(+++) SORT OF SCARY STUFF

Guys Read, Volume 2: Thriller. Edited by Jon Scieszka. Walden Pond Press. $16.99.

Scary School. By “Derek the Ghost” (Derek Taylor Kent). Illustrated by Scott M. Fischer. Harper. $15.99.

Poison Apple Book: At First Bite. By Ruth Ames. Scholastic. $5.99.

     Mild chills are in store for young readers who pick these books up – and there is some amusement, too, from time to time. The second Guys Read anthology is actually on the serious (if melodramatically overdone) side, having left the humor largely to the first volume, Funny Business. This time, Jon Scieszka edits and introduces a collection in which the word “weird” makes very frequent appearances. The 10 authors here are all solid craftsmen (and craftswomen), some of the standouts being M.T. Anderson, Walter Dean Myers, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Bruce Hale and Patrick Carman. Oh, heck – they are all standouts, one way or another: the others are Matt de la Peňa, Anthony Horowitz, Margaret Peterson Haddix, Gennifer Choldenko and James Patterson. Myers’ “Pirate” is perhaps the scariest story here, because it is the closest to real-world reality, being about a Somali boy involved in piracy. At the opposite end of things is Horowitz’s “The Double Eagle Has Landed,” which features “the world’s worst detective” and such lines as “is it a safe safe?” and, in response to a comment that a man spent three years in prison, “He was a guard?” It’s the kind of story in which someone urges someone else not to open the doors, and he opens them anyway, and “at once about a hundred bells all around the building began a deafening clang.” A little of this goes a long way. There’s amusement too in Hale’s “Nate Macavoy, Monster Hunter,” in which Nate, to get information on Pukwudgies, must talk to “the toughest kid in sixth grade. Brandon Frye. …He’s built like a big brown refrigerator, with a shock of thick black hair, eyes like black lasers, and the sweet disposition of a hungry wolverine.” Then there is Anderson’s “The Old, Dead Nuisance,” about fights between psychics and a treasure hidden in plain sight. As usual in an anthology, and as these examples show, the stories vary widely and come with all sorts of moods, with even the “thriller” description fitting some only loosely. The Guys Read series is supposed to be especially for boys, and boys are indeed the main protagonists in these stories, but beyond that, the book is just another short-story collection whose contents will have varying levels of appeal, depending on each individual reader’s taste.

     Young readers whose taste runs entirely to humor, or rather what Mad magazine used to call “humor in a jugular vein,” are the target audience for Scary School, first in a new series about a school where the teachers have a bad habit of eating the students and the students are mostly ghosts, ghouls or goblins anyway, so it doesn’t much matter. Charles Nukid is the new kid at school in this installment, told by 11-year-old Derek the Ghost – or, well, 11-years-old-when-he-died-in-a-science-experiment-gone-wrong Derek the Ghost. A fair sample of the narrative here: “Principal Headcrusher was familiar with Dr. Dragonbreath’s unusual teaching method, which tended not to support the more common notion that students should stay alive during class.” Or: “Here’s the thing about Scary School: sometimes the students could be just as scary as the teachers. You might be a regular kid, but the kid sitting next to you might be a zombie, a vampire, or a werewolf. That’s what made Scary School extra scary and was a big reason why Principal Headcrusher could charge so much for tuition.” One more: “When you’re doing Monster Math with a monster, the monster is always right.” The book is full of weird teachers, odd students, and such places as Scary Garden, “at the end of the school yard behind a tall white fence that prevented the dangerous plants from attacking the students. There were holes in the fence that kids had to watch out for, because sometimes a hungry plant would reach through the hole to snatch a good meal. But that didn’t happen too often.” There really isn’t much plot here – just a lot of vaguely connected scenes filled with amusing weirdness – but readers looking for something offbeat and at least as funny as it is frightening (actually a lot more so) will enjoy it.

     There is some amusement in the latest Poison Apple entry as well. These books, aimed at preteen girls, are quick reads whose not-too-frightening plots are easily understood and speedily forgotten after each book ends. At First Bite is a little unusual, though, because instead of a plot in which there may or may not be something supernatural going on, Ruth Ames’ book features something definitely supernatural from the very beginning. The reason is that the protagonist, 12-year-old Ashlee Lambert, is a vampire. And the plot hinges on whether there is another vampire in town – “town” being Los Angeles, to which Ashlee has moved from New York City. This is not a simple relocation for a vampire kid, since L.A. has all that sunshine and Ashlee has got to learn to deal with some really bad sunburns. Besides, she must contend with the usual mean-girls clique at her school; and in addition to learning about the need for SPF 75 sunscreen at all times, she must handle the possibility that Dark Ones are about, and also make sure she always has a good supply of Sanga! (a drink that comes with its own exclamation point and “was invented by a genius vampire who was as grossed out by hunting as I am”). And then there are her involuntary shifts into a bat. Soon Ashlee is suspecting that there may be more than one other vampire in town. She’s right, too, but not in the way she initially thinks. Anyone who knows Bram Stoker’s Dracula will realize quickly that a key to what is going on lies in a character named Mr. Harker; but even young readers unfamiliar with Stoker will likely pick up clues well before Ashlee and her friends do. At First Bite is better written and somewhat lighter in tone than most of the Poison Apple books, and if it is still, ultimately, forgettable, at least it offers a fair amount of fun while being read.

(+++) BEING STRONG

Grant’s Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant’s Heroic Last Year. By Charles Bracelen Flood. Da Capo. $27.50.

True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life. By Kevin Sorbo. Da Capo. $26.

     The notion of “facing down death” is popular in heroic fiction, but real life – and real death – are another matter. No one faces death down, but some face it with far greater equanimity than others. The phrase “death with dignity” has become a watchword of proponents of hospice care and assisted suicide, but it is far more applicable to the final year of Ulysses S. Grant, whose body was ravaged by throat and mouth cancer just when his personal circumstances and those of his family were at their lowest ebb. Grant, famously naïve about monetary matters, had lent his name and given all his family’s money to what would later come to be called a Ponzi scheme – and he had lost everything. He started his memoirs in an attempt – successful, but not until after his death – to provide for those he loved. Mark Twain, who had become Grant’s friend and who published the memoirs, found Grant’s writing exemplary and the memoir tremendously valuable – a judgment generally shared by historians and critics right up to today. Charles Bracelen Flood, author of Lee: The Last Years, creates a fast-paced and highly informative book about Lee’s great opponent in Grant’s Final Victory. Told through letters, telegrams, newspaper articles and research that ranges from expected academic sources to a book by Grant’s granddaughter, Princess Julia Catacuzene (who was nine years old when Grant died), Flood’s book balances the sadness of Grant’s physical decline with an appreciation of the near-heroic measures he used to keep himself writing. Indeed, Twain believed that creating the memoirs is what kept Grant alive so long – the former president and general died three days after finishing them. Legal depositions involving the unraveling of the firm of Grant & Ward appear here side by side with remarkable photos of Grant, his family and those who were significant in his life: P.T. Barnum, Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and William Scott Hancock, magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, onetime Grant friend and assistant Adam Badeau (who later betrayed Grant’s trust in him), and many others. A photo of Grant himself, only weeks from death, is tremendously moving in a way that all the narrative of heroism, preservation of the Union and a two-term presidency is not. The respect accorded Grant by former Confederates is one of the most telling parts of this story, and the great love felt for him by his wife and children is another. Grant, whose reputation has had many ups and downs over the years, emerges from this heartwarming portrait not as a hard-edged, hard-drinking soldier and severely flawed leader of a reunited nation – as some biographies have portrayed him – but as a concerned, capable, loving and supremely determined man whose military brilliance was perhaps matched, and to an extent undone, by his tremendous naïveté in political and financial matters. Grant’s Final Victory is intended not so much to be revisionist history as to be corrective history. Many of its most telling elements are the small ones: “By four in the afternoon [of the day of Grant’s death] Bloomingdale’s department store had sold over six miles of black crepe.”

     Confrontation with death in a far more modern setting is the subject of True Strength, the story of TV actor Kevin Sorbo – who, at the height of his career in 1997, had three very atypical strokes in a single day. Unlike Grant, who accepted his diagnosis of fatal cancer (caused by many years of cigar smoking) with equanimity and a determination to do the best he could in the time remaining to him, Sorbo refuses to take a possible death sentence at face value; that is no longer the way Americans handle such things. He almost lost his left arm because of an aneurysm – but doctors saved it by thinning his blood so much that he could have bled to death if he had moved too much. When the immediate crisis had passed, Sorbo began years of battling back physically and mentally: physical therapy, psychiatric help, and alternative as well as conventional medicine all played their parts. True Strength is a typical modern memoir by a typical modern minor celebrity, of interest primarily to Sorbo’s fans and fans of the TV show Hercules, the Legendary Journeys, on which Sorbo starred in the 1990s. There are the usual behind-the-scenes-of-the-entertainment-world elements to keep fans interested, of course. “A go-see is a two- or three-hour time slot when invited models show their books, making small talk while the photographer or art director pages through their portfolios. They are usually cattle calls, with lots of bored-looking models hanging around, waiting their turns. Modeling is such an odd business. ‘Hi. Here are pictures of me. Aren’t I great? Please book me. Please.’” And there is what passes for the usual sort of self-revelation, as when Sorbo first confronts his recovery chances: “My goal is for a complete recovery to the heroic, invincible, driven man I have been my whole life. Here this guy [a doctor] is telling me I shouldn’t even want that. His words singe me. I flush, from embarrassment or nerves; his perspective blazes on my skin and puts a pit in my stomach.” True Strength has a deliberately upbeat tone and message, with Sorbo working his way back into acting and becoming head of a mentoring program for inner-city teens. This is all very admirable and will be inspirational for some people – specifically, for Sorbo’s fans. The chapters contributed by various people in Sorbo’s life will likewise be of interest to fans. But in the long run, there is nothing very special about Sorbo’s determination or his road back to health, and nothing very special about him, either, except his modest level of celebrity. Certainly his story is worth cheering, as is the tale of anyone’s recovery from a life-threatening condition. But True Strength is not a book designed to appeal to everyone; it is a book for fans of an actor who want to get some vicarious pleasure out of reading about his trials and triumphs.

(+++) REACHING BACK

The Mystery of the Missing Everything. By Ben H. Winters. Harper. $16.99.

The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman. By Ben H. Winters. Harper. $5.99.

The Last Musketeer. By Stuart Gibbs. Harper. $16.99.

The Three Musketeers. By Alexandre Dumas. Adapted by Clarissa Hutton. Pictures by Brett Helquist. Harper. $6.99.

     Some new books are more effective and more fun only if you know their predecessors. The Mystery of the Missing Everything reintroduces middle-school detective Bethesda Fielding, now an eighth grader, in a story about a stolen trophy that has led Principal Isabel Van Vreeland to cancel the eighth grade’s much-anticipated field trip to Taproot Valley. The trophy is super-important to the principal, since it is the only one the school has ever won, and it brings out her mean streak: “Instead of helping her get to the bottom of this, and get her precious trophy back, all everyone did was moan and groan about their precious extracurricular activities. …Well, guess what, folks. You want me to make things better around here? Too bad. They’re about to get a lot worse.” Bethesda methodically works on the trophy issue, and soon becomes a thorn in the side to a certain someone: “Bethesda was clever. A little too clever. She was determined to solve the mystery, and for the person in the upstairs bathroom, that was a problem.” There is a long list of suspects, through which Bethesda goes methodically, and there turn out to be several confessions, none of them useful until, of course, the one that is (actually the two that are). And a bit of deus ex machina at the end guarantees that everything comes out fine – thanks in part to Ida Finkleman, who at one point is sort of a suspect but who turns out to be a big help. She is the focus of Ben Winters’ previous book, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, which is now available in paperback. In that book, set a year earlier (with Bethesda as a seventh-grader), there is much made of Ms. Finkleman’s apparent tattoo of Ozzy Osbourne, and of the contrast between the conservatively dressed music teacher and the real Ms. Finkleman, who seems to have a “secret life.” But it turns out that there is a secret beyond the secret, a mystery behind the mystery: what has been revealed about Ms. Finkleman turns out not to be correct, not quite, and even that tattoo, although it exists, proves not to be what it seems. The twists in Ms. Finkleman’s story are rather overdone, but the book seems somewhat less forced than The Mystery of the Missing Everything, and rock-music fans in the target age range will find it neatly to their tastes – and a good foundation for the newer book, if they want to know more of Bethesda’s detective adventures.

     “Adventure” is the perfect word for The Three Musketeers, published in serial form in 1844 and ever since identified with swashbuckling heroism and the “all for one, one for all” mentality (in fact, Alexandre Dumas invented the phrase – albeit in French). Readers who have long enjoyed the novel, or one of its many adaptations, may nevertheless be unaware that there were two sequels: Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, one part of which is famous as The Man in the Iron Mask. And now there is another sequel of sorts, or rather a prequel: The Last Musketeer by Stuart Gibbs. It is really a pretty silly book, involving time travel by 14-year-old Greg Rich in an attempt to rescue his parents after they disappear during a family trip to Paris. Greg meets the teenage Musketeers – Athos, Porthos and Aramis – and discovers that he must help them survive some dastardly machinations so they can become the heroes they are meant to be and meet up with d’Artagnan. This means that Greg himself must become a Musketeer, which is possible because his family history is tied to the Three Musketeers, and…well, the whole setup is so far-fetched that it is hard to believe Gibbs wants anyone to take any of it seriously. The camaraderie of the Musketeers quickly extends to Greg: “‘By now you’re not a stranger,’ Aramis interrupted. ‘You’re a friend.’ ‘Besides, this is about right and wrong, and defending honor,’ Athos added.” And so the morality underpinning Dumas’ novels (which are collectively called The d’Artagnan Romances) appears in Gibbs’ book as well, however hard it may be to take it seriously in this context. And how seriously will modern readers take it in the original context? The Three Musketeers is certainly still worth reading, even – for young readers – in the rather lightweight adaptation by Clarissa Hutton. Brett Helquist’s name appears on the cover in larger type than Dumas’, which shows this edition’s orientation – although it is not a graphic novel (actually, The Three Musketeers would make a good one). Helquist’s illustrations are suitably overdone – lots of smirks and snarls by bad guys and lots of heroic posturing by the good characters. And the translation is suitably dramatic – plenty of “Begone!” and “Silence!” and “Help! Help!” and such. And the development-a-minute plotting still carries readers along into the mixture of swordplay and chivalry that has long made Dumas popular. There may not be all that much to The Last Musketeer, but there is still plenty to enjoy in the novel that provides its foundation and background.

(++++) VIRTUOSITIES

Berlioz: Overture to “Béatrice et Bénédict”; Harold in Italy; Paganini: Sonata per la Gran Viola e Orchestra. David Aaron Carpenter, viola; Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Ondine. $16.99.

Couperin: Concerts Royaux. Bruce Haines, hautboy; Arthur Haas, harpsichord; Susie Napper, viola da gamba. ATMA Classique. $16.99.

William Alwyn: Concerti Grossi Nos. 2 and 3; Dramatic Overture—The Moor of Venice; Serenade; Seven Irish Tunes—Suite for Small Orchestra. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Naxos. $9.99.

     Both individual and ensemble virtuosity are much in evidence in these fine new recordings. David Allan Carpenter’s is particularly good: he restores some extra-difficult elements of Harold in Italy that Berlioz wrote in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Paganini to accept and perform the work – which Paganini never did, although the great violinist gave the piece high praise when he heard it played by someone else. The added elements do not significantly change the overall work, which is neatly described as a “symphony with viola obbligato” on this Ondine recording. Paganini, of course, wanted a pure display piece in which he would play constantly. In fact, the viola, although important, is not sufficiently prominent in Harold in Italy for the work to be dubbed a concerto. Nevertheless, without prominent and strongly played viola elements, the piece falls flat – which it decidedly does not as performed by Carpenter with the Helsinki Philharmonic conducted effectively by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The final “Orgy of the Brigands” is particularly well done here: not as orgiastic as the finale of the earlier Symphonie fantastique, it nevertheless has considerable power and drama. Ashkenazy also leads a light, well-paced and bouncy version of the overture to Béatrice et Bénédict, which functions as a sort of curtain-raiser for Harold in Italy. Also on the CD is Paganini’s own version of a piece – to his taste – for viola, the Sonata per la Gran Viola e Orchestra. This is actually a fairly small-scale work, its three movements lasting less than 13 minutes, but there is certainly plenty of virtuosity in it, especially in the final set of variations. Carpenter plays it quite well, and both he and Ashkenazy are careful not to over-expand the work into something larger than it is.

     The scale is also appropriately small in the excerpts from François Couperin’s Concerts royaux on a lovely reissue by ATMA Classique of a 1999 CD featuring the late Bruce Haynes. Haynes, who died in May at age 69, was a multitalented advocate of Baroque performance practices, not only playing the hautboy (ancestor of the oboe) – as well as the recorder and modern oboe – but also crafting replicas of Baroque woodwinds at his studio in California. Haynes also wrote extensively on historical performance and was by all accounts a fine teacher. What stands out on the Couperin disc, though, is simply his musicality. All the works here, which date to the 1720s, require delicacy and careful blending of instrumental voices, with the hautboy not so much “first among equals” as it is an equal ensemble member whose aural prominence is due more to its innate tone than to any especially virtuosic writing. Couperin’s blending of voices is, in fact, a particularly pleasant sort of chamber music, in which the performers (and Haynes is very abled partnered by Arthur Haas and Susie Napper) make music together, cooperatively, the ebb and flow of the melodies and the instrumental sounds carrying listeners along with apparent effortlessness on the part of the players. This CD stands as a fine tribute to Haynes and his art: elegant, understated, beautifully played and a delight to hear again and again.

     The virtuosity is of a different order in the works of William Alwyn (1905-1985), even when Alwyn superficially adopts the Baroque form of the concerto grosso. Alwyn wrote three works with that title, and while the second and third, on the surface, partake of the correct form, they are filled with a lyricism that goes beyond their Baroque models. The third, which features a particularly well-handled blending of brass, winds and strings, is especially pleasant. Indeed, “pleasant” is a pretty good adjective for a lot of Alwyn’s music – for which reason it is not quite at the level of the works of fellow Britons Holst and Vaughan Williams. Even in his Shakespeare-based Dramatic Overture—The Moor of Venice, Alwyn seems more inclined to the lyrical than the overwhelmingly dark and despondent, although certainly the overture has its moments of power. This is the world première recording of the overture, and also of the Serenade and Seven Irish Tunes, both of which are well-made, nicely orchestrated works that flicker through multiple moods. None of the music here is as interesting as Alwyn’s oboe concerto or his Lyra Angelica for harp and strings, so this CD is not really the best introduction to Alwyn for those unfamiliar with him; the disc, which is very well played and conducted, gets a (+++) rating. Those who have already encountered Alwyn will find this an enjoyable expansion of their knowledge of his music.

(+++) PAST PERFECT?

Busoni: Doktor Faust. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Richard Lewis, Ian Wallace, Heather Harper, John Cameron; Ambrosian Singers, Chorus from the Royal Academy of Music, and London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. LPO. $16.99.

Mahler: Symphony No. 2; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Otto Klemperer: Merry Waltz; Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole; Brahms: Symphony No. 4; Ottokar Nováček: Perpetuum mobile. London Symphony, BBC Symphony and New Philharmonia Orchestras conducted by Leopold Stokowski. BBC Legends. $39.99 (3 CDs).

     It is all too easy to idealize the past – indeed, in a sense, humans remake themselves by reimagining their pasts all the time. When it comes to music, it is easy to think that “legendary” performances of the past were far superior to anything more modern, and certainly better than any renditions recorded more recently. Now, though, thanks to the increase in releases of archival recordings, this belief in the superiority of the performers and recordings of yesteryear can be put to the test, or rather to the ear. This frequently involves a rebalancing of priorities – superb older performances of Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, for example, almost invariably omit exposition repeats that the composers wanted and that are nearly always included today. In the case of a less-known work such as Busoni’s opera Doktor Faust, revisiting a classic performance from 1959 makes it possible to appreciate some excellent casting and singing – while regretting the significantly shortened version that was presented. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is in fine voice here as Faust (he appeared several times in this opera, even appearing in one production as a speaker), and the rest of the cast supports him ably, with Richard Lewis a suitably unpleasant Mephistopheles and Heather Harper an effective if perhaps not highly seductive Duchess of Parma. Busoni’s libretto, which he wrote himself, varies substantially from Goethe’s better-known version of the Faust legend, with (for example) the seduction and abandonment of Gretchen occurring in a prologue and being less important than Gretchen’s brother’s failed attempt at revenge. At the time Sir Adrian Boult conducted this recording, the only available version of the opera was the completion by Philipp Jarnach, and this in turn was shortened for purposes of the BBC broadcast recorded here. Decades later, in 1982, Antony Beaumont completed Doktor Faust by using sketches by Busoni that had previously been thought lost. So what this recording offers is a shortened version of a not-ideally-completed version of Busoni’s final opera, well sung and certainly well conducted, but ultimately coming across as rather thin – which the score as a whole decidedly is not.

     The three-CD BBC Legends release of performances by Leopold Stokowski is in some ways at the opposite extreme. Stokowski always favored the lush, and his conducting was inevitably broad in scope and grand in scale; it was as if he attained subtlety mostly by accident. Throughout this compilation, there are grand gestures and very broad approaches to music, whether the works are well adapted to the Stokowski technique or not. Stokowski was also a tinkerer with orchestration, using his vast knowledge of the orchestra to heighten elements that he thought could be brought out more effectively if things were changed here and there from what the composer wrote. This is a decidedly old-school approach that was uncommon even when Stokowski was in his heyday; to the extent that it occurs and is audible in these recordings, it simply sounds odd, as if the emphases and colors are in the wrong places. Stokowski was a master of the massive but was scarcely known for delicacy. Thus, in the 1963 recording of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony, with the BBC Chorus, BBC Choral Society, Goldsmith’s Choral Union, Harrow Choral Society and London Symphony Orchestra – plus soloists Rae Woodland and Janet Baker – the choral sections of the finale are gigantic and the lengthy lead-in to them is broad and intense; and the funereal first movement is also effective, even in the performance’s obsolete monophonic sound. But the middle movements, where Mahler so carefully balances the heaviness and intensity of the open and close, are disappointingly pedestrian (although Baker’s rich contralto is superb). Similarly, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, recorded in 1964 with the London Symphony, has a wonderful-sounding finale (although too triumphal for more-modern interpretations of the work), but the subtleties, sarcasm and warmth of the earlier movements do not get their full due. Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 8, also recorded in 1964 – but with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – fares better: perhaps because the work is less known, Stokowski approaches it in a more straightforward way, and the orchestra’s excellent playing makes a strong case for the music. Ottokar Nováček’s Perpetuum mobile, recorded the same year with the same orchestra, is a minor work (although the composer’s best-known one), handled pleasantly enough in Stokowski’s own orchestration. The remaining pieces here feature the New Philharmonia Orchestra and were recorded in 1974. Otto Klemperer’s Merry Waltz is nicely played, if a little lumbering; Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole is a bit too grand and expansive although, again, well played; and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is so rich a brew of strings that it is nearly overwhelming – it is sumptuous but very slow. As for Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, the most transparent of the composer’s symphonies and the most indebted to Bach, it gets a somewhat too grandiose and overly speedy treatment that makes it rather less impressive than it can be. All the works here showcase Stokowski as a conductor generally more comfortable with grand gestures and big works than with pieces of more-modest dimensions or requiring a lighter touch. His approach seems very much one of the past – a time when many classical works were far less known than they are today, so changes and reemphases by a conductor seemed far more justifiable. There is a great deal worthwhile in these Stokowski performances, but also quite a bit that will sound wrong-headed, slightly “off,” to today’s audiences.

(++++) TALES OF SURREALITY

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: 14 Amazing Authors Tell the Tales. By Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton Mifflin. $24.99.

Moving House. By Mark Siegel. Roaring Brook Press. $16.99.

     Chris Van Allsburg has done some amazing things. Two-time winner of the Caldecott Medal (for Jumanji and The Polar Express, both of which were made into movies), he is also the creator of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, the best modern inspirer of creative writing for young people – and, it now turns out, a darn good inspiration for famous and successful adult authors, too. The 1984 book was a mystery that could not be solved: 14 enigmatic illustrations, each with a title and brief caption, but with no stories to go with them and no way of finding out what the stories were supposed to be (because the author-illustrator had mysteriously disappeared right after dropping off the pictures with a potential publisher). There are tales within tales in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, since that possible publisher was himself a fictional character – thus, the book involved a fictional publisher getting fictional illustrations from fictional stories that may or may not have been written by a fictional author-illustrator who mysteriously vanished into thin air, leaving it to reader to imagine or write their own tales. A wonderful concept – and one now taken a big step further in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, to which Chris Van Allsburg himself contributes one story, with such luminaries as Stephen King, M.T. Anderson, Walter Dean Myers, Lois Lowry, Cory Doctorow and Jon Scieszka contributing others. Indeed, every author here is well-known – the others are Jules Feiffer, Sherman Alexie, Linda Sue Park, Kate DiCamillo, Louis Sachar, Tabitha King and Gregory McGuire. And the book’s introduction is by Lemony Snicket. It would spoil the fun (and the chills, for there are some of those) to say too much about the stories themselves; suffice it to say that each author takes his or her assignment to write about one of the original often-surrealistic illustrations quite seriously, and every story fits its illustration and caption very well – although (and this is the charm of the whole Harris Burdick conceit) there are many, many other possible ways to write about the very same pictures. Those pictures have retained all their charm and oddity. In one, a man raises a chair above his head as if to hit a lump beneath the carpeting, with the title “Under the Rug” and the caption, “Two weeks passed and it happened again.” In another, four people ride along railroad tracks in an open cart pulled along by a billowing sail, with only mist in the distance, with the title “Another Place, Another Time,” and the caption, “If there was an answer, he’d find it there.” In yet another, a frightened-looking woman stands with knife poised above a glowing pumpkin, with the title, “Just Desert” and the caption, “She lowered the knife and it grew even brighter.” These are wonderfully evocative visual images, ranging from the beautiful to the ambivalent to the genuinely spooky, and The Chronicles of Harris Burdick does every one of them proud through short, very well-written interpretative stories that will – and should – have young readers and adults alike talking about their own ideas of what the illustrations really mean. And what they really mean is, of course, that ideas are gateways to the infinite recesses of the imagination. The Chronicles of Harris Burdick is a remarkable book and a thoroughly wonderful one.

     Mark Siegel’s Moving House is not at this level – few books for young readers are – but its gently told and delightfully illustrated story partakes of surrealism just as surely as does Chris Van Allsburg’s. Siegel’s title is intended to be read two ways – as “we are moving to a new house” and “the house is moving.” The latter reading turns out to make the former unnecessary; that is the entire plot. But the way the plot unfolds is what makes this book so special. Little Joey and Chloe, two of the widest-eyed children to be found anywhere this side of Disney animation, love their house, but they and their parents do not love living in Foggytown, where people constantly bump into things and no one can see the stars. So it is time to pack up and move house to somewhere clearer than Number Seven Carriage Street. But the house itself has other ideas – or rather the same idea. It turns out that love goes both ways: the kids love the house, and it loves them back. So in the middle of the night, “Joey and Chloe’s room tilted, the house wriggled and jiggled and everything went whoa this way and whoa that way” as the house picks itself up and starts to wander. In illustrations reminiscent of a famous Winsor McKay Little Nemo in Slumberland sequence, the house grows legs and arms and stretches, yawns and trots off, explaining along the way that it does not want Joey and Chloe to leave it. They do not want to leave it either – so the house, the kids and the entire town get together to come up with a solution. In addition to McKay’s influence, Siegel has clearly absorbed elements of comic books and cartooning (notably in a scene where numerous houses huddling in the fog all open their window-eyes wide). Clever use of color and perspective make Moving House as much fun to see as to read – even more fun, actually, since the one slightly sour note here is a textual reference to the stars being visible “before the factory,” an environmental dig that unnecessarily mars the otherwise beautifully handled dreamscape of the story. This is a minor jarring note, though, in a book that otherwise mixes charm, surprise and all sorts of enjoyment into a surrealistically delightful soufflé.

(++++) CLASSICS FOR A NEW GENERATION

The Giver: The Gift Edition. By Lois Lowry. Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Houghton Mifflin.$19.99.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By William Shakespeare. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Persuasion. By Jane Austen. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Emma. By Jane Austen. HarperTeen. $8.99.

     Recasting literary classics for 21^st-century teenage readers is a noble endeavor: it would be nice if books generally considered “great literature” would be read because they are considered interesting rather than because they are required in high-school and college courses. How to make the works appealing to today’s young readers, though, is by no means clear. The Giver has been a modern classic since its first appearance in 1993; its winning of the Newbery Award was scarcely a surprise. Because it is only 18 years old, it needs relatively little to make it intriguing and appealing to today’s young readers: its language still speaks clearly to them, its dystopian plot is easy to see and follow, and its eventual uplifting and hopeful message carries as much meaning now as it did when Lois Lowry first wrote it. Like so many other books for a preteen or teenage audience, this is about growing up – but there is nothing facile about Lowry’s story of regimentation, assigned roles and the tremendous losses that accompany gained knowledge: “He didn’t want the memories, didn’t want the honor, didn’t want the wisdom, didn’t want the pain. He wanted his childhood again, his scraped knees and ball games. …But the choice was not his.” The Giver is ultimately about choices that can and cannot be made – and about finding a way to choose when there seems no way to do so. This is a resonant theme, and one that withstands the occasional logical lapses of the story. The new “Gift Edition” of the book is handsomely bound and includes striking illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, who takes particular advantage of one of the Giver’s abilities: to see color when no one else can. Thus, some illustrations are in black-and-white, some are in color, and some have a tiny and very effective splash of color in what is otherwise black-and-white. Lowry’s 1994 Newbery acceptance speech is included at the end as a sort of postscript, and is really all the additional commentary the book requires – to the extent that it needs any at all.

     Older works need more. New HarperTeen editions of classics by Shakespeare and Jane Austen attempt, somewhat dubiously, to interest modern young readers by including “extras” of various kinds at the end. The works themselves, though, are presented straight, without commentary or explanation, and since the authors’ language is not easy for most teens today, it is unlikely that these new oversize paperbacks will produce a sudden groundswell of interest. One can always hope, though; these three new editions all get (+++) ratings because of that hope.

     A Midsummer Night’s Dream fares best in its new guise. Printed in large type and with plenty of white space on each page, the play is as easy to read in this format as its language will allow. And the “extras” really do add something extra here. Not all of them – not, for example, the rather lame six-question “What would you do in the name of love?” quiz. But on the plus side, this edition offers five short stories by members of the online teen writing community Inkpop (www.inkpop.com) – each reimagining one part of the play or another. The real value of these stories lies not in their writing (although that is generally good) but in the simple fact that they are by members of the same teenage audience at which this edition is targeted – that is, here are young people who have read the play, absorbed it, thought about it and created something new based on it. That may be enough to bring at least some new readers to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The remaining “extras” probably won’t: they are “10 Things You Didn’t Know about William Shakespeare” (one of which is that he was born in 1564 – which scarcely seems a little-known fact) and an excerpt from Romeo & Juliet that is, again, given in the original language and without explanatory material. True, footnotes and explanations can interfere with the flow of a work and the enjoyment of it; but given Shakespeare’s language, which is glorious to those who can follow it but can be nearly indecipherable to those who cannot, it would have been helpful to make at least some attempt to get today’s teen readers involved in one of the most frequently adapted and most amusingly enjoyable of all Shakespeare’s plays.

     The language is, chronologically, much more modern in Jane Austen’s works, but the sensibilities of the author of Sense and Sensibility are, in their own way, more archaic than those of Shakespeare. Austen is going through a resurgence of popularity these days through various adaptations and reinterpretations, so it seems to make sense to bring out teen-oriented editions of some of her actual writing. Instead of Shakespeare’s speedily stagey pacing and constant confusion of identities, Austen provides slow-moving works that are emotionally charged (by Victorian standards) with questions of love and devotion. Persuasion is about an attempt to rekindle a romance that ended when Anne Elliot allowed her family to dissuade her from engagement to poverty-stricken Captain Wentworth even though the two were in love. Typical dialogue: “‘I am much obliged to you,’ was her answer, ‘but I am not going with them. The carriage would not accommodate so many. I walk: I prefer walking.’ ‘But it rains.’ ‘Oh! Very little. Nothing that I regard.’” The HarperTeen edition comes with the same six-question “love quiz” offered in the Shakespeare volume, plus “10 Things You Didn’t Know about Jane Austen” (she never married; she died at age 41; and so on). There is also an excerpt here from Emma, Austen’s famous story of a matchmaker who eventually makes her own match. And then the “extras” in the new edition of Emma include the same “10 Things” supplement plus an excerpt from Persuasion. The quiz in Emma, though, is different: “Have you found your match?” And it includes only five questions. Emma is nearly twice as long as Persuasion, and although more famous, may be more difficult for modern teens to read, simply because it does go on and on for nearly 600 pages. Again, the dialogue may be hard for today’s teens to relate to: “‘I am very sorry to hear, Miss Fairfax, of your being out this morning in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves. – Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?’ ‘Yes, sir, I did indeed; and I am much obliged by your kind solicitude about me.’” The recent upsurge of interest in Austen’s works has come about almost entirely because of such adaptations as the delightful 1995 film Clueless, which is loosely based on Emma. Reading Austen in her original language and at her original length is a taller order than enjoying reinterpretations of her plots and characters, and there is nothing in the HarperTeen editions to help modern readers adjust to the notions, language and pacing of novels from 19^th-century England. It would be nice if these books did in fact cause more of today’s teens to develop an interest in Austen and Shakespeare, but the likelihood of that happening because of these volumes seems, unfortunately, slim.

(++++) BRAINIACS ALL

Leonardo’s Legacy: How Da Vinci Reimagined the World. By Stefan Klein. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Da Capo. $16.

The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain. By Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. Da Capo. $16.

      The literal translation from the original German in which Stefan Klein wrote his book about Leonardo Da Vinci says the great creative genius “newly invented” the world, or “invented it anew” (neu erfand). The English “reimagined” seems an inadequate substitute, for all that Shelley Frisch’s translation generally reads well and makes it easy to follow Klein’s line of argument. The difference is that Klein’s wording emphasizes Leonardo’s actual, real-world creativity, while the translation indicates that what Leonardo did was largely within his own mind. Yet it is important to understand that Leonardo was no idle dreamer but a highly practical constructor of instruments of peace and war, of ancestors of robots, and of diagrams of the human body whose accuracy is quite astonishing even though the worldview through which Leonardo saw anatomy now seems hopelessly quaint. To Leonardo and others of his time, the human body – a divine creation – was a microcosm of the larger world: “So then we may say that the earth has a spirit of growth, and that its flesh is the soil; its bones are the successive strata of the rocks which form the mountains; its cartilage is the tufa stone; its blood the springs of its waters.” One of the most amazing things about Leonardo is that he could foundationally accept this viewpoint while conducting experiments whose findings are as strikingly modern as the man-as-microcosm belief is archaic. Klein’s book, originally published in 2008 and now available in paperback, not only discusses well-known aspects of Leonardo’s work, such as his three-decade preoccupation with flying, but also less-known but more important ones, such as “the first city map the world has ever seen,” of the town of Imola, near Bologna. The map is reproduced in the book, showing the town from a bird’s-eye view, and it is amazing. But then, so much that Leonardo did was amazing – and a great deal of it was in the service of war. Klein makes no attempt, unfortunately, to reconcile Leonardo’s stated and apparently sincere aversion to violence with the instruments he imagined (and sometimes created) for propagating it: “In one sketch, archers are running away from an exploding grenade, which Leonardo referred to as ‘the deadliest of all machines.’ In another, a war chariot with rotating scythes as large as men is mowing down soldiers and leaving behind a trail of severed legs and dismembered bodies.” It has been argued that Leonardo needed, after all, to support himself, and that rulers such as Cesare Borgia wanted his expertise for reasons of conquest, not peace. True enough, but this is an incomplete truth, since any requirements that Leonardo create machines of war surely did not mandate that he show their gruesome expected effects in such detail. This is one Leonardo mystery that Klein does not attempt to solve; nor does he seek to explain, for example, why Leonardo so much time and effort over so many years trying to unravel the mysteries of flight. But Leonardo’s Legacy is nevertheless a fascinating book, whether Klein is discussing the Mona Lisa or explaining that “Leonardo considered water the perfect symbol of the maelstrom of time,” leading him to create, for example, a remarkable picture of a giant , apocalyptic tidal wave. And what, finally, is the legacy to which Klein’s title refers? It is, the author says, that Leonardo “showed us what man is capable of when liberated from the constraints and apparent certainties of the world.” Although others might phrase this differently, or analyze Leonardo’s contributions in different ways, Klein has certainly made an effective point about the man who was surely one of the world’s great lateral thinkers.

      Lateral thinking – the solving of a problem by looking at it from multiple angles rather than attacking it head-on – is but one form of “brain work” at which certain people are better than others. Those who are not very good lateral thinkers may have other strengths. In fact, argues California psychologist Thomas Armstrong, a “differently wired” brain like Leonardo’s would probably today produce a diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder). For, Armstrong says, people with ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and other forms of mental illness really have compensating strengths that go unappreciated in the rush to treat (and especially medicate) the overt symptoms. In reality, Armstrong argues, brain differences should be observed through a diversity model – one in which, for example, depression and bipolarity are seen to be indicative of creativity; one in which differences in brain structure and function are celebrated instead of there being a set of “normal” brain behaviors and a set of deviant ones. Armstrong seems to want to bring political correctness to neurology, just as others have insisted there are no “disabled” people, only “differently abled” ones. At a certain level, the attempt is admirable, for marginalizing people with, for example, Asperger’s syndrome, does little to help the individuals and may actually be detrimental to society. At another level, though, Armstrong’s argument quickly becomes absurd, much like the protests of defense attorneys against forced medication for schizophrenic defendants on the grounds that giving them behavior-altering drugs that will allow them to stand trial infringes their civil rights. It is difficult to tell just who the audience for this book is supposed to be, since on one hand Armstrong discusses good career paths for “differently wired” people (useful information for them), while on another he talks about creating better environments for the “neurodiverse” (useful ideas for parents, caregivers, teachers and employers). Armstrong’s basic point – which he makes repeatedly – is that “there is no example of a normal brain” and “the important question [is] who is normal anyway.” Well, there is such a thing as a bell curve, and the 80% of people in its middle can reasonably be considered “normal,” but Armstrong prefers to talk about “the rainbow of intelligences,” “the advantages of anxiety,” “the positive side of being autistic,” and more (those three quotations are chapter titles, not passing references). Armstrong is also dismissive of economic costs associated with widespread changes in education or management of the “neurodiverse,” saying, for example, that appropriate educational changes have been shown to work in two schools and can therefore work everywhere. This is not just arrant nonsense but arrogant nonsense – which, however, does not mean the idea is a poor one. “The concept of neurodiversity provides an alternative approach where we begin to break down old divisions that separate people with disabilities from so-called normal people,” writes Armstrong, and this is certainly a well-meaning statement. But there is so much underlying naïveté here, such utopian insistence on the essential goodness and equality of everyone under all circumstances, that The Power of Neurodiversity finally fails to convince – because it refuses to acknowledge that its approaches may make sense some of the time for some people under some circumstances. Seeking all or nothing makes it that much more likely to get nothing – a reality of which Armstrong is unaware, or one that he choose to ignore. The book gets a (+++) rating for those who accept its underlying equivalence between those who are “differently abled” mentally and physically, but a (++) rating for those who do not accept the inherent superiority of cultures “which are based less on rational grounds than contemporary Western culture,” and in which “people with symptoms that might be regarded as schizophrenic by Western clinicians are in some cases celebrated as gifted” and regarded as shamans.

(+++) LET THE ADVENTURES BEGIN

Variant. By Robison Wells. HarperTeen. $17.99.

Eve. By Anna Carey. Harper. $17.99.

Slayers. By C.J. Hill. Feiwel and Friends. $16.99.

     Here begin three new teen-oriented series of novels, two science-fictional and one in the fantasy realm, all taking familiar themes and modifying them in a variety of ways, and all well enough written so they will grip young readers – some young readers, anyway – and interest them in the planned followup books. Variant uses the notion of young people without families, isolated from the world, supposedly in an elite location but in reality somewhere sinister – whose reason for being is the underlying mystery of Robison Wells’ story. The protagonist here is Benson Fisher, who receives a scholarship to exclusive Maxfield Academy, goes there with high hopes, and soon finds out that the school is anything but benign. The 74 students – or later, disconcertingly, 72, and still later 68 – are trapped behind a razor-wire fence and constantly observed by video cameras manned by who-knows-whom. It is not long before Benson is telling a fellow student, “‘This place is crazy. It’s a crazy school full of crazy people. …Nothing here makes sense…’” Ah, but it does make sense, frightening sense, as Benson eventually finds out. The students are divided into three groups called Havoc, the Society and the Variants. Benson ends up a Variant; hence the book’s title, which of course also has wider resonance (the school as a variant of the rest of the world, the students as variants of people outside the school, certain students as variants of the others, and so on). Students have come to various forms of accommodation with the school’s oddities and restrictions, its apparent randomness and its prison-like prohibition against anyone leaving (this is, among other things, a nobody-ever-escapes novel). Even the words are twisted here – “detention” is far from benign, for example. As Benson becomes more involved with a student named Jane, his life grows more complicated. He tells her, “‘This is some weird prison – it isn’t a resort,’” but she knows that already. “Jane, of all people, should have realized that the school was a death trap. Every day we stayed was a day closer to detention or worse.” The “or worse” soon turns up, as Benson makes a discovery that turns his world upside-down and has him understandably questioning every single thing that every single student at Maxfield Academy does. In fact, he is, again understandably, questioning just who – or what – the students are. Eventually Benson decides that “we were in the school for a reason, either to be tested or to be trained. I couldn’t guess which because neither really made sense.” But it all does make sense, and a well-paced climax not only shows what is going on but also leaves things wide open for the next book in the series – because why it is going on is not yet explained. Despite some overdone elements of formula and melodrama, Variant will have many teen readers waiting eagerly for the story’s continuation.

     If the mantra of Variant is “trust no one,” that of Eve is “nowhere is safe.” This is a post-apocalyptic novel – specifically, a post-plague one. In her first novel for young adults, and the start of a planned trilogy, Anna Carey creates a setting for her protagonist that is in some ways similar to the setting of Variant. Eve, who is 18 – which means she was two years old when the virus killed most people on the planet – is an orphan, living in a heavily guarded school where she is kept, above all, away from boys, whom she has been taught to fear. It is easy to see where the story is going, and that is just where it goes. As in Variant, the school in Eve conceals a frightening secret beneath its protective exterior, and when Eve finds out what is really going on – that is, what really happens to the newly graduated, who had expected to become teachers and artists – she escapes into the wild, determined to find a way to survive on her own. As she flees, she re-encounters a onetime school rival (a device that Carey uses to show just how different school life and non-school life are) and, not surprisingly at all, meets a boy. He is Caleb, and he has figured out how to live, barely, in this world – and he quickly becomes protective of Eve, whose trust he slowly wins. One thing leads to another, the “another” being love (again, there is nothing surprising about the way this plot progresses); but then Eve and Caleb find themselves being hunted, and the desire for love and survival begins to look like a choice of one or the other. Carey paints scenes of devastation more effectively than she builds characters into fully fleshed-out people: “I wondered if there was something inside me that was rotten. …I didn’t want to witness any of it anymore, the boarded-up homes and the tattered red flags hanging from cracked windows, PLAGUE printed across them in black. The children were too young to be motherless. I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.” Not at all surprisingly, Eve turns out to be exceptionally important – hence the intense effort to catch her. The book ends with separation – it is, after all, the start of the trilogy – but with the promise of re-connection to come.

     The connections in Slayers are of a different sort. This is fantasy, not science fiction, complete with dragons and heroics and miraculous healing and more. But the biggest twist offered by C.J. Hill (a pseudonym) is that dragons are not marvelous, amazing creatures in a world of wonder and drama, as in so many other modern fantasies. These dragons are smart, to be sure, but they are fierce beasts that must be killed by the Slayers – who are teens with great but unrecognized-as-yet dragon-fighting powers. One of those teens is Tori, who is excited about going to Dragon Camp even before she learns that dragons are real. The dire circumstances that Tori and her peers confront involve eggs that the beasts rendered dormant ages ago so the dragons could, in the future, rebuild their ranks, which slayer-knights had effectively destroyed. The knights did not destroy the eggs, whose potential hatching (under the guidance of the evil dragon lord Overdrake) now threatens to revive the dragon race – meaning that Tori and friends have to save the world. Well…OK. In addition to the evil-dragons approach, the juxtaposition here of fantasy elements with 21^st-century Earth ones can be intriguing: “She shouldn’t freak herself out about the noise. It wasn’t like [sic] the dragon eggs were buried underneath her cabin. But just in case, Tori got out of bed, felt her way to the dresser, and retrieved her iPod. She put it on the most soothing playlist she had, then went back to bed.” The story from Tori’s perspective alternates with elements told by Jesse, who becomes Tori’s fellow Slayer and with whom she predictably falls in love. There is actually a lot of predictability here, most often in the dialogue, as when Overdrake says, in typical boasting-villain fashion: “‘I could call the dragon over here to tear you to pieces. …The only reason I haven’t done it already I that I like you. Don’t make change my mind about that. …You can’t win. …Not here. Not later. There are nine of you. I have a small army of men to fight for me. Your deaths tonight will be nothing.’” The book is at its best when violating genre conventions – shortly after his tirade, for example, Overdrake is commenting that Americans are “the laziest, most self-serving people on earth,” and he takes a bit of petty revenge on Tori by making her listen to the Bee Gees singing “Staying Alive” (but via CD, which seems a bit primitive here). Slayers proves an odd but intermittently entertaining mixture of dragon lore, teen romance and sarcasm – not always a winning combination (the disparate elements do not hold together all that well), but a sufficiently offbeat one to grab some readers and take them along for the ride to the next book in the series.

(++++) SOUNDING LIKE AMERICA

The Heritage of John Philip Sousa, Volume 9. “The President’s Own” conducted by Lieutenant Colonel Jack T. Kline, USMC. Altissimo. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Ned Rorem: Chamber Music with Flute. Fenwick Smith, flute; David Leisner, guitar; Ronald Thomas, cello; Mihae Lee, piano; Ann Hobson Pilot, harp. Naxos. $9.99.

James Aikman: Violin Concerto—Lines in Motion (2009); Ania’s Song—A Pavane for String Orchestra (2006); Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra (2010). Charles Wetherbee, violin; Taimur Sullivan, alto saxophone; St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Lande. Naxos. $9.99.

River of Light: American Short Works for Violin and Piano. Tim Fain, violin; Pei-Yo Wang, piano. Naxos. $9.99.

     In certain ways, there remains no more quintessentially American music than that of John Philip Sousa, the super-prolific march composer and the man who brought the American band to its highest level of skill – and international fame – at a time when American orchestras were nonexistent or barely being formed. And for interpreting Sousa’s music, there is certainly no more dyed-in-the-wool American ensemble than the U.S. Marine Corps Band, known as “The President’s Own.” Sousa’s music has universal appeal and has been exceptionally well performed by bands all over the world, but there is something especially appealing about hearing it played by the most unabashedly red-white-and-blue of all United States bands – even when the music itself is not purely patriotic in nature. Sousa, after all, wrote in a number of forms, and in addition to creating marches, he wrote operettas and suites and other decidedly non-martial music. Each volume of the Altissimo Heritage of John Philip Sousa series offers a fine mixture of the marches for which the “March King” was best known and other fine works with which listeners are likely to be less familiar. Volume 9, the last one of the series, is a real winner, including the best-known Sousa march of all, The Stars and Stripes Forever, along with such top-notch toe-tappers as The Thunderer, Boy Scouts of America, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, The Rifle Regiment, When the Boys Come Sailing Home, and Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. Everything is played with strength and a very high level of skill – and that includes not only the familiar works but also less-known ones such as the three Camera Studies (The Flashing Eyes of Andalusia, Drifting to Loveland and The Children’s Ball), Columbia’s Pride, The Free Lance, Wisconsin Forward Forever, The High School Cadets, The Charlatan, The Pride of Pittsburgh, Sound Off, Recognition March, The Pathfinder of Panama, Jack Tar, Prince Charming, excerpts from the operetta El Capitan, and Rose, Thistle and Shamrock (representing, respectively, England, Scotland and Ireland). Sousa’s rhythms may be foursquare much of the time, but his melodic inventiveness and skill at orchestration keep his music bright, interesting and very American in its uplift and promise of a better day – a message just as valuable in difficult modern times as it was when Sousa created these pieces and brought them to the United States and the world.

     The music of Ned Rorem (born 1923) is altogether more modest and intimate, far more at home in the recital hall than the outdoors or the sorts of grand stages where Sousa performed. Rorem is especially well known for his songs, but he has also written some well-made chamber works, including several featuring a prominent part for flute. Five of these, collectively covering much of the composer’s career, are now available in fine performances featuring Fenwick Smith – and if their style of expression will not be to everyone’s taste, their emotional content will certainly be clear to all listeners. One piece, Mountain Song, is a 1949 arrangement for flute and piano of a rural Kentucky folk song; the other works were written for flute from the start. They are Trio for flute, cello and piano, from 1960; Book of Hours (1975), a meditative piece for flute and harp that goes on a bit too long for this particular instrumental combination; Romeo and Juliet (1977), for flute and guitar, which captures many elements of the timeless love story and is very well played, but which again seems somewhat too much for two fairly delicate instruments; and Four Prayers, for flute and piano, written in 2006 and very effectively combining the meditative with the outgoing. This (+++) Naxos CD is a fine addition to the Rorem discography and will be of considerable interest to listeners who mainly know Rorem through his vocal music.

     Another (+++) Naxos CD, entitled Venice of the North Concerti, offers three works by James Aikman (born 1959) that show a sensibility quite different from Rorem’s, for all that both composers were born in Indiana. The three Aikman works here draw on multiple stylistic influences, with distinct jazz and pop-music elements and very different levels of expressiveness. The Violin Concerto is the most intricate of the pieces, retaining a strong flavor of improvisation even when thoroughly written-out: the first movement is actually called “Prologue/Improvisation” and the second “Quasi una Fantasia,” emphasizing the free-flowing form of the whole. At the other emotional and structural end of things is the dissonant and rather harsh Saxophone Concerto, whose clarity of orchestration strongly contrasts with its generally acerbic tone and a sound recalling that of Alban Berg. In the middle of these pieces, both on the CD and in terms of its impact, lies Ania’s Song, a short and peaceful work that functions, both aurally and in terms of its middle placement on the CD, as a respite for the ear. Aikman’s music not only shows the recent American tendency to pick up influences from many places but also showcases the increasing international acceptance of music by American composers: the orchestra here is Russian and the recording was made in St. Petersburg, yet nothing sounds exotic or as if it is played by musicians uncomfortable with Aikman’s American style.

     Indeed, there is no single “American style” anymore, if there ever was. The well-played (+++) Naxos CD called River of Light shows that clearly by offering disparate short pieces by nine different composers – each work from a different time and in a different form, all of them united only by their American origins and their use of violin and piano. Like most anthology discs, this Naxos compilation has high points and low ones, but which are which will depend on individual listeners’ preferences. The pieces appear in no particular order; their varied effects tumble over one another without much regard for what has come before or will be heard afterwards. For example, the opening Aria, written in 2002 by Kevin Puts (born 1972), is decidedly lyrical; it is immediately followed by a very impressively played rendition of Knee Play 2 (1976) from Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass (born 1937); this provides a strong contrast. Then the effect switches again with Air (1995) by Aaron Jay Kernis (born 1960), immediately complemented by (rather than contrasted with) Sicilienne (2002) by Lev Zhurbin (born 1978). The other works here are the eponymous River of Light (2007) by Richard Danielpour (born 1956); Graceful Ghost Rag (1979), providing further evidence, if any is needed, of the versatility of William Bolcom (born 1938); Legacy (1999) by Jennifer Higdon (born 1962); The Light Guitar (2006) by Patrick Zimmerli (born 1968); and the short, aptly titled Wistful Piece (1953) by Ruth Shaw Wylie (1916-1989) – a work that ends this multifaceted and somewhat disjointed recital in quietude and with a sense of solace. That is a fine way to bring a survey of American music to a close, being a strong contrast to the ebullience of Sousa and a respite from the tonal and dramatic explorations of so many 20^th-century American composers.

(+++) SORROW, HOPE AND BEAUTY

Robert Moran: Trinity Requiem; Seven Sounds Unseen; Notturno in Weiss; Requiem for a Requiem. Trinity Youth Chorus and members of Trinity Choir conducted by Robert Ridgell (Requiem); Musica Sacra conducted by Richard Westenburg (Seven); The Esoterics conducted by Eric Banks (Notturno); Philip Blackburn Remix (Requiem for a Requiem). Innova. $12.99.

James Whitbourn: Son of God Mass (2001); Winter’s Wait (2010); Give us the wings of faith (2002); A brief story of Peter Abelard (2006/11); A Prayer from South Africa (2009); Living Voices (2001); Requiem canticorum (2010); All shall be Amen and Alleluia (2009). Jeremy Powell, soprano saxophone; Ken Cowan, organ; Ronn Carroll, reader; Jonathan Palmer Lakeland, piano; Jacob Ezzo, percussion; Westminster Williamson Voices conducted by James Jordan. Naxos. $9.99.

Teizo Matsumura: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; To the Night of Gethsemane. Ikuyo Kamiya, piano; RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Takuo Yuasa. Naxos. $9.99.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein. EuroArts DVD. $19.99.

Kara Karayev: Ballet Suites—Seven Beauties; In the Path of Thunder. Moscow Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rauf Abdullayev. Delos. $16.99.

     Anyone who believes that modern classical composers write cold, soulless music need only listen to the strongly emotional elements of a number of recent recordings in order to be disabused of that incorrect notion. Robert Moran (born 1937) wrote Trinity Requiem to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the attacks by terrorist murderers on the World Trade Center in New York City – but the work is more than a lament, more than a threnody. It was commissioned by Trinity Church for youth voices and ended up being performed for Innova by many young people who were scarcely born when the attacks of 9/11 occurred. But the piece reaches out in more-general terms to everyone affected by war, terror and fear; it transcends the specific event it commemorates. And its heartfelt combination of high voices with organ, harps and cellos give it a simple, direct appeal that is oddly heightened by its only specific reference to the terror: a siren during the Offertory, recorded by mistake and unable to be edited out. The sound stands as the single direct reminder of what this piece is about – helping the work provide a feeling of uplift as well as commemoration of the cold-blooded murder of thousands. Also on the CD are Seven Sounds Unseen for 20 solo voices, which uses fragments of letters written to Moran by John Cage, set to choral textures; Notturno in Weiss, a setting of a Surrealist poem by Christian Morgenstern; and Requiem for a Requiem, a collage by Philip Blackburn of several Moran works that is the least interesting and most self-indulgent piece here, and the most overtly “modern” in approach. Most of the CD offers a meaningful emotional experience, well sung and well presented.

     James Whitbourn commemorates the murders on 9/11 in a very different way with a very different work called Living Voices, written the same year that the terrorists struck and lasting just three minutes – and using a poem by Andrew Motion to express the mournfulness of the time. The choral music of Whitbourn (born 1963) is equally effective. His short Requiem canticorum is a simple, fairly straightforward and meaningful setting of parts of the traditional mass for the dead. His Son of God Mass for choir, saxophone and organ is the major work on this new Naxos CD, largely following the traditional format of a Mass but also including commentary, of a sort, in movements called “Kyrie meditation,” “Lava me” and “Pax Domini.” And there are several well-made shorter pieces offered here as well, all of them preoccupied with life, death and the balance between the two – and the faith-based response of the living to the death of loved ones.

     Teizo Matsumura (1929-2007) achieves something of the same stirring effect, but in purely instrumental terms, in her Symphony No. 2, written for piano and orchestra in 1998 and then revised between 1999 and 2006. Here, sorrow and hope coexist and alternate, each taking the place of the other for a time, only to return to the background as the other emotion comes equally strongly to the front. The work was inspired by statues at the entrance to a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan, but its Asian elements are balanced by European influences in structure, harmony and overall emotional impact. It shares a new Naxos CD with the composer’s Symphony No. 1, which dates to 1965 and is a much more powerful and intense work than the second symphony; and Matsumura’s last orchestral composition, To the Night of Gethsemane (2002, revised 2003-05), written for chamber orchestra and inspired by Giotto’s fresco, “The Kiss of Judas.” The blending of Buddhist and Christian feelings and emphases in Matsumura’s work allows a mixing of emotions as well, with hopefulness and something akin to despair – but not quite despairing – coexisting and periodically giving way to each other.

     Hope and fear, or at least uncertainty, have long been known to coexist in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, with the apparently triumphal final movement in particular representing either a joyous affirmation or a disguised subsuming of the composer’s heartache into an empty, formulaic triumphalism. Leonard Bernstein’s sensitive December 1966 performance of the symphony is now available on a DVD that also includes a brief (five-minute) look at Bernstein’s rehearsal of the work with the London Symphony Orchestra. The affirmative elements of the score and its sarcasm are front-and-center in Bernstein’s interpretation, which is powerful and, in the third movement, genuinely moving. But the DVD will be of interest mainly to Bernstein’s more ardent fans, since the whole thing runs less than an hour and the performance, while admirable, gains little from being seen on video – although those who enjoy Bernstein’s often-flamboyant conducting style will appreciate the chance to watch it here.

     Far less known than Shostakovich, but a significant musician of the Soviet era nevertheless, Kara Karayev (more often written Gara Garayev) was a prominent Azerbaijani composer – and Shostakovich was his mentor, teaching him composition from 1942 to 1946. Shostakovich praised Karayev’s skill in polyphony and instrumentation, and the latter is much in evidence in a new recording of suites from the ballets Seven Beauties (1952) and In the Path of Thunder (1957). These are the only two ballets by Karayev (1918-1982), and the first of them – a work about betrayal of oppressed people by corrupt rulers, a typical Soviet-era theme – was the first Azerbaijani ballet composed by anyone. Path of Thunder, which focuses on racial conflicts in South Africa through its story of the forbidden love between a black teacher and white girl, fit into Soviet thinking in a somewhat more unusual way. The lovers die in the course of the conflict that their relationship mirrors, but this leads the people as a whole to rise up on the Path of Thunder – that is, the route to liberation through struggle. Yet neither this ballet nor the earlier one is of the tub-thumping sort that Shostakovich himself created during his theatrical years. Karayev’s music is by turns lyrical and passionate, on the one hand, and discordant and harsh, on the other. And he is quite as capable of creating character dances (“Indian Dance,” “Khorezm Dance,” “Slavonic Dance,” “Magrib Dance” and “Chinese Dance” in Seven Beauties) as he is of writing the tender “Lullaby” and intensely demonstrative concluding “In the Path of Thunder” march in his later ballet. Karayev’s music is very little known outside his native region, but Shostakovich was right about him: he had considerable skill in composition and more than a little talent for communicating his ideas, even within the strictures of Soviet society.