(+++) THE REST OF THE STORY

The Giver Quartet II: Gathering Blue. By Lois Lowry. Houghton Mifflin. $17.99.

The Giver Quartet III: Messenger. By Lois Lowry. Houghton Mifflin. $17.99.

The Giver Quartet IV: Son. By Lois Lowry. Houghton Mifflin. $17.99.

      Lois Lowry’s The Giver stands on its own, and it stands tall – as a sensitive, intelligent and thoughtful story about a dystopian society and the price that its members pay for what appears to be safety and security. But The Giver, although it can be read by itself and provide a highly satisfying experience (of which the ambiguous ending is an integral part), is actually only the start of a multi-book series – originally planned by Lowry as a trilogy and now expanded into a quartet.  The four books, now available in high-quality, matched Houghton Mifflin editions, enlarge the story of the first one and in some ways enrich it, although the second through fourth books are not compelling enough to be must-reads in the way that The Giver itself is.

      Gathering Blue, originally published in 2000 – seven years after The Giver – focuses on a lame girl named Kira whose life is spared by her harsh society, where those who cannot work die, because the Council of Guardians discovers that she is good at embroidery. Kira is assigned to fix the robe worn by the village’s Singer, whose job is to sing the story of human civilization once a year. Other characters here are Thomas, who carves the Singer’s staff; an old woman named Annabella, who teaches Kira how to dye in every color except blue, which the village does not possess; and Matt, who tells Kira he once came upon another village that did have blue. The threads of the story are similar to those of The Giver – this book is designated a “companion” to the earlier one – as Kira, like Jonas in the prior book, learns the harsh truths that lie behind the village’s generally placid exterior. Eventually, Matt goes missing, then returns with a blind man who wears a blue shirt and turns out to be Kira’s long-lost father – who, it turns out, lives in a community whose members are injured or disabled. The plot is more obvious than that of The Giver and is thinner; the book is an extension of the world of the earlier novel but does not add a great deal to it. However, Matt becomes important as the protagonist of the third book in the series, Messenger.

      Actually, several characters from earlier in the series reappear in Messenger, which was first published in 2004 and was supposed to conclude the story begun in The Giver. In addition to Matt, Kira is in the third book, and so is Jonas, now called Leader, who is in charge of the village where Messenger is focused. Even Gabe, whom Jonas took with him in The Giver, reappears in Messenger. But the book goes off in a different direction from the earlier ones and does not provide a very satisfactory ending to the various stories – in fact, the conclusion seems rather abrupt and forced. The village here is the one where the injured and outcasts live; Matt, now called Matty, lives there with the blind man, Seer. Matty is the village’s messenger, able to go through the surrounding, mysterious forest, which lacks dangerous animals but is itself dangerous in an eerie way, injuring people it does not want passing through – and killing them if they come in again. Matty is unaffected and can therefore take messages to and from other villages. Something is wrong with his village, though, just as something has been wrong with the settings of the first two books. In this case, the peaceful and accommodative villagers are becoming angry, deciding to wall themselves off from the rest of the world and no longer accept injured or displaced people. This leads Seer to ask Matty to go fetch his daughter – yes, it is Kira, of Gathering Blue – before the village is walled off. Matty and Kira are attacked by the forest, Leader (Jonas) goes to get them and is also captured, but eventually Matty is able to use a power he barely understands to heal the forest itself as well as the people of the village – at the cost of his own life.  Jonas then designates Matty “Healer” rather than “Messenger.” But the conclusion of the book seems perfunctory, even though Matty is remembered as his village’s great hero in the concluding book.

      The newly released Son is a much better summation than Messenger of the various tales, although not a perfect one. It is considerably longer than the prior two books – nearly as long as Gathering Blue and Messenger put together – and has a larger canvas, in effect a triptych. It starts when a child, called a “product,” is born to a 14-year-old girl named Claire, who is left sterile after the birth (during which she is blindfolded) and who finds herself with a maternal interest in her child that is not usual in her community. The reasons Claire is different hark back to The Giver, and it turns out that Gabe is her child, so the connections among books are apparent early in Son. Claire searches for Gabe, arrives in a more-tolerant community than the one she left, then moves on from there into adventures that involve not only Gabe but also Jonas and other characters from the earlier books. The last part of Son is set in the village where Messenger takes place, pulling many threads of the books together.  Actually, Lowry ties things together almost too neatly, making sure that the fourth book touches directly on all three previous ones. The first third is set in Jonas’ original village; the middle in an isolated seaside village, not seen before, that is protected and hemmed in by cliffs; and the final portion in the Messenger village. The first part of Son essentially provides a different perspective on the village of The Giver. It is the middle of the book that has the most-original storytelling and is in many ways the most interesting part, although the climax of the entire book is a fast-paced high-stakes battle that is, if anything, over too quickly to be fully engaging. The real problem here is that the book ends with a rousing fantasy-style good-vs.-evil confrontation, while the earlier books were more closely rooted in science: the people of Lowry’s world had practiced eugenics and had had the ability to control the weather. The world at the end of Son (not so much in the first two parts) seems fundamentally different, and although Lowry’s fine writing style almost makes the last part of the story believable, it is not quite enough: the ending veers perilously close to cliché, which is not at all true of The Giver, and even some of the characterizations (notably that of Gabe) fall short of what Lowry did earlier in the series.

      This is a very unusual quartet. Its first book is vastly superior to any of the others, which is why it is not discussed here as part of the sequence. There is nothing wrong, and a great deal right, in reading The Giver by itself and stopping right there, enmeshed in its world and troubled by its ambiguities (several of which are rather disappointingly “solved” in later books). Readers hungering for more of the world that Lowry created in The Giver have nowhere to turn but to the three followup books – but they do not quite feel as if they occupy the same world, and they do not fit into it quite as well or as elegantly as does The Giver itself. Those wanting to read the entire sequence will surely find Son, despite its flaws, to be a far better conclusion than Messenger. The choice is really between reading only The Giver or reading all four books – stopping with either Gathering Blue or Messenger is a recipe for disappointment. Therefore, it is a good thing that Lowry wrote Son, which makes the tetralogy much more satisfying than the trilogy was. But it is not more satisfying than The Giver as a standalone novel.

(+++) SERIES OF, OR WITH, PICTURES

Lunch Lady No. 8: Lunch Lady and the Picture Day Peril. By Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Knopf. $6.99.

Squish No. 4: Captain Disaster. By Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm. Random House. $6.99.

Calvin Coconut #8: Rocket Ride. By Graham Salisbury. Illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers. Wendy Lamb Books. $12.99.

Melonhead 4: Melonhead and the Vegalicious Disaster. By Katy Kelly. Illustrated by Gillian Johnson. Delacorte Press. $14.99.

      How can you not love a graphic-novel series that includes such implements as a fancy-ketchup-packet laser, chicken nugget bomb, mustard grappling hook, and serving-spoon crowbar? They are all there in Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady sequence, along with dialogue like this: “Oh my goulash!” “Justice has a way of being served.” “Holy jalapeňos!” “Let’s dinner-roll.”  The plots of the Lunch Lady books may be thin to the point of vanishing, and the villains may be given such lines as, “I will not have my dreams squashed by some meddling schoolchildren,” but how is it possible not to enjoy an attack of supermodels – against whom Lunch Lady and Betty fight back with loaves of French bread?  The plot of Lunch Lady and the Picture Day Peril has to do with a photographer scamming schoolkids to get the money she needs to be a fashion-world star, doctoring permission slips with a mysterious substance so the kids will have acne on school picture day and will need to pay extra for airbrushing, and getting one kid to steal student-council funds as well, and – well, it’s all pretty incoherent. But Lunch Lady fans won’t care – this entry is no more ridiculous than previous ones – and non-fans can enter the series at any point and figure out what is going on pretty quickly. In this book as in the previous seven, Krosoczka delivers just what his readers expect.

      Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm do likewise in the Squish series, intended as a sort of “boy” version of their Babymouse sequence for girls. Squish the amoeba is not as interesting a character as Babymouse, though, lacking the mouse’s prickly personality and constant talking back to the narrator; the Squish books are much more straightforward and less inventive. In Captain Disaster, Squish is captain of a soccer team called the Water Fleas, and of course they are pretty awful – and unhappy to be repeatedly told by their coach that winning isn’t everything, everyone should participate and have fun, and all that. Of course the Water Fleas lose again and again, to teams with names such as Sharks, Razor Fish and Moray Eels, until eventually Squish figures out a way to win games by focusing on the team’s strong players and not letting the weaker ones participate equally – which results in hurt feelings despite won games. And everyone learns that being equals on a team is what really matters. Bleh. The book is rather too “message-y,” and the chances for humor (amoebas, which have no feet, playing soccer) are barely acknowledged. The simple science experiment at the end – there is one in every Squish book – is a nice feature, but the book itself is not at the level of Babymouse. Or, for that matter, Lunch Lady.

      The ongoing series about Calvin Coconut and Melonhead are traditional novels, not graphic novels, but both are distinguished by the importance of their illustrations: the ambiance of the books is communicated as much by artists Jacqueline Rogers and Gillian Johnson as by authors Graham Salisbury and Katy Kelly.  In Rocket Ride, Calvin’s father, a famous pop singer, is coming to town and will see Calvin for the first time in four years. Although Calvin’s parents are divorced, Calvin’s dad gives his mom 10 tickets to the concert, so Calvin gets to worry both about seeing his father again and about who gets the tickets. The Hawaiian atmosphere is, as always, an important part of the book, with ironwood trees and references to a hamajang (totally mixed up) life.  But the pictures are equally significant: classmate Shayla’s drawings of a toad wearing a cowboy hat and another strumming a guitar; Willy, Julio and Rubin gaping at Calvin in equal astonishment; Calvin’s father with beefy bodyguards on each side; the cat Zippy lying in the middle of the road; class centipede Manly giving a very un-centipede-like wink; and many more. The plot is predictable, the positive outcome inevitable, but the book is fun to read – and enjoyable to look at.  And so is Melonhead and the Vegalicious Disaster, in which the fifth-grader is not only subjected to a teacher nicknamed Bad Ms. Mad but is also being forced to eat more vegetables at home because his mom is including them in the meals she cooks. Both of these issues are pretty thin ones on which to hang a plot, but the Melonhead books are more about personalities – Adam “Melonhead” Melon himself, friends Sam, Jonique, and Lucy Rose, new friend Pip, and various adults – than about events of much significance. The illustrations reflect this: most of them show characters, not plot points, and are scattered around the pages. The chapter titles are fun (“Everybody Has a Dead Person Except Me,” “Disappearing Pants Would Be less Embarrassing Than This Dinner”) and the plot resolutions are offbeat enough to make readers chuckle. On the vegetable front, Melonhead starts eating plenty of them after he discovers he likes beets, because “when I eat beets my pee turns red.” And on the Ms. Mad side of things, Melonhead – thanks to a suggestion from Lucy Rose – comes up with an ideal subject for his Most Admired Person in History report: Joseph Pujol, a famed 19^th-century entertainer known as Le Pétomane, who performed at the Moulin Rouge by passing gas in a variety of ways. It should be obvious from all this the Melonhead books are aimed more at boys than girls; but kids of either gender who like this sort of slightly gross and slightly grotesque humor will not be disappointed by Melonhead’s latest adventure.

(++++) WARMTH AND BITE

Elgar: Cello Concerto; Carter: Cello Concerto; Bruch: Kol Nidre. Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Decca. $12.99.

Cowell: Synchrony; Piano Concerto; Harrison: Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra; Varèse: Amériques (1927 version). Jeremy Denk, piano; Paul Jacobs, organ; San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. SFS Media. $18.98 (SACD).

      Anyone with even a passing knowledge of 20^th-century classical music cannot help but be moved by the pairing of Alisa Weilerstein and Daniel Barenboim for a splendid new recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.  This concerto was the signature piece of Jacqueline du Pré, the brilliant cellist who was Barenboim’s wife and who died of multiple sclerosis in 1987 at the age of 42.  The du Pré recording of this concerto, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, is rightly considered legendary – it is a magnificent performance – and Weilerstein herself says it was deeply influential on her, to the point at which she knew she had to stop listening to it and strike out on her own. That she has done so brilliantly, and has produced an excellent Elgar recording with Barenboim as conductor, is an accomplishment that goes well beyond the fine playing of cellist and orchestra alike. It feels like a new beginning and the laying to rest, after nearly half a century, of the notion that the du Pré rendition of this piece is unapproachable; it also seems to provide closure for a stirring (and controversial) love affair.  There have been other fine performances and recordings of this concerto, but Weilerstein’s is the first that strides forth boldly on its own terms, with astonishing technical felicity and a level of strong emotion radiating throughout – this is wholly convincing and tremendously involving music-making. It is not altogether fair to compare the recording with du Pré’s from 1965, but it is perhaps inevitable; and Weilerstein’s stands up extremely well. Du Pré is a touch more involved, her playing having a feeling of greater spontaneity and a slightly higher level of emotional intensity; Weilerstein is somewhat more studied, with everything just where it should be and some exceptional attention to detail and phrasing (for which Barenboim too deserves much credit: Staatskapelle Berlin is at least the equal of Barbirolli’s Philharmonia Orchestra).  Weilerstein is perhaps a trifle cooler than du Pré but in no way less emotional. This is the first recording that really does deserve to be placed just about at du Pré’s level.

      Weilerstein does an equally fine job with Elliott Carter’s Cello Concerto, written when the composer, who just died – a month before he would have turned 104 – was merely 93, in 2001.  This is a far more acerbic work than the Elgar and a highly challenging one technically. It sounds like a piece that an expert cellist would have a great time playing, and one that would be wonderful to watch being performed on stage – some of the pyrotechnics are quite amazing. The seven-section piece is not entirely successful in recorded form, being episodic and somewhat self-indulgent in its techniques, but Weilerstein performs it masterfully, with the contrast between the Giocoso and following Lento section especially well done and the final Allegro fantastico being altogether, well, fantastic. And at the other end of the emotional spectrum, Bruch’s hyper-Romantic Kol Nidre brings out every bit of warmth and tenderness that Weilerstein can extract from her 1790 William Forster instrument. This is the most relaxed of the three performances on Decca’s CD, with Weilerstein and Barenboim seeming to communicate telepathically as the music ebbs and flows with great beauty and style.  The CD is an altogether winning one from start to finish.

      So is the new SACD from SFS Media, the San Francisco Symphony’s own label, but in a very different way. The orchestra has several times played concert series called “American Mavericks,” and this disc offers four examples, all recorded live, of what that title means. Henry Cowell’s Synchrony was recorded in December 2010, the other works here in March 2012. Cowell is considered the inventor, in 1913, of the tone cluster, and both Synchrony (1930) and the piano concerto (1928) make use of the device; indeed, the concerto’s second movement is called “Tone Cluster.”  The concerto, which Jeremy Denk plays very well indeed, is the more interesting of the two pieces, its virtuosity at the service of musical material that continues to sound very modern even 80-plus years after it was composed. The concluding “Counter Rhythm” is particularly impressive – as is the way soloist and orchestra stay together and keep up with each other during it. Synchrony, intended as a choreographic work (Martha Graham started on the dance elements but did not complete them), has interesting moments as well, but they are fewer and less consistent.  Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra, though, is a winner throughout.  Harrison was a student of Cowell, and some of that influence is apparent in this music, but not all that much: Harrison had his own style, and it flowers wonderfully in this work, which does an excellent job contrasting the sound of the organ (which is essentially a woodwind) with that of the many percussion instruments.  Paul Jacobs is a splendid organist and seems thoroughly at home in this complex and, um, brassy music, which is a rhythmic feast as well as a superb display piece for soloist and percussionists alike. Again, as in the Cowell works, Michael Tilson Thomas proves a highly adept leader with a strong sense of balance and of effectively managing the interplay of solo and tutti sections.

      The final work on this disc is in some ways the most complex. Edgard Varèse was one of the least prolific of composers, completing barely more than a dozen works, but he was a trailblazer and something of an enfant terrible throughout his life. Amériques, originally written from 1918 to 1922 and revised several times thereafter, requires 125 players and some “noise” (as opposed to musical) instruments, notably wailing sirens.  Its intensity and somewhat self-conscious modernism are indicative of the Parisian musical scene in the 1910s and early 1920s, reminiscent of such works as Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2. But Amériques stands on its own as an intense, complex and highly effective piece that Varèse insisted was absolute music but in which listeners will inevitably hear reflections of the mechanization of life, warfare and music itself in the 20^th century.  Tilson Thomas shapes the work well – it can easily sprawl and lumber out of control – and keeps it moving effectively and with considerable musicality.  Certainly Varèse, who became an American citizen in 1927, deserves to be deemed an American maverick to the same extent as U.S.-born Cowell and Harrison, even if Amériques predates its composer’s adoption of his new country.  More important than labels, though, is the quality of the music of these “mavericks,” and that turns out to be very high indeed – and exceptionally well communicated by this conductor and this orchestra.

(+++) MUSICAL MIXTURES

Delius: Appalachia—Variations on an Old Slave Song with Final Chorus; Sea Drift. Leon Williams, baritone; Master Chorale of Tampa Bay and The Florida Orchestra conducted by Stefan Sanderling. Naxos. $9.99.

Pater Noster: A Choral Reflection of the Lord’s Prayer. The King’s Singers. Naxos. $9.99.

Patricia Van Ness: Requiem; The Voice of the Tenth Muse. Sanford Sylvan, baritone; Ruth Cunnigham, soprano; Coro Allegro conducted by David Hodgkins. Navona. $13.99.

Lock & Key: Chamber Works by Scott Pender, R. David Salvage, Daniel Perttu and Malcolm Hawkins. Navona. $14.99.

Quadrants: Modern String Quartets by Marie Incontrera, Michael G. Cunningham, Alan Beeler, Ulf Grahn and Virgil Thomson. Navona. $14.99.

Andrew May: Music for Instruments and Computer. Ravello. $15.99.

Herbert Deutsch: From Moog to Mac. Ravello. $14.99.

      There are many ways to create something new in music by juxtaposing elements in unexpected or unusual ways. One well-known approach is to take someone from one culture and immerse him in another, as occurred with Dvořák during his time in the United States and, in ways much less frequently noted, with Frederick Delius during his time overseas.  Delius lived in Florida and Virginia in the 1880s and 1890s, creating several works intended to evoke the American South while still communicating through his own gentle impressionistic idiom. One of those pieces, Appalachia (1896-1903), has all the usual languid, expansive sound of Delius’ better-known music, but puts his leisurely form of expression at the service of a slave song from which Delius creates 14 variations after introducing it on an English horn (the same instrument that Dvořák used for the theme of the Largo in his “New World” symphony).  This is very broad music whose shape emerges slowly and with considerable expansiveness, portraying a Southern dawn at the start and moving through a series of emotions that last well over half an hour.  Stefan Sanderling shapes the music well and keeps it moving nicely, although as with much Delius, the overall feeling is often more of stasis than of motion.  Sanderling also does a fine job with Sea Drift (1904), a work for baritone, chorus and orchestra based on the poetry of Walt Whitman.  Whitman’s sea images have proved irresistible to many composers, notably including Delius’ fellow Englishman, Ralph Vaughan Williams. For Delius, Whitman provided an opportunity to evoke Nature in ways thoroughly reflective of Delius’ predilections for orchestration: solo harp, woodwinds and other gentle touches pervade a piece that in Whitman’s poem (from Leaves of Grass) is about impermanence and loss, but for Delius is more focused on the ebb and flow of life and its mysteries. Well sung and well played, both these works show a side of Delius not often heard.

      Another vocal approach to creating a new sound is the one used by The King’s Singers on a fascinating CD called Pater Noster. Subtitled “A Reflection on the Lord’s Prayer,” the disc features seven sections, each based on one line from that well-known evocation, from “Our Father, who art in heaven,” to “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  For each line, there are from three to six short choral settings, commentaries or interpretations, by composers from Heinrich Schütz, William Byrd and Henry Purcell to John Tavener, Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky. The CD, which is exceptionally well sung, is both intriguing and peculiar, its juxtapositions of musical styles being sometimes revelatory and sometimes simply strange.  This is partly a matter of the different time periods from which the pieces come and partly a matter of their very different styles: Schütz and Byrd or Stravinsky and Francis Poulenc sound rather odd when heard one after the other, no matter the similarity of their subject matter.  The King’s Singers begin and end the disc with plainsong, creating a sort of “framing tale” for their musical exegesis of the prayer’s clauses. This is certainly a CD for a highly specialized audience – one interested in top-notch choral singing, in multiple interpretations of religious messages, and in unexpected and aurally challenging differences in the sound and structure of works on similar topics. It is an exhilarating experience for a limited group of listeners.

      The same may be said of the new Coro Allegro CD of music by Patricia Van Ness, but for different reasons.  The King’s Singers have sung Van Ness’ music, and indeed comment on the CD package that it “is universally well-received,” but they are not the performers here – the disc features Coro Allegro, a “cause” chorus made up of members and supporters of Boston’s LGBT community.  The Voice of the Tenth Muse plays into the sociopolitical background and orientation of the chorus, being based on the works of Sappho, but it is a work of sufficient drama and musical interest to be attractive on its own terms – although it is perhaps a bit long-winded.  Ruth Cunningham handles the solo parts well here, and Sanford Sylvan is even better as the soloist in Requiem, a heartfelt work that does not exactly follow the traditional Requiem Mass but instead brings a personal perspective to death and the consolation of those left behind.  Although longer than The Voice of the Tenth Muse, Van Ness’ Requiem feels more intimate and immersive – not exactly pleasant, given its subject matter, but thoughtful and contemplative.  Van Ness’ style may not be to all tastes, but those who find it attractive will deem this disc a success, quite apart from any social or political cause it may be seeking to advance.

      More common than the juxtaposition of musicianship and sociopolitical issues is the simple creation of an anthology – that is, a mixture from which listeners may hope to extract at least some material of interest, even if they do not enjoy the whole thing.  Anthologies such as Lock & Key and Quadrants have their own self-imposed limitations: since most, if not all, the music they offer is unfamiliar, it is hard to know who is expected to buy the CDs, it being rather unlikely that most potential listeners will be familiar with all the composers represented.  These two discs are for chance-takers who want to explore the ways in which chamber music is being produced and extended by contemporary composers.  Of the four works on Lock & Key, two are sets of brief movements and two are extended single-movement pieces. The latter are Scott Pender’s In the Time Before, for piano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and vibraphone, and Daniel Perttu’s Gloamin: A Fantasy for Flute and Piano.  Pender’s piece is the more successful of the two, largely because the wider instrumental variety creates a broader sound palette that sustains interest more easily.  Perttu’s work, although nicely played, tends more to the monochromatic (or duo-chromatic), with the result that it seems longer than Pender’s piece even though in fact it is not.  Along with these works, the CD offers Bonjour Ma Petite by Malcolm Hawkins, a rather amusing set of five short movements for string quartet plus double bass and piano; and a series of brief works called Albumleaves for solo piano by R. David Salvage, of which Must It Be? Albumleaf 45, its title recollecting Beethoven’s Muss es sein? from the String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135, is particularly interesting. Three Jefferson Pieces (Albumleaves 15-17) make a nice mini-suite, while five other works create a set of differing moods. As is typical of anthologies, Lock & Key has music of varying interest levels and appears to lack a strong unifying theme, but listeners will likely find at least some pieces here to enjoy.

      There is a theme in Quadrants, since all the works are string quartets, but the contrast among the pieces here is substantial.  Virgil Thomson’s four-movement String Quartet No. 1 is the most traditional in concept, the most poised and ultimately the most convincing of the pieces, although Michael G. Cunningham’s three-movement String Quartet No. 5 also has commendably strong structure and harmonic interest. Alan Beeler’s String Quartet No. 2, though, is more of a trifle, its four movements over almost before they have begun (the third lasts less than one minute) and its musical development minimal. There are also three single-movement pieces here, all of them rather self-consciously “modern” in their titles and approaches and none of them especially impressive – they are well enough made, but seem to lack conviction. One is Beeler’s Quartet 2000, the second is Limbic Breath by Marie Incontrera, and the third is The Timeless Lines of Time by Ulf Grahn. It sometimes seems as if contemporary composers lavish more attention on their works’ titles than on their musical contents; certainly there is nothing in these pieces to show clearly why they bear the designations that they have.  As with Lock & Key, though, listeners to Quadrants will likely enjoy at least some of these works.

      Whether or not Andrew May’s music is enjoyable will depend on how listeners feel about a type of juxtaposition that was all the rage in much of the 20^th century but has been less popular with composers in more recent times: the mixture of traditional instruments with electronic ones – more specifically, in May’s case, computers.  The six pieces on this CD, whose title is Imaginary Friends, give a considerable workout to the soloists and, in one case, to a chamber ensemble. Shimmer for piano and electroacoustic music (2002) features Shannon Weinstein; Chant/Songe for clarinet and computer (2004) uses F. Gerard Errante; Retake (2001) and The Twittering Machine (1995), both for flute and computer, are with Elizabeth McNutt. May himself plays the five-string electric violin in Ripped-Up Maps for solo instrument and computer (1996/2011), and the only work here in which human soloist and computer both sound as if they belong.  And then there is Vanishing for ensemble and computer (2000), the longest and most elaborate of all these pieces, in which May conducts a group that includes flute, piccolo, percussion, two violas, two cellos and vocal samples, the whole coming across as a hodgepodge of sound that veers close to the line of self-parody and sometimes, apparently not intentionally, steps over it.  Electronic music of the mid-20^th century was sometimes mocked and dismissed for ignoring the audience and simply indulging its composers, and Vanishing has, unfortunately, some of that flavor.  The other works here will likely be an acquired taste for most listeners, if not all, and a 75-minute-plus dose of May is quite a lot to take even for those for whom electronic/computer music is a pleasurable acoustic experience.  Structurally, the works are more seamless in integrating human and computer elements than were their electronic-music predecessors – the technology has, after all, advanced quite a bit.  But the pieces still come across as more self-indulgent than inviting.

      A more interesting, if in some ways cruder, melding of electronic and traditional sounds is heard on From Moog to Mac, a fascinating compendium of works written by Herbert Deutsch for the analog synthesizer first manufactured – imagine this – some 60 years ago. Deutsch has been involved with Moog music from the beginning, and his Jazz Images, A Worksong and Blues, heard on this CD, is the first piece ever composed using the synthesizer’s sounds.  That makes the disc of historic interest – and in fact, the CD looks even farther into the electronic-music past with Deutsch’s Two Songs without Words for Theremin and Piano, the theremin being the prototypical electronic instrument, dating to 1928 (!) and being played without physical contact.  This CD shows just how ambitious Deutsch (born 1932) has been over the years in creating electronic music in which the electronic elements were not the point, or not the primary point.  For Jazz Images, A Worksong and Blues, for example, he performs on trumpet and piano.  Fantasy on “Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child” features John Marshall on alto and soprano saxophone.  Several of the pieces include narration, such as the intriguing Prologue to King Richard III.  Also here is an odd work called The Abomination in which Bob Moog (1934-2005) himself narrates and also performs on the prototype synthesizer – itself deemed an abomination by some musical conservatives. The theremin-and-piano works (performed by Darryl Kubian and Nancy Deutsch) are actually rather mild when compared with some of the other music here – and just about all these works sound more mainstream today than do those of later electronic-music composers and of 21^st-century figures such as Andrew May.  Whether the Moog synthesizer should now be deemed “mainstream” is a question more philosophical than musical.  Whatever its place in music and musical history, though, there is no question that Deutsch is a towering figure in its development: he and Moog worked on the synthesizer together, and it was Deutsch who created the instrument’s keyboard interface as well as many works for it. The merging of traditional sounds with those of the Moog synthesizer no longer seems as outré today as it did in the 1960s, and as From Moog to Mac shows, Deutsch deserves to be called the Grand Old Man of this particular field – although, even at 80, he would likely bristle at the designation.

(++++) THE USES OF CARTOONS

Think Like a Shark: Avoiding a Porpoise-Driven Life—The Seventeenth “Sherman’s Lagoon” Collection. By Jim Toomey. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel. By Jeanne DuPrau. Adapted by Dallas Middaugh. Art by Niklas Asker. Random House. $18.99.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose. By Lucille Colandro. Illustrated by Jared Lee. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

Superman: Attack of the Toyman. By John Sazaklis with John Farley. Illustrated by Andy Smith. HarperFestival. $3.99.

Batman: Batman Versus Man-Bat. By J.E. Bright. Pictures by Steven E. Gordon. Harper. $3.99.

Little Critter: Phonics Fun. By Mercer Mayer. Phonics scope and sequence by Cathy Toohey. Harper. $12.99.

      Cartoons are ubiquitous these days, and used in a variety of ways for adults as well as for children. Sherman’s Lagoon is a traditional newspaper comic strip, but like many strips today, it reaches more toward an adult audience than toward a young one. And Jim Toomey’s comedy, which varies from character-driven to slapstick, is decidedly offbeat – from the “can I eat this” flow chart on the cover of the latest collection to self-aware comments by the characters, as when one complains of being cold, another says fish aren’t supposed to get cold, and the first remarks that fish aren’t supposed to talk, either. The usual characters are here: Sherman, the bumbling great white shark who needs to have one for the road before going on a trip (“one” being a hapless beach ape – that is, a human swimmer); his domineering wife, Megan; Fillmore, a sea turtle given to bad poetry and intellectual pretensions; Hawthorne, self-important hermit crab and perpetual schemer; Ernest, computer whiz and, until this collection, the only fish wearing glasses – except that a whole school of them shows up in one Sunday strip this time; and Kahuna, the sunken idol with a penchant for turning the fish into humans now and then. Toomey never seems to run out of silly ideas: Kahuna gets a girlfriend, a statue of Aphrodite, but it doesn’t work out, so he crates her up and sends her to a museum – on Mars; Hawthorne gets to perform a big death scene when hit during a paintball game, but when he asks for violins, Ernest can only supply light rock; Sherman and Ernest visit the Sargasso Sea, where they meet Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster (who is in the middle of a golf game); Sherman grants an about-to-be-eaten fish one phone call, and the fish then insists on also having one tweet, one blog update and a photo for his Facebook page; Hawthorne improbably finds himself in a dog pound; Sherman, as a human, tries to befriend his nemesis, fishing-boat captain Quigley; jellyfish stings cause several personality reversals; and so on. The unpredictability of the plot of Sherman’s Lagoon is one of its charms; another is its fearlessly old-fashioned sense of humor – there is some social consciousness here (Toomey is concerned about the state of the oceans, as the Sargasso Sea strips and some others make clear), but by and large, the main purpose of Sherman’s Lagoon is fun. Not a bad idea.

      Things tend to be more serious in the more-elaborate cartoon world of graphic novels, and that is certainly the case with the excellent adaptation of Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember by Dallas Middaugh and Niklas Asker. This first and best of the four Ember books has traditional elements of a dystopia: a city where it is always twilight, services are failing, and the power structure is corrupt. But it is essentially a book about hope and about being willing to search for something good instead of just accepting a dreary, humdrum life. And it is about being willing, after finding someplace better, to offer a better life to those you have left behind. The two young protagonists, Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet, run afoul of authorities when they manage to figure out a way to get out of Ember, where life is getting steadily worse for everyone except the leaders. The two, along with Lina’s little brother, Poppy, make a dangerous journey that eventually leads them to a better place and a startling discovery about what Ember really is.  The post-apocalyptic setting is scarcely a new one, but DuPrau portrays it vividly and believably, and Middaugh carries it through admirably in this adaptation and simplification – which puts the focus even more strongly on Doon and Lina than DuPrau did.  The art is exceptionally well-tailored to the story, with Asker working almost entirely in a palette of browns until he introduces a few brighter colors after Doon and Lina make their escape. The result is pictures that capture and enhance the mood of story and draw readers into it as effectively as the words do – which is just about all anyone could hope for in a graphic novel.

      Most cartoon art is considerably more mundane than this, although young readers will still get some enjoyment out of the latest (+++) entries in the “Old Lady” and Superman series. In the first of these, Lucille Colandro and Jared Lee turn their attention to Valentine’s Day: the inexplicably ever-hungry and ever-smiling old lady swallows a rose, lace, glitter, candy and other thematically appropriately objects, then laughs out loud, blows a big kiss and produces a Valentine greeting, complete with card. Based on the old nonsense song about the old lady who swallowed a fly (and many other things, up to and including a horse – which, in the song, proved fatal), these short, amusing books get more far-fetched all the time. But they are certainly entertaining for kids who will want to find out just what the old lady swallows next, and how her ever-present little dog (a nice feature of Lee’s art) will react.  As for Attack of the Toyman, it is slight even by the standards of old-fashioned Superman stories: will kids really believe that a bunch of toys could be any sort of threat at all to a superhero who can fly, move mountains and produce searing heat vision?  Impossible to take even a little bit seriously – and clearly not intended to be taken that way – this story of a toymaker gone bad features the newer, craggier appearance given these days not only to Superman but also to Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, who have cameo roles here.  All that happens is that a disgruntled maker of old-fashioned toys decides to attack the companies that put him out of business by selling digital devices, using his toys as weapons; and Superman stops him, to the surprise of absolutely no one.  This is strictly for kids who think language such as “a platoon of perilous playthings” is funny, and who enjoy watching Superman’s eyes blaze red. Cartooning can be much better than this; and, thank goodness, it often is.

      For example, it is better in Batman Versus Man-Bat, another silly story, but one that has some credibility in the cartoon universe originated by DC Comics. This is a Level 2 book (“high-interest stories for developing readers”) in the I Can Read! series, and it will be fun for fans of Batman – who remains distinguished among superheroes for his lack of superpowers and, therefore, the necessity that he think rather than rely on brute force to solve problems. Batman Versus Man-Bat features the traditional “mad scientist” plot, except that this time the scientist is not evil – just worried about losing his hearing. So he and his colleague, who is also his wife, create a serum that restores his ability to hear – but also turns him into a man-sized bat with a nasty temper. The notion of Batman fighting a Man-Bat is enough to propel the whole book and make it easy to skip over the manifest absurdities – such as the fact that the scientist’s wife creates an antidote to the original serum after she “worked all day without stopping” (wow; wouldn’t real-world scientists like to develop miraculous cures after so “much” time?).  Anyway, Batman eventually triumphs by his usual method of thinking things through, and the Man-Bat returns to human form, and no one is killed or even hauled off to prison; the former Man-Bat is taken away in an ambulance, not a paddy wagon. Although this (+++) book is thin on plot, it is still a cut above many other comic-book-based offerings for young readers.

      Even farther above – in fact, a solid (++++) production – is the set of 12 small books called Little Critter: Phonics Fun. Here cartoons are used in just about the best way possible: as teaching tools. The dozen brief books are intended to help pre-readers and early readers, ages 3-5, understand how vowels and vowel combinations sound, and they do the job admirably – indeed, they are reminiscent of the top-notch Bob Books sets from Scholastic.  These Little Critter books are simply and intelligently arranged, with two apiece for each primary vowel sound: long and short a, e, i, o and u. The very first book is an introduction presenting sight words, and the last one is a review. Each book has a story with ample Mercer Mayer illustrations, making the learning easy and enjoyable. Just Saving My Money, for example, teaches long “a” by using words such as breaks, skateboard, game, lemonade, papers and saved; Just a Little Sick, which features short “e,” includes such words as bed, rest, better, checks and medicine. And so on. Cathy Toohey has done an excellent job incorporating Mayer’s characters into a learning sequence, and Mayer himself has wonderfully adapted his tale-telling skill and ability to make Little Critter amusing and interesting into a set of very short stories that work well from a plot standpoint while remaining focused on words that teach specific phonics skills. As an early-learning aid incorporating cartoon characters that genuinely help children in ways that Superman never helps Metropolis or Batman Gotham City, Little Critter: Phonics Fun proves itself “super”-ior.

(++++) WHAT YOU SEE AND WHAT YOU READ

What Are You Looking At? The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art. By Will Gompertz. Dutton. $28.95.

Noah Webster & His Words. By Jeri Chase Ferris. Illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch. Houghton Mifflin. $16.99.

      You know that Will Gompertz’ book is going to be unlike any other study of modern art even before you get to the first page. The inside front cover and its facing page display a map of London’s Underground subway system, with the station names replaced by those of artists (from Seurat, Gauguin and van Gogh on the far left to Al Weiwei and Banksy on the far right), and the names of larger stations and junctions bear those of movements within modern art (Primitivism, Suprematism, Conceptualism, Fluxism, Postmodernism and so on). This is more than a funny and clever design: it really is a road map to the ways in which Gompertz sees art and artists connecting over the past century and a half. And the genesis of this book is highly unusual: yes, Gompertz has appropriate art credentials, having served as a director of London’s Tate Gallery for seven years and currently holding the position of BBC Arts Editor. But much of the book reads like an extended bit of standup comedy, because that is how he created it – by taking a course in standup comedy and applying its lessons to art instruction. This is about as far from the standard, hyper-pompous approach to art as it is possible to get (thank goodness). 

      Make no mistake: Gompertz gets the art information right from start to finish. For example, discussing the colors that Impressionists used, he comments, “Today they look unremarkable, almost muted, in our high-definition world of television and cinema, but back in the nineteenth century they were as startling as a hot summer in England.”  (Notice the slight comedic turn at the end there – typical of Gompertz’ writing.)  Certainly there is erudition aplenty here, as when Gompertz discusses one’s first encounter with an actual painting by van Gogh: “It’s like the first time you hear the Berlin Philharmonic play or visit Rio during the Carnival: another dimension is added by being in the presence of a great life force. Such entities can only be truly experienced unmediated: you have to be there. With the Berlin Philharmonic, it’s the depth of the sound that hits you, while Rio’s energy is its irreproducible factor; and with van Gogh it is the object. Because many of van Gogh’s great paintings are not simply pictures, they’re more like sculptures.” Gompertz takes his considerable knowledge and perception all the way through the 20^th century and into the 21^st. “There’s something of the satellite orbiting the earth in the way the incongruous Corner Counter-Reliefs [by Vladimir Tatlin] hang in the air,” he writes. And: “Buying Full Fathom Five [by Jackson Pollock] would have been like investing in Google when it was still in start-up mode. One hundred and fifty bucks for a Pollock original drip painting? They now fetch north of $140 million. How did that happen?” Actually, Gompertz tries to show how that, and many other changes in art and in perception and valuation of art, happened, up to and including its current extreme commercialization.  He tries to be as fair in evaluating today’s shock-oriented artists as in discussing those of the 19^th century. For example, “A lot of people knock Tracey Emin [who, among other things, stitched the names of all her past lovers on a tent and called it art], say she is a fraud. History will judge the quality of her art, but she is not a fraud. …[S]he unquestionably deserves to be judged as a bone fide artist and not a con artist.”  Gompertz’ own judgments, especially on modern and highly controversial artists and art works, may well be at odds with those of many readers – in fact, some Tate Gallery exhibitions in recent years have been met with as much scorn as appreciation – but there is no doubt that Gompertz knows his stuff and has found a highly entertaining, exceptionally accessible way to transmit that knowledge to anyone interested in receiving it. So, What Are You Looking At? In the case of this book, if not always the case of the art it discusses, you are looking at something highly involving and thoroughly fascinating.

      Noah Webster & His Words, aimed at young readers rather than adults, is about the famous American dictionary creator and of course is about writing rather than painting or sculpture. And it is, in its own way, quite marvelous. Jeri Chase Ferris interweaves the story of Webster with that of the early days of the United States as an independent country, showing how Webster was instrumental in carrying newfound American culture throughout the new nation. Ferris deliberately sprinkles “dictionary words” throughout the text, then promptly defines them: “This would U-NITE [verb: make one] the new United States.”  And she manages to show some ways in which nascent American publishing was not all that different from today’s, as when she mentions that after Webster’s third book was published in 1785, “The printers were getting rich. Noah was not.” Vincent X. Kirsch’s illustrations ensure that Noah Webster & His Words never becomes dry or academic: his people are caricatures (Webster with his huge head and pencil neck, a group of seven readers with eyes popping out and big smiles as they examine a single copy of a Webster book); and some of his ink, watercolor and graphite illustrations are really inspired, such as one showing a ship bearing Noah and his son William to Europe as afloat on a sea of words. Webster’s basic desire is clearly explained: “Noah’s dictionary would be 100 percent American – the first American dictionary!” The dictionary was not published until Webster was 70 years old, in 1828, but its influence – as Ferris writes and Kirsch shows – was enormous, and remains so: “Noah’s dictionary is the second most popular book ever printed in English, after the Bible.”  A loving and beautifully presented book, Noah Webster & His Words is a wonderful introduction to writing and to the notion of words as uniters of people – a tribute that both informs and delights.

(++++) NO IFS, ANDS OR….

The Butt Book. By Artie Bennett. Illustrated by Mike Lester. Bloomsbury. $16.99.

Poopendous! By Artie Bennett. Illustrations by Mike Moran. Blue Apple. $16.99.

      Thirty-five years ago, Tarō Gomi’s Everyone Poops (called Everybody Poos in Great Britain) directly tackled a subject that had until then been pretty much verboten in children’s books. Originally written in Japanese as part of a science series, the book explained simply and directly that defecation is normal and that all animals do it – and it showed more of the process, in humans and other creatures, than kids’ books had done before. And the world did not come to an end.

      Since then, children’s-book taboos have continued to crumble, thanks to books such as Jennifer Davis’ First Comes Love, telling about where babies comes from and, yes, how they get in there.  But while some of the books, including Davis’, have had their moments of humor, they were essentially serious and certainly not written primarily to make kids laugh.  This resulted in an opportunity that knocked quite loudly for Artie Bennett, Mike Lester and Mike Moran, the result being two hilarious books about rear ends and what they are used for.

      The Butt Book features everything from people standing in underwear emblazoned with their national flags to such utterly absurd (but accurate) assertions as this: “Even mummies,/ like King Tut,/ have a well-worn,/ well-wrapped butt.”  Bennett has a great sense of the ridiculous, which Lester’s illustrations complement…well, “beautifully” may not be quite the right word, but maybe “extremely well” will do. Just think: “Elephants have mighty ones,/ while hippos have untidy ones.” Bennett is entirely shameless in the silliness of his rhymes and the images they conjure up, which is a good thing, since his conjurations produce Lester’s hilarious drawings (the prominent “mouse butt” deserves to be a classic). Bennett is smart enough to avoid saying that everything has a butt, because even though everything does indeed poop, “Snake behinds just don’t exist—/ something no snake has ever missed.”  All right, Bennett is given to hyperbole when he asserts, “Butts are vital body parts,/ important as our head or hearts.” But the book is so funny, and its ability to make age-acceptable humor out of rear ends is so delightful, that he is entitled to a touch of overstatement here and there.

      “There” would be in Poopendous!  It is entirely too tempting to call this book “No. 2.” Better just to deem it a sequel to The Butt Book, with a different illustrative style that is equally amusing and effective, as is clear in the illustration in which “Professor Pip Poopdeck” tries to help out a lady who has stepped in the stuff, as two kids, a dog, a mouse, a squirrel and even a skunk react with appropriate levels of disgust. “To read this book you must be strong./ Just hold your nose and come along!” Now who could resist such an invitation? Mike Moran’s cartoon illustrations range from the semi-realistic, as of a cat in a litter box, to the outré, as of an octopus sitting on a commode, holding toilet paper in six of its arms. Bennett again manages some mighty clever lines here: “Monkeys fling when under stress./ It helps the monkey decompress.” (That one may be in there mainly for parents.) Many of the words and illustrations are matched just perfectly: “Rabbit pellets, raccoon tubes,/ Owl whitewash, and wombat cubes,” shows all four animals on or near a tree, while Professor Poopdeck and two kids observe their, ahem, doings. The most interesting part of the book is about “the many ways dung is of use,” from dung-beetle food to manure for plants to dung used for heat, cooking and even to seal Mongolian yurts.  By the end of the book, the professor, brandishing a plumber’s helper, cheerfully asserts, “Not merely ‘Gross!’ ‘Revolting!’ ‘Vile!’/ Yes, poop can surely be worthwhile!” This may be a somewhat tougher sell than the notion that butts are legitimate body parts, but when parents put Bennett’s No. 1 and No. 2 together, they will certainly have some ways of amusing their kids and themselves, not just once but again and again. And that’s the bottom line.

(+++) LOOKING BACK AND AHEAD

Precious Bones. By Mika Ashley-Hollinger. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

Jump into the Sky. By Shelley Pearsall. Knopf. $16.99.

Recon Team Angel Book #1: The Assault. By Brian Falkner. Random House. $17.99.

      Looking back to the 1940s and ahead to a highly improbable 2030, these three books approach time-worn subjects in largely familiar ways, albeit with a few twists and turns here and there. Precious Bones, set in a small Florida town in 1949, has 10-year-old Bones trying to prove her father, Nolan, who is part Miccosukee Indian, not guilty of murder. Bones and her friend Little Man investigate as Nolan and Bones’ mother, Lori, hover rather fecklessly in the background in a story in which the two men murdered are far less interesting than the swamp critters that Bones and Little Man encounter as they search for clues. A debut novel, Precious Bones is Mika Ashley-Hollinger’s tribute to the small Florida town where she grew up and to a largely vanished way of life.  The dialogue tends to be stilted and pretty much as expected: “Grandma probably sees more than most people do with two good eyes. She sees from the inside, from the heart.” And: “Bones, there’s a lot of things in the world that ain’t quite right. Maybe it will take you young’uns to change things.”  There are sightings of real and mysterious creatures, hints of ghosts and witchery, trouble between the rural folk and city “po-lease” and between Southerners and Yankees, and pretty much everything else that might be expected in a book about this place and this time. There is a lot of “mighty fine” and “if it ain’t no bother,” and there is some unsurprising self-examination and even somewhat-overstated-for-its-time ecological awareness: “Lots of greedy people came down here and slaughtered animals for their fur and feathers. Didn’t even eat ’em. Just left their bodies to rot. They’re killin’ the swamps, stealin’ the water, buying up the land. It just ain’t right.”  Needless to say, Nolan is not guilty of murder, Bones helps find evidence that gets the guilty party arrested, and there is a touching conclusion that turns on what happens to an enormous black bear. A period piece that proceeds in few unexpected directions, Precious Bones is pleasantly nostalgic, if scarcely compelling reading.

      Jump into the Sky is set in the same decade but what feels like a very different time: 1945, when World War II continues to rage (although it is nearly over) and the life-changing lessons are learned not by rural Southerners but by urban African Americans. Actually, the South figures here, too, since 13-year-old Levi Battle takes a train journey from Chicago to North Carolina to try to find where his father is stationed, learning in the process what it means to be black in the South as opposed to black in the urban North. Precious Bones is an in-depth look at a single small town; Jump into the Sky is in many ways the opposite, the story of a meandering trip around and across the United States. Shelley Pearsall uses the usual ingredients of a quest for self-discovery, having Levi’s search for his father also being a search for who he is himself and for where he belongs.  All the standard elements of a youth’s journey toward self-awareness are here: happiness and disappointment, kind strangers and unkind ones, even an aunt who makes delicious fried chicken and a father who is assigned to a secret mission and does not know Levi is coming. By the time Levi does find his father, Charles “Boots” Battle, of course the reunion is not what Levi expects: “Now, you’d think we could have let down our guard after that and picked up the pieces where we’d left off as father and son. But, after three years of being apart, what do you talk about first?”  The reunion is not the book’s climax – the story continues into what Levi’s father is doing, and there is a tragic parachute drop, and then the war ends, and Levi learns about his father’s attempts to find Levi’s mother, who had deserted the family, and Boots gets a chance to philosophize a bit: “There are things in this world even the smartest encyclopedias can’t help you with. Love. Death. War. Why some people treat other people the cruel way they do. You need to look somewhere else for answers to the tough questions like that.” By the end, Levi and his father are heading back South to a life that they know will be difficult but is sure to be better because they are together – a suitable ending for a book of this type, and an entirely predictable one.

      The predictable elements of The Assault, the first book of a series called Recon Team Angel, are those of a book about alien invasion and teenage heroism in that environment. This is fantasy masquerading as science fiction – the days in which the use of alien invaders made a story automatically science fiction are long gone, or should be – and Brian Falkner’s book in fact fits the mold of military stories set in any age, at any time. Unlike Jump into the Sky, which strives for sensitivity and a realistic portrayal of one element of real history (African American contributions to the war effort during World War II, specifically those of the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion), The Assault involves the anyone/anytime/anyplace setting of infiltrators trying to pass themselves off as members of the enemy forces so as to destroy the bad guys from within. This is the stuff of uncounted numbers of war movies as well as books – The Guns of Navarone is one that comes to mind, for those who know it, because there too a small heroic band attempts to penetrate a supposedly impregnable enemy headquarters and discovers, after a series of mishaps and near-death experiences, that there is a traitor among them. That is in fact exactly the plot of The Assault.  The Americas are the only remaining free countries in a world overrun by evil aliens called the Bzadians. The aliens’ headquarters is actually in Australia, in the desiccated outback around Uluru (Ayers Rock), and six teenagers are humanity’s last hope to penetrate alien HQ and strike a blow that will oust the invaders. Or something like that. The teens have been physically modified to look like the aliens and have been trained to talk and act like them – even to think as they think. But the teens run into mission problems almost from the start; they find ways around the difficulties; they press on; and just as they are about to make a major discovery, they have to confront the reality of there being a traitor in their midst. Take out the aliens, and this could be any one of a great number of military novels. Even the sort-of-military-style chapter headings are conventional: “[Mission Day 5] [0530 hours] [Benda Hill, New Bzadia].” And of course the dialogue could have been written by anyone who has ever read other military books or seen war movies: “As for you and me, we were always expendable.”  There is nothing surprising or particularly creative about this exercise in predictability, but teens unfamiliar with genre conventions or just seeking a read-it-and-forget-it thrill will enjoy the book and look forward to further entries in the series.

(+++) SOLOIST POWER

Chopin: Études, Op. 25; Nocturnes in E-flat, Op. 55, No. 2, in F, Op. 15, No. 1, and in C-sharp minor, Op. Posth.; Grande Valse Brillante; Andante Spinato & Grande Polonaise; Waltz in D-flat, Op. 64, No. 1 (“Minute”); Tristesse. Lang Lang, piano. Sony. $9.99.

Rachel Lee Guthrie: Romantic Works for Solo Piano. Dmitry Tavanets and Karolina Rojahn, piano. Ravello. $14.99.

Osias Wilenski: La Leyenda del Kakuy; Sonata for Solo Violin; Hommage to B.B. for Solo Clarinet; Solo for Solo Bassoon; Improvviso for Solo Piano. Tapestry East conducted by Ovidiu Marinescu; Vit Mužík, violin; Juame Sanchis Carretero, clarinet; Bernardo Verde, bassoon; Osias Wilenski, piano. Navona. $16.99.

Walter Ross: Concertos for Oboe d’Amore, Bassoon, Flute and Guitar, and Oboe and Harp.  Michal Sintal, oboe d’amore; Ramon Mesina, bassoon; M. Turner, flute; Radka Kubrova, guitar; Igor Fabera, oboe; Adriana Antalová, harp; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor. Ravello. $16.99.

      Lang Lang’s technical prowess continues to amaze, and it is particularly impressive when put at the service of the op. 25 Études of Chopin, in which brilliant finger work and a certain stylistic detachment combine to excellent effect.  These “studies” are always formidable, and Lang Lang revels in their complexities rather than sounding as if he is trying to overcome them; he is thoroughly at home in the music. Technical brilliance remains his forte, musicality rather less so, although he certainly has no difficulty with the three Nocturnes on this CD, playing them with tenderness and warmth. There are some advantages to hearing Lang Lang on CD: his well-known and sometimes distracting physical movements are absent, and listeners can focus entirely on the music. The Grande Valse Brillante is perhaps a touch more brittle than brilliant here, but the Andante Spinato & Grande Polonaise comes off very well, especially (and somewhat surprisingly) the slow part, to which the pianist brings great beauty and sweetness. The two encores are effective in different ways: the “Minute” waltz is a romp, and Tristesse (in which Lang Lang is joined by Danish singer-songwriter Oh Land) is a touch of pleasant salon music. There is nothing particularly revelatory in the playing on this Sony CD – Lang Lang is not a performer to whom one turns for subtlety or insight – but there is very considerable beauty, and if it is mostly surface-level, it makes for a very attractive surface indeed.

      The pleasures are quite different in the piano music of Rachel Lee Guthrie (born 1979), whose studies in form on a new Ravello CD incorporate some Chopin-style expressiveness (in a Nocturne) as well as other types of emotion, from the Baroque to the modern. Guthrie has absorbed the methods and forms used by Classical, Romantic, Impressionist and other composers and uses them to varying degrees of effectiveness in the 10 works here. Rondo in A Major hues rather closely to earlier models, for example, but while Serenade has the expected level of emotion, Lullaby is more varied in expressiveness than might be expected, and rather less tender. There is a lively and bright – and brief – Waltz here as well, plus a pleasant Romance, a fairly wide-ranging Fantasia, and several pieces whose titles indicate what Guthrie is trying to communicate: Flight of the Hummingbird, In the Woods and Evening Breeze. Some works are played by Dmitry Tavanets, others by Karolina Rojahn, and all sound good. This is not particularly deep music but is also not purely imitative: despite her adoption of many forms favored by earlier composers, Guthrie does have a personal slant to her works.

      So too does Osias Wilenski (born 1933 in Argentina), a pianist as well as composer, whose Improvviso for Solo Piano shows impressive command of the instrument in a very impressive performance by the composer himself.  An award-winning filmmaker as well as composer and performer, Wilenski shows in the music on Navona’s new CD that he can write well and idiomatically not only for piano but also for violin, clarinet and bassoon. The Sonata for Solo Violin is a genuinely interesting work in three movements, requiring both sensitivity and virtuosity and concluding with a finale intriguingly titled “Alla Ludwig van,” whose homage to Beethoven may not be quite what listeners would expect. Hommage to B.B. for Solo Clarinet and Solo for Solo Bassoon are more-straightforward works, pleasant and interesting in their respective sonorities and challenging for the performers. The most extended piece on this CD, though, goes beyond solo works – or, more properly, requires half a dozen soloists to perform together (flute/piccolo, bass clarinet/clarinet, trombone, piano, viola and cello). La Layenda del Kakuy is a seven-movement work drawing on an Argentine legend. The real kakuy is a solitary night bird with a dismal song. The legend is of brother Kakuy and sister Turay – the piece’s first two movements portray them – and of their conflict.  Turay is wicked, so Kakuy ties her to a tree and leaves her there, where she goes mad and becomes a monster that to this day is thought to lure people into ill luck or becoming lost. Wilenski builds through several short movements to two longer, final ones called “The Pursuit” and “The Transformation,” requiring considerable virtuosity and evenness of tone from the members of a chamber group called Tapestry East. The performers deliver satisfyingly, and the work has a pleasantly exotic neo-Romantic feeling to it.

      As intriguing as solo performances and those of small chamber groups can be, ones requiring a soloist to play against and as part of a larger ensemble – that is, concertos – place quite different demands on performers. Four wind-focused concertos by American composer Walter Ross (born 1936) show this quite clearly. Ross has played both French horn and flute professionally (and bass, too); his understanding of wind instruments is clearly shown in music that lies well on them and is challenging to perform but never sounds virtuosic for its own sake. A University of Virginia professor, Ross has little of the dry or academic about his music, which tends to be brightly orchestrated and rhythmically attractive. The flute-and-guitar concerto, the only four-movement piece on Ravello’s new CD (the other concertos have three movements apiece), has particularly felicitous blending and contrast of the two solo voices. The oboe-and-harp concerto, which uses a string orchestra, is structurally the most unusual of these works, with slow outer movements enclosing a bright middle one. The bassoon concerto also uses a string ensemble, and here Ross keeps things light and bright, giving the work as a whole a jolly and rather rustic flavor (the middle movement is marked Allegretto Pastorale). The most songful of the concertos is the one for oboe d’amore, which is primarily graceful, even winsome, rather than highly virtuosic, and which gives the soloist plenty of opportunities to play songfully and with delicacy.  All the solo performers handle their roles well, and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kirk Trevor provides fine accompaniment for pieces in which the soloists remain at center stage throughout, but mainly in the sense of standing forth in front of an interestingly varied background – not in the “competitive” sense more commonly seen in many Romantic and post-Romantic concertos.