heard more frequently and to hold a higher place among his compositions.

(++++) MAKING OCCASIONS NOTEWORTHY

Notecards: Sierra Club—Hummingbirds; Sierra Club—Sea Turtles; Wolf Kahn—The Seasons; Gorey Cats; Dard Hunter Thank You Notes. Pomegranate. $14.95 each (Hummingbirds, Turtles, Kahn, Gorey); $8.95 (Hunter).

     Anytime may be the right time to send someone a note on an attractive card, but the simple reality is that this form of communication is increasingly rare nowadays. We tend to send cards for special occasions when we send them at all – for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas and so on. Get a little creative with some of the cards from Pomegranate, though, and you can easily come up with a whole new set of occasions for which it is appropriate to send something special. There are, for example, the Sierra Club cards that Pomegranate offers. They are perfect for Earth Day, although that is, if anything, a little bit obvious. How about hummingbird cards to mark the arrival of spring, or summer, or the first hummingbird sighting in your area? Sierra Club—Hummingbirds includes 20 cards (five each of four designs) and 20 envelopes. Most people know the ruby-throated hummingbird, but these cards provide gorgeous views of three other types: the purple-throated mountain gem (which gets two very different-looking cards), the broad-tailed, and the white-necked Jacobin. The cards, blank inside and printed on heavy stock, help reinforce the Sierra Club’s environmental message: a portion of the proceeds is used to further the Sierra Club’s aims.

     Or how about cards with sea turtles to mark turtle nesting season, celebrate the start of summer (when many families take beach vacations), or even take note of the anniversary of the BP oil spill, which (happily) seems not to have caused the damage to these turtles that so many feared it would? Sierra Club—Turtles includes four views of the green sea turtle: a hatchling zipping across the sand on its way to the water, two adults on a beach, and two different cards showing individual turtles swimming gracefully underwater. The photographs are lovely, and sea turtles have become a well-known environmental symbol, so sending these cards to like-minded environmentalists, or just to people who appreciate the animals’ beauty of form and color, seems a natural thing to do. Just come up with the right occasion.

     How about sending cards to mark the changing of the seasons? The Wolf Kahn cards from Pomegranate would be ideal. Kahn’s cards overstate the colors of nature – nothing is quite that purple or orange – and for that very reason can make wonderful “happy spring” or “happy autumn” offerings. The four designs in this Pomegranate box are not directly attached to specific seasons, so you can let your imagination roam as you decide which would be appropriate to send at what time. “Silvery Trees” seems like a winter scene; “Green Grove” could stand for spring; “Invented Foliage” might be summer; and “Glow III,” dense with brilliant autumnal orange, could be fall. But this is only one way to view the scenes. Part of the fun of sending these cards would come from deciding which one fits your particular definition of each season.

     Then…let’s see…how about something for National Cartoonists Day (May 5), or to celebrate friends’ cats’ birthdays, or as birthday cards for someone who just happens to love felines? Gorey Cats fills the bill for these occasions, and Edward Gorey fans can surely think of others (maybe sending something for Gorey’s birthday, February 22). Unlike his more mysterious and dark works, the four examples in Gorey Cats are humorous without being scary – although they are certainly odd enough to show who drew them. All feature Gorey’s favorite cat, wearing a horizontally striped shirt. “Cutting a Rug” is a dance pose (and maybe the cat’s claws are actually cutting the rug on which he stands, too?); “Flower Fancier” has the cat floating, hanging Mary-Poppins-like from an umbrella, toward a large flower; “Rock Island” has the cat perched horizontally on, well, a big rock; and “Picture Purrfect” is a pose within an ornate frame. All the Gorey Cats cards are delightful – you just have to come up with the right reasons to send them.

     One reason we do still send cards – well, some of the time, anyway – is to thank people for a pleasant evening, a nice dinner, or any sort of good time. It is true that we, as a society, don’t do this nearly as much as we used to, but the tradition is one of those niceties of socializing that, thank goodness, have not disappeared entirely. Using sufficiently attractive thank-you cards may even help it continue (one can always hope). One example among many from Pomegranate: Dard Hunter Thank You Notes, 10 small notecards with appropriately sized envelopes, feature a 1908 Hunter design from a booklet called The American House. The cards are simple and elegant, showing two symmetrically drawn, stylized flowers connected by a dotted line that parts at one point to contain the words “Thank You.” The inside is blank, so you can write a few words of your own to complement the art and compliment the person to whom you are sending the card – a lovely gesture made more attractive when it comes in the form of notecards as good-looking as these.

(+++) PARENTING ON THE STRANGE SIDE

Dr. Riley’s Box of Tricks: 80 Uncommon Solutions for Everyday Parenting Problems. By Douglas A. Riley, Ed.D. Da Capo. $15.

     Ranging from the reasonably odd to the oddly reasonable, clinical psychologist Douglas Riley’s ideas for handling typical issues confronting families primarily involve taking things to extremes – that is, even further extremes than the ones children are likely to present. Thus, “The Liar’s Program,” for a child who often fibs, involves disbelieving everything the child says, so if he or she says what he or she wants for breakfast, the parent presents something else, since the originally expressed preference must have been a lie; if he or she wants to watch cartoons on a weekend morning, the parent assigns chores instead; and so on. This is an amusing idea that could actually work, although whether the lying child would actually do the assigned chores or eat the offered and unappealing breakfast is less than clear (Riley assumes the child will do as he or she is told – a shaky assumption at best).

     If nothing else, the ideas here are likely to make parents who read them feel better, even if the parents don’t try them out. If a six-to-14-year-old constantly yells, for instance, Riley recommends insisting the child yell everything or be ignored. Riley’s imagined dinner conversation is hilarious; and he insists that this program really has been tried, and really does work. You’ll never know unless you try it, but just imagining it and smiling at it may give harried parents a smile.

     For these ideas to work in the real world, parents have to be willing to carry them out. That is a repeated message here, and one some parents may have difficulty accepting. Several “tricks” require something along the lines of one that Riley calls “The Victim of Capitalism.” This is a messy-room approach: if a child leaves things strewn everywhere and never cleans up, the parents apologize for buying him or her so much and “explain that the only way to relieve him of the huge burden they had placed on him was to box up half of his stuff over the next few days and put it into storage so he would no longer have to deal with it.” Two weeks later, if the room is still messy, the parents have to box up half the remaining stuff and store it somewhere secure. And so on. Riley assures parents that this will work, but “you must be willing to follow through.” Will parents who have been so indulgent in buying things suddenly see the light and be willing to deprive a child of many of those things? Doubtful – although maybe, if parental frustration is high enough, this just might be workable.

     The biggest potential problem with Riley’s clever solutions (which are sometimes tricky but not really “tricks”) is that he assumes kids will get the point that parents want them to get. In the context of the counseling sessions that Riley holds with children and parents, and the reinforcement those sessions provide, that may be so, but it will not necessarily work the same way with families going about their everyday lives. For example, Riley suggests “The ‘I Forgot’ Pizza Method” for kids ages eight to 14 “who can’t seem to remember to do their homework or to hand it in if and when they do it.” This involves promising pizza for dinner, then getting a pizza place to make a pizza without cheese, with just a few bits of randomly distributed sauce, and with a small scattering of pepperoni; giving it to the kids; and then saying the pizza maker must have forgotten to put on all the ingredients, just as the kids forget to do their homework. The kids are supposed to understand that this is a lesson…learn the lesson…and clean up their act. More likely, though, they will become outraged, storm out of the room, go eat something else, become surly and unpleasant (or surlier and more unpleasant), and learn only that the parent who pulled this is not to be trusted to order pizza ever again.

     There is no question that parents need to think creatively to break through some of the ongoing issues that erupt and then fester in families. Riley has a good grasp of many of those issues: arguing, door slamming, slacking off, bathroom battles, fighting with siblings, interrupting, cell-phone overuse, and more. And a few of his approaches seem to have a good chance of success. For example, if a child fears going to sleep because he or she is sure the room is filled with spooky things, such as vampires, Riley suggests sitting down and talking calmly with the child, asking how often the vampires have actually gotten hold of him or her – not in dreams, but in reality. The child will eventually realize the answer is “zero.” Then you point out how dumb the vampires must be: “They roam around your room all night, from what you tell me, but it’s never occurred to them to look under the covers to find you. So they must be really stupid.” This is supposed to get the child to laugh and calm down – and it may do just that. It’s certainly worth trying. Just don’t be surprised when, a couple of days later, he or she announces that now the problem isn’t vampires – it’s witches, or zombies, or giant flesh-eating Easter bunnies, or something else. The fears underlying thoughts of these imaginary creatures may not be as easy to lay to rest as Riley suggests they are. Likewise, the problems that lead to many parent-child difficulties may not be solvable by tricking them into nonexistence.

(+++) FOR SPECIALIZED FOODIES

Gluten-Free in Five Minutes: 123 Rapid Recipes for Breads, Rolls, Cakes, Muffins, and More. By Roben Ryberg. Da Capo. $17.

Sinfully Vegan: More Than 160 Decadent Desserts to Satisfy Every Sweet Tooth. By Lois Dieterly. Da Capo. $18.

Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet. By Jack Norris, R.D., and Virginia Messina, M.P.H., R.D. Da Capo. $17.

     Special-needs eaters – or, perhaps, special-wants ones – have all sorts of interesting recipe books available to them these days. The main theme of the books is that one need not sacrifice taste, enjoyment, even the “mouth feel” of foods just because one cannot or has chosen not to eat certain food groups. People who cannot consume gluten without gastrointestinal distress, but who still love the sorts of foods in which gluten-containing wheat and other ingredients are typically major components, are the target audience for Gluten-Free in Five Minutes. Roben Ryberg, founder of a gluten-free-food emporium and author of other books saying that gluten-free foods can bring just as much enjoyment as ones containing gluten, here puts an emphasis on speed as well as taste. Narrative material is kept to a minimum, with only a brief opening “helpful hints” chapter and short introductions to sections on breakfast, breads, rolls, sides, cakes, icings, muffins and other desserts. The focus is on recipes, whose ingredients may surprise people without gluten sensitivity and even some with it. For example, the one for a bagel (yes, a single bagel) includes an egg white, canola oil, applesauce, brown rice flour and a little sugar, with Ryberg commenting, “These bagels are better at room temperature than hot. Strange, but true.” Some of the recipes are more than a tad obvious: corn on the cob (one ear of corn plus optional salt and/or butter) and hard-boiled egg (one cup of water and one egg). Others could appear in any recipe book, not just a gluten-free-foods one – the hollandaise sauce, for example (egg yolk, butter and lemon juice). On the other hand, some recipes will be especially delightful for those who cannot tolerate gluten, such as two different ones for chocolate pound cake (one using brown rice flour, the other using sorghum flour; there are similar dual recipes for red velvet cake, carrot cake and regular chocolate cake). The chapter on icing is not entirely necessary – as Ryberg points out, “many traditional, store-bought icings are gluten-free” – but someone already using the book may enjoy having these recipes in the same place as the ones for cakes. And it is nice to have some recipes here for desserts that one would expect to require gluten – apple crisp and peach cobbler, for example. Not all the recipes are quite at the five-minute-preparation level, but most are simple and quick enough to please readers who need to avoid gluten altogether.

     No one needs to avoid meat altogether, and those who select a vegan lifestyle do sometimes come across with a kind of holier-than-thou attitude that non-vegans may find irritating. That makes the title of Lois Dieterly’s Sinfully Vegan fun. What makes it even more enjoyable is that this dessert-focused book suggests easy vegan substitutes for common ingredients (soy milk for milk, applesauce for butter, etc.) and gives many of the goodies interestingly cute names: “orange you glad it has chocolate chips cake,” “rootin’ tootin’ raisin spice cake,” “pucker-up cream pie,” and so on. The names may become a little too cutesy after a while, but the recipes are more straightforward than their titles and are, for the most part, easy to follow. Sinfully Vegan was originally published in 2003; this revised and updated version includes 20 new recipes. Dieterly, a teacher and former baker, has a greater fixation on certain desserts than many readers are likely to have – she devotes a full chapter to Boston cream pies, for example – but she presents a wide enough variety of sweet stuff to satisfy just about any vegan palate. There are dessert tapas, cheesecakes, puddings, doughnuts, smoothies and more – even four recipes for making your own ice cream, all with “absolutely no cream in them” (bananas provide the creaminess). Non-vegans who want to try these recipes may find some of the ingredients a bit bewildering (garbanzo bean flour, Suzanne’s Ricemellow Creme), but vegans who already know where to find their specialty recipe components should have little trouble combining them as Dieterly recommends – and coming up with some tasty treats that satisfy both their sweet tooth and their chosen eating habits.

     People who have not yet chosen the vegan life, but are considering doing so, can get some solid information on what it is like – and how to stay healthy if they adopt it – from Vegan for Life. Registered dietitians Jack Norris, cofounder of Vegan Outreach, and Virginia Messina, an advisor to the Vegetarian Resource Group and the advocacy organization called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, are both longtime vegans and are – like many others of their persuasion – strong believers in the vegan approach. In Vegan for Life, they assert that “vegan diets can – and do—support optimal health throughout the life cycle” and that “a vegan diet isn’t difficult; it’s just a different way of meeting nutrient needs.” They admit that vegan diets “still sit well outside the mainstream” and are associated with a number of beliefs that they say are myths, such as, “When you first go vegan, you’ll experience unpleasant feelings from detoxing and withdrawal from animal products,” and “Plant proteins are missing some essential amino acids.” Vegan for Life is an advocacy book, as are most works written by those seeking to recruit non-vegans to the vegan life or persuade wavering maybe-vegans to “stay the course.” Vegans must take supplements of vitamin B₁₂, for example, and Norris and Messina devote some space to whether that should trouble vegans – since plant foods do not contain this necessary vitamin. They come to a reasonable conclusion, but then immediately overstate their case: “We agree that it doesn’t matter whether a vegan diet is our historical way of eating or not. The fact is, it makes sense now to choose a vegan diet. And whose diet is really natural, anyway?” This sort of speciousness aside, the book does a good, straightforward job of discussing what it means to live as a vegan, with the authors asserting that vegans consume “some of the best food you’ve ever tasted” and that “you can build healthful and appealing vegan meals around convenience foods and easily prepared dishes.” Their section on “stocking the vegan pantry” will be especially useful for those trying to figure out what to buy, and they sensibly (and non-dogmatically) insist that it does not matter that “even seemingly benign foods like white sugar and maple syrup – seemingly vegan – can be processed with animal ingredients, a fact you won’t see on their labels. Some food additives and food colors can be either animal- or plant-derived – and you have no way of knowing.” The authors deserve praise for trying so hard to focus on the health aspects of vegan living while mostly distancing themselves from the morally superior attitude that so many vegans assume. Their sample menus, which include ones for breast-feeding and for infants and children, are a plus, too. Vegan for Life will not likely persuade non-vegans to change their ways. But it is an effective primer for those just starting to live as vegans and those interested in trying the vegan lifestyle but uncertain about its potential benefits.

(++++) CHAMBER CHARMERS

Beethoven: Septet, Op. 20; Sextet, Op. 71. Scharoun Ensemble Berlin. Tudor. $19.99 (SACD).

Hindemith: Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 11, No. 4; Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata; Brahms: Sonata No. 2 for Viola and Piano. Naoko Shimizu, viola; Özgür Aydin, piano. Genuin. $18.99.

     The delights of chamber music come through especially clearly when the works are played as clearly and cleanly, and with as much emotional understanding, as they are on these two discs. The Scharoun Ensemble Berlin consists of members of one of the world’s very best orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, and is named after architect Hans Scharoun (1893-1972) – creator of that orchestra’s world-renowned concert hall, whose superb acoustics remain among the best anywhere. It is therefore no surprise that Beethoven’s two early wind serenades sound simply wonderful on a new Tudor SACD. The Septet, which dates to 1800, and Sextet, which despite its late opus number was composed around 1796, show Beethoven at his most genial and engaging, although the works are not without depth – especially in the Adagio cantabile of the Septet. Beethoven’s Septet became annoyingly popular – annoyingly to the serious-minded composer, that is, although he did not object to the financial success it brought him. Inspired by Mozart’s glorious Divertimento, K. 563, whose title is a complete misnomer for a work of grand scope and considerable profundity, Beethoven’s Septet in turn inspired other composers, such as Hummel, Spohr and (most famously) Schubert, to produce works that similarly explored a wide variety of sounds and combinations of wind instruments. Beethoven apparently did not know Schubert’s Octet, but he is known to have disliked several other successors of the Septet, believing they lacked the proper balance of seriousness and lightheartedness. Beethoven’s own work does not, especially when played with the sensitivity that the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin brings to it. The piece gives each instrument plenty of opportunities for solo display (notably in the fourth movement, Tema con Variazioni), but it also uses the whole ensemble effectively and allocates warmth to the slow movement – and even allows, in that movement, for Beethoven’s first experiment with the transition from A-flat to C major, which was to become important in, among other places, the Fifth Symphony. The earlier Sextet (for two each of clarinets, bassoons and horns) is a less weighty work and only half the length of the Septet. Beethoven later pretty much disowned this work as being overly light, and indeed it is bouncy and engaging. But its full sound from only six instruments is intriguing, and the connections among sections in the concluding Rondo look ahead to some of Beethoven’s later formal experimentation. Here too the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin offers an excellent performance, not overly heavy but also not flippant: what depth the music has is brought forth very effectively indeed.

     The depths of the three viola-and-piano works on the new Genuin CD featuring Naoko Shimizu and Özgür Aydin also come through clearly, but the main effect of this disc is one of beauty: the viola and piano sound simply lovely together. Shimizu has a full, rich tone that is very well complemented by Aydin’s carefully wrought and sensitive accompaniment. Two of the three pieces here are quite familiar to violists and those who love the instrument’s elegant middle-range sound: Schubert’s “Arpeggione” sonata (which is also sometimes played on cello, but no longer on the short-lived instrument for which it was originally written), and Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 (which is played at least as frequently on clarinet as on viola, Brahms having designated it for either instrument). In both these works, Shimizu looks for long lines, elegant phrasing and great tonal beauty, and offers performances that are strongly emotional without wallowing. Her Schubert is perhaps a touch more satisfying than her Brahms – her approach might work a little better in the first Brahms viola sonata than in the darker and weightier No. 2 – but simply listening to the quality of her playing is a pleasure. And Shimizu’s Hindemith is very well done indeed. Hindemith, himself a violist as well as a composer, had a great deal to do with the resurgence of the viola in the 20^th century – he and violist Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) are the towering figures in this instrument’s modern history. This Hindemith sonata is an early work, and it shows more influence of earlier music than do some other Hindemith pieces. From folklike elements to instrumental color in the Debussy mode, the sonata gives evidence of a compositional approach not yet fully formed: in later works, Hindemith more fully integrated disparate styles. Nevertheless, this sonata is effective on its own terms, and the date of its composition (1919, the year Hindemith turned 24) is made clear through its pushing of the limits of tonality and its use of dissonance. Taken together, the three pieces here provide an interesting showcase for the viola as chamber instrument over a period of nearly a century – and provide warm and lovely sound from start to finish.

(++++) SYMPHONIC GRANDEUR

Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Adriana Kučerová, soprano; Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano; London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. LPO. $17.99 (2 CDs).

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4; Academic Festival Overture; Tragic Overture. Gewandhausorchester Leipzig conducted by Kurt Masur. PentaTone. $29.99 (3 SACDs).

     The sheer scale of Mahler’s symphonies is a source of continued amazement when performances take full advantage of it, as did Vladimir Jurowski’s reading of the “Resurrection” symphony at Royal Festival Hall in London on September 25 and 26, 2009. Those Jurowski performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra are now available on the orchestra’s own label, and they are very much worth hearing. Jurowski takes a very broad and expansive view of this symphony, not so much through slow tempos (although his are on the slow-ish side) as through a willingness to let phrases breathe and allow silences to be extended (it was Haydn who remarked on the importance of getting the silences right in music). The symphony in Jurowski’s interpretation does not quite fit on a single disc, so the first movement here gets a CD of its own – a wise decision, since Mahler himself called for a five-minute pause between the first movement (which ties back to his Symphony No. 1) and the second (which follows the opening uneasily and enters new territory). The grand striding of the first movement here stands in strong contrast to the quiet idyll of the following Andante moderato, after which the scherzo (based on the Rückert song, Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt, “St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes”) is given more bite than usual – there is not only irony but also some bitterness in this music, as Jurowski sees it. Then the Urlicht movement, which introduces voice for the first time, follows without a break and is simply glorious: mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn’s dark, burnished voice is beautifully communicative, rising to real anguish at the words about the little angel trying to bar the path to God. All these elements set up a highly dramatic and very intense finale, whose lengthy instrumental opening strides forth as bravely as does the music of the opening movement – but in a very different mood. And when the chorus finally enters, ever so quietly, with “Aufersteh’n,” there is a feeling of expectation and hopefulness that carries right through to the eventual mystical proclamation that the soul shall rise again – albeit not in conformity with any organized religious tradition. The intensity of the earlier parts of the symphony becomes soul-stirring transcendence by the end of the finale, as Mahler surely intended, and the result is a thoroughly satisfying performance in which soloists, chorus and orchestra join in beauty, sweeping listeners along with them.

     There is sweep of a different sort in Kurt Masur’s Brahms cycle, recorded in 1976 and now available in remastered SACD form thanks to some fine engineering work by PentaTone. The sound is still not quite up to the best modern SACD standards, but its analog origins give it a fullness and richness that original digital recordings did not attain until many years later. And Masur’s understanding of this music – when added to the excellent and highly knowledgeable playing of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig – makes this set a winner from start to finish. Actually, the cycle shows its age less in sonic terms than through some aspects of performance practice, notably the unfortunate paucity of repeats – typical in the 1970s but now, thankfully, much less often encountered. Nevertheless, this is broad-scale Brahms. Tempos are well chosen, allowing the music time to breathe while still keeping the symphonies moving smartly ahead. The First opens grandly and concludes with grandeur of a different kind, the questions raised in its first three movements answered nobly in the fourth. The Second – the symphony that perhaps benefits the most from a repeat of the first-movement exposition, but does not receive it here – manages to be genial without sounding light or even lighthearted: there is something like gruff good humor here rather than any superficial gaiety. The tightly knit Third emerges as a thoroughly connected, interwoven whole here, with Masur bringing out the motivic relationships among the movements and scaling the symphony as a large work of chamber music rather than giving it any sort of gigantism. And the Fourth, a work at once mighty and reserved, here has propulsive energy and a monumental sense of scale, which carries right through the variations of the final Passacaglia into a triumphant conclusion. Add to these fine readings a couple of wonderful performances of the bright Academic Festival Overture and its dark companion piece, the Tragic Overture, and you have a Brahms cycle that thoroughly explores the composer’s musical scale and communicates his thoughts to impressive effect.