(+++) ANIMALS AND ALMOST-ANIMALS

Puppies and Kittens. By Penelope Arlon and Tory Gordon-Harris. Scholastic. $7.99.

Chickenhare. By Chris Grine. Graphix/Scholastic. $10.99.

      There’s just about nothing cuter than a puppy or kitten, and the pages of the new Scholastic “Discover More” book about these animal companions are chock full of cuteness.  Aimed at very young readers, up to about age eight, the book gives simple, basic facts about dogs and cats, and equally basic information about their early lives: “A newborn pup sleeps, eats and poops. …A puppy can bark at about 2-4 weeks old. Before then, it just squeaks.” There is information here on how to hold these small animals and how to take care of them: “Kittens learn to hunt by playing.” There are pictures of many different types of cats and dogs, and of such wild relatives as the wolf and leopard. What is missing in Puppies and Kittens is any discussion of the responsibilities of pet ownership: yes, the book is aimed at very young children, but the pictures are so adorable and the poses in which the animals are shown are so darn winning that many kids will be begging their parents for a puppy or kitten halfway through the book.  Without a firm understanding of the responsibility of caring for an animal that will live with the family for many years, children will be disappointed when their parents refuse to get one – and disappointed in a different way if a puppy or kitten does arrive and not only requires constant care and cleanup but also grows out of its super-cute stage to become a mature animal. Parental discretion with this book is definitely advised.

      Chickenhare is about a bunch of almost-animals and is intended for considerably older readers, as usual with graphic novels. But some discretion is in order here, too. The title character is half chicken, half rabbit, but his origin and reason for being are never explained. His best buddy is a turtle with a beard – again, never explained. As the book starts, the two have been captured (how is never explained) and are being taken to an evil and obviously insane taxidermist (whose craziness is explained and is a big part of the plot).  The crazy guy, Klaus, inspires such loyalty and/or fear in his underlings that they even help him hunt the heroes despite the bad guys’ legs being broken and/or their bodies bleeding internally. Also here are creatures called shromph (never explained). Oh, and Chickenhare and Abe (the turtle) meet and go through the adventure with characters named Banjo and Meg, whose exact origin is never explained.  Then, near the end, Meg tells Banjo, “They deserve to know exactly who and what you are,” and Banjo points out that there are issues with who and what Meg is, too, and then Chris Grine reveals exactly nothing (there is surely a sequel planned, if not several).  Oh – there is also the ghost of a dead goat here as a plot mover; the goat’s relationship with Klaus explains a great deal, or seems to, or in any case keeps the story plunging ahead.  The tale is a simple escape-the-bad-guys one, and the art, while certainly good enough, is not particularly distinctive. The characters are interestingly offbeat, but because readers find out so little about them and their origins, they are less attractive than they could be. Maybe the followup to Chickenhare will play fair, or more fairly, with what readers are, really, entitled to know if they are expected to empathize with characters (even combination-of-animals ones).

(+++) ADVENTURES IN STRANGE LANDS

Little Bo in London: The Ultimate Adventure of Bonnie Boadicea. By Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton. Illustrated by Henry Cole. Harper. $19.99.

The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe. By Pat Mora. Illustrated by Steve Johnson & Lou Fancher. Knopf. $16.99.

      There is not necessarily anything especially exotic about England and Mexico, the countries where these books are set, but the strange and surprising things that happen to the characters make both the nations seem wondrous indeed. Little Bo in London is the fourth and final tale of the adventures of a very small cat with the improbable name of Bonnie Boadicea – following Little Bo, Little Bo in France and Little Bo in Italy. The primary author is Julie Andrews Edwards – the actress better known simply as Julie Andrews – and the books, not surprisingly, have a fine sense of pacing and drama (Emma Walton Hamilton is Julie Andrews Edwards’ daughter).  The story picks up after the human and feline protagonists have left Italy aboard the yacht Legend and are enjoying a cruise through the Mediterranean.  Suddenly, the yacht is attacked by pirates, who are foiled thanks to Bo and her friend, Panache.  The result of this adventure is that the cruise is cut short and everyone returns to England, where a still-greater adventure awaits: an audience with no less than the Queen.  But while the humans of the story are taking tea with Her Majesty, Bo and Panache are stuck up a tree, having been chased by four dogs on the palace grounds.  The cats are rescued, of course, and Bo has an unexpected reunion with her brother, Maximillian, and later an even more unexpected one with her parents. “Isn’t life amazing?” asks Bo after all the commotion dies down – and of course it is in these books, for cats and their human companions alike.  The writing keeps the story moving smartly along, although the illustrations by Henry Cole are more of an acquired taste: it is not quite clear whether they are intended to be fully realistic or have something of a fantasy flavor. They are certainly nicely done, in any case.

      The illustrations for The Beautiful Lady are a big part of the charm of this retelling of the legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to a poor farmer in Mexico in 1531 and was canonized in 2002.  Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher do a fine job of showing what the story is all about, creating reverential illustrations that nevertheless convey real-world presence and a sense that real human beings are at the heart of this tale of a 16^th-century miracle.  Pat Mora tells the tale straightforwardly, with a child of today hearing from her grandmother how a man named Juan Diego was walking to church one day when he saw a beautiful, shining lady who asked him to go to the bishop and arrange for a hilltop church to be built. Juan Diego tried, but as a poor man without influence, he was not believed – and told the lady so when she appeared to him again. Eventually, as the bishop continued insisting on some sort of proof, the lady provided it in two forms: flowers out of season, and her own picture on Juan Diego’s cloak, where it can still be seen today.  This is a simple, lovely story with great meaning for New World Catholics; it also has a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere that will appeal to families with different beliefs.  Certainly its gentleness and its notion of someone holy appearing to somebody humble rather than to a person with higher worldly standing will resonate with people of many religions and belief systems, and even with those who do not adhere to any organized religion at all.

(+++) CLIMBING THE READING LADDER

Mia and the Tiny Toe Shoes. By Robin Farley. Pictures by Aleksey and Olga Ivanov. Harper. $16.99.

Mia: The Sweetest Valentine. By Robin Farley. Pictures by Aleksey and Olga Ivanov. HarperFestival. $4.99.

Fancy Nancy: Too Many Tutus. By Jane O’Connor. Cover illustration by Robin Preiss Glasser. Interior illustrations by Ted Enik. Harper. $16.99.

How to Drive Your Sister Crazy. By Diane Z. Shore. Pictures by Laura Rankin. Harper. $3.99.

Batman: Fowl Play. By John Sazaklis. Illustrated by Steven E. Gordon. Colors by Eric A. Gordon. HarperFestival. $3.99.

      The staged reading series from various children’s-book publishers are an excellent way to get kids interested in reading on their own – starting when they are as young as age four. HarperCollins has a series called “I Can Read!” that includes five levels, from “My First” through Level 4 – or as the descriptions put it, from “Ideal for sharing with emergent readers” through “The perfect bridge to chapter books.”  Mia and the Tiny Toe Shoes is at the “My First” level, and like many of these books, uses characters who appear elsewhere and may already be familiar to young children – or may become familiar through this series and attract kids to further books about the same characters.  This particular book has Mia, in ballet class, trying to help the newest would-be ballerinas learn some basic steps – and becoming worried when the new students have a lot of trouble following what Mia suggests. Then Mia comes up with an idea to turn the difficulties the class members are having into a positive thing, and everyone, including the teacher, is impressed and happy.

      Another story about Mia, The Sweetest Valentine, shows one way in which reading can progress. This is an illustration-focused book in the HarperFestival line rather than part of the “I Can Read!” series. The story is somewhat more complicated (although still designed for ages 4-8), and the book includes a page of stickers. Kids who enjoy the simpler Mia story may well move on to this one, in which Mia and her friends inadvertently eat Mia’s mother’s Valentine’s Day gift, a box of candy, so Mia and her father, Mr. Cat, have to come up with an alternative gift in just a few minutes. Their answer: a Valentine’s Day show, featuring Mia dancing and helping her father learn to do all the steps so Mrs. Cat will be both surprised and delighted. And of course everything works out just fine.

      Back in the “I Can Read!” series, Fancy Nancy: Too Many Tutus also has an obvious ballet connection, but here dancing is not the point – dress-up is. The always overdressed and thoroughly delightful Fancy Nancy loves wearing colorful tutus, and does not even care if some are too small or torn (a torn one makes a great cape, she says).  Nancy’s mother wants to make room in the closet by giving some old or damaged tutus away, but Nancy initially refuses – and then agrees, reluctantly, when she finds out that her class at school will have a swap-and-shop event, with kids bringing in clothing they no longer want and getting points that they can put toward clothes they do want that someone else has donated. This is a Level 1 book (“Simple sentences for eager new readers”), and the plot is clearly more complex than at the “My First” level. It even includes Nancy doing a good deed for one of her fellow students – before getting two more tutus for herself.  Fancy Nancy is a particularly attractive character for little girls: funny and effusive and given to big words that are explained at the end and can help build young readers’ vocabulary.

      For young boy readers, the books in the “I Can Read!” series take on a somewhat different and often more mischievous tone. How to Drive Your Sister Crazy is a Level 2 book (“High-interest stories for developing readers”), and is really a step toward chapter books, since it includes four separate events that are all eventually tied together.  Bradley Harris Pinkerton, who narrates the book, explains in detail how to upset his big sister, Abby – and how other younger brothers can upset theirs, too. The first suggestion is an elaborate one involving a rubber snake that the sister does not know is rubber, and a snake search done while Abby is in the shower.  The second idea involves sneaking into Abby’s room and rearranging a number of her items in suitably upsetting ways. The third is a phone prank , used when Abby is talking with her best friend.  And the fourth is an apparently sincere apology that makes everything all right again – until the middle of the night, when a leftover element from the room-rearrangement plan comes into action.  This is a more-elaborate book than those in earlier stages of the “I Can Read!” series, and unlike those, it does not end happily for all concerned – it ends with Bradley’s sister being driven crazy one more time. Whether that is appropriate for what parents want their young readers learning will be up to each family to decide.

      There are boy-oriented books in the HarperFestival line, too, often involving superheroes – for instance, Batman: Fowl Play, which has the Caped Crusader encounter a nefarious ring of thieving birds, trained through hypnosis by Oswald Cobblepot, also known as the Penguin.  The superheroics are the point here – although in reality, Batman does not have superpowers and solves crimes by investigation, making him (despite the outlandish costume) the most human of the superheroes created by D.C. Comics.  This book features nonstop action and not much of a mystery, since Bruce Wayne (Batman’s alter ego) simply follows a thieving bird that has broken into Wayne Manor and stolen some objects that are conveniently equipped with tracking devices.  Not a very elaborate story, to be sure, but one that kids who already enjoy Batman tales may find interesting enough to encourage them to read about the prime crime solver in Gotham City instead of simply enjoying his adventures on film or in videos.

(++++) SERIES, COMPLETE AND ONGOING

Mendelssohn: String Quartets (complete). Bartholdy Quartet. Acanta. $24.99 (4 CDs).

Mozart: Piano Sonatas (complete). Bart van Oort, piano. Brilliant Classics. $24.99 (5 CDs).

Hummel: Piano Concertos, Volume 1—Concerto in A minor, Op. 85; Concertino in G, Op. 73; Introduction & Rondo brillant in F minor, Op. 127 (“Le retour de Londres”). Alessandro Commellato, fortepiano; Solamente Naturali conducted by Didier Talpain. Brilliant Classics. $7.99.

Johann Strauss Sr. Edition, Volume 23. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Christian Pollack. Marco Polo. $9.99.

      Packaging is an unheralded element of recorded-music production, but it can make a great deal of difference to listeners interested in a set of works. Some such sets lend themselves to single-release boxed offerings; others may work that way as well but be packed as separate, individual discs for reasons of marketing or recording – the creation of the sets may be a multi-year project, for example. Although there are complete boxes of Wagner’s Ring cycle and even of Bach’s organ works, the single-box approach is more often used for music that can fit on three or four CDs, and whose similarity lends itself to their being packaged together. The Mendelssohn set by the Bartholdy Quartet (Joshua Epstein and Max Speermann, violins; Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn, viola; Annemarie Dengler, cello) is a good example of the all-in-one box. These are lovely performances, with fine flow and great rapport among the performers, and in fact the set is more than complete, containing not only all the familiar quartets but also one that Mendelssohn composed at the age of 14 – plus the quartet-in-all-but-name cobbled together from multiple works and known as the Andante, Scherzo, Capriccio and Fugue. The order of presentation of the music is peculiar: the first CD includes Op. 44, No. 1 and Op. 13; the second has the early work, without opus number, and the not-quite-quartet; the third features Op. 12 and Op. 44, No. 2; and the fourth offers Op. 44, No. 3 and Op. 80. Actually, with some judicious juggling, and without caring about presenting the quartets out of order (which is already the case), this could have been a three-CD rather than four-CD set.  But of course what really matters is the music itself and the quality of the music-making that goes into the performances. Mendelssohn’s quartets encapsulate his life in some very remarkable ways. The one he wrote at the age of 14 clearly shows that he had already mastered counterpoint and elegant compositional techniques, while the last quartet, Op. 80 – an F minor work written after the death of his beloved sister, Fanny, and not long before his own death – has drama, intensity and heartbreak far beyond anything else in the quartets or, indeed, in most of Mendelssohn’s other music.  The Bartholdy Quartet members have a talent for nuance, and bring out the differing expressions of the quartets to excellent effect, and the set as a whole leaves a strong impression – and a good sonic one, too, despite the fact that these are remasterings of analog recordings dating to 1973-74.

      Bart van Oort’s recording of Mozart’s 18 piano sonatas is newer – it dates to various times between 1997 and 2005 – and digital in origin. It is also expressive in a wholly different way that is just as effective in this music as the Mendelssohn recording is in the later composer’s quartets.  Van Oort performs the works on the instrument for which they were written, the fortepiano, or more precisely on five fortepianos, including modern copies of ones dating to 1785 and 1795 and a 1785 original.  Furthermore, van Oort thoroughly understands the differences in technique and sonority between the fortepiano and its modern descendants, pointing out in the booklet for these performances that “instrument and style were tied together within the spirit of the time.”  These are poised, elegant performances, and van Oort understands the time in which they were written so thoroughly that he does not attempt (as so many other pianists do) to play the notes exactly as written and with metronomic precision. Instead, there is a degree of free-flowing rhythmic liberty here, a suitable amount of ornamentation, and a general fluidity of line that make these works all the more effective.  There is no wholesale rubato, which would be inappropriate in this music, but there is nevertheless considerable tempo variation – usually of a minor sort, providing an instant or two of emphasis and gone almost before the listener realizes it – that sounds just right, as if Mozart wrote the lines precisely that way.  But in fact the opposite is true: Mozart wrote the lines imprecisely, at a time in musical history when improvisatory performance was the norm, and van Oort’s adherence to the expectations of Mozart’s time (rather than slavish reproduction of the scores’ notes exactly as they appear on the page) makes for an altogether involving, even immersive experience in sonatas that are generally considered pleasant enough but not usually thought of as being among Mozart’s more-profound creations.  The sonatas are presented in numbered order, based on their Köchel listings, and that is helpful in allowing listeners to hear Mozart’s progress in this form through the years. For example, van Oort clearly appreciates the fact that K. 284, in D, is a grander and more-expansive work than those that came before (as well as the first sonata in which Mozart included a set of variations). He handles the A minor sonata, K. 310, feelingly, but without overdoing its emotion.  The well-known K. 331 in A, which starts with variations and ends with the “Rondo alla Turca,” fits clearly into the progression; the C minor, K. 457, holds to tragedy throughout and looks ahead structurally to Beethoven’s “Tempest” sonata; and so on.  There are many felicities here and a great deal of delightful – and often moving – music, all handled in a way that preserves Mozart’s intended approach while speaking clearly to 21^st-century listeners.

There is similar sensitivity to period style and instruments in the first volume of Brilliant Classics’ cycle of Hummel’s piano concertos – which actually would make a good boxed set, but is being released a single CD at a time.  The performances by Alessandro Commellato, with Solamente Naturali under Didier Talpain, are the first these works have received on period instruments, and the result is quite delightful: Hummel’s ties to Mozart emerge very clearly in these readings (especially when Mozart’s piano works are also played on the instruments for which they were written), while the forward-looking elements in Hummel (which glance toward the Romantic era) come across even more clearly than they do on modern instruments.  The first CD in this series is actually a bit odd in its selection of music. There is only a single concerto here, and it is No. 4 among the eight that Hummel composed (counting two early, distinctly Mozartean concertos as Nos. 1 and 2).  A large-scale work of considerable drama, as befits its minor key, this is a concerto with breadth as well as emotion, and its ties to the Romantic era are particularly clear. It contrasts very pleasantly indeed with the Concertino, Op. 73, which is sort of a sonatina to the concerto’s sonata – well-constructed, filled with felicitous touches, but on an altogether smaller scale.  And the third piece on this CD, the Introduction & Rondo brillant, is a pianistic showcase – Hummel was a fine and well-known pianist, and this is a work meant for display and virtuosity, although (again) not to the extent that Romantic-era composers would demand just a few years after Hummel’s death in 1837.  Hummel’s concertos are in need of a complete period-instrument recording, and the first disc in this sequence indicates that they are in the process of getting a very fine one.

      Speaking of “in process,” the excellent Marco Polo series of the works of Johann Strauss Sr. has now reached its 23^rd volume, with Christian Pollack continuing his wonderfully idiomatic conducting and the Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina still playing with all the upbeat spirit that these works demand. Yet this volume includes pieces from a time of considerable turmoil: 1848, the year of the famous insurgency against the “old order” in the person of Chancellor Klemens von Metternich.  A number of the compositions of Strauss Sr. from this year – the second-last of his life – are in the form of marches celebrating military triumphs or otherwise connected with the uprising.  Most famous of all, and indeed the most famous piece Strauss Sr. ever wrote, is the Radetzky-Marsch, heard here in its first version, with lighter orchestration and without the drumroll for which it subsequently became well-known. The Österreichischer Nationalgarde-Marsch (“Austrian National Guard March”), Marsch der Studenten-Legion (“March of the Legion of Students,” which includes a quotation of a well-known student song – much as Brahms was later to include Gaudemus igitur in his Academic Festival Overture), Freiheits-Marsch (“Freedom March”), and Marsch des einigen Deutschlands (“March of the United Germany”) are further testimony to the turmoil of the times and to Strauss Sr.’s skill in the march form.  Also here are two polkas (Fortuna-Polka and Wiener Kreuzer-Polka, the latter named for the Viennese Kreutzer Society, which collected funds for the needy), and a quadrille that, like the marches, reflects the times in its title: Quadrille im militärischen Style (“Quadrille in the Military Style”). Yet despite the tensions, Strauss Sr. did continue to produce some excellent waltzes: Aeaciden (“Aiakos,” a title referring to a judge in the Greek underworld), Amphion-Klänge (“Amphion Melodies,” another Greek reference – this time to a famed mythological lutenist), Aether-Träume (“Ether-Dreams,” written for a doctors’ ball at a time when the anesthetic was still experimental), and Sorgenbrecher (“Stress Relievers,” a title surely much appreciated by Strauss Sr. himself as well as by the Viennese populace at large).  Like the other volumes in this ongoing series, this one shows again and again just how skilled Strauss Sr. was in the musical forms of his time, and just how little he deserves to have been so thoroughly eclipsed over the years by the triumphs of his eldest son, Johann Strauss Jr.

(++++) GOING, GOING BUT NOT GONE

Everything Goes: In the Air. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $14.99.

Everything Goes: 123 Beep Beep Beep!—A Counting Book. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $7.99.

Everything Goes: Stop! Go!—A Book of Opposites. By Brian Biggs. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $7.99.

The Runaway Bunny, The Story of Babar and Goodnight Moon. Read/sung by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and Mark Stone. GRP Records. $16.99.

      Brian Biggs’ Everything Goes books continue to be a great mixture of information and enjoyment, tackling subjects that young children will frequently encounter in everyday life and explaining them amusingly and accurately in a delightful combination of fact and fiction. In the Air, for ages 4-8, for example, explains that “some things have changed, but airplanes basically work just as they did a hundred years ago” – which may be a revelation to some parents as well as children. The parts of a plane are clearly labeled, and various types of planes – new and old – are shown in ways that make perfect sense: a stunt plane is not only shown upside-down but also identified with upside-down lettering.  Nor are planes the only flying machines shown here – kids and, again, adults may be surprised to see how many types of helicopters there are. Biggs is careful not to overdo the specificity of his drawings and words – for example, he shows the interior of the cockpit of a passenger jet, but although he labels some parts individually (thrust lever, yoke, altimeter), he also includes the label “various indicators & gauges.”  The simple story underlying the book is that of a family plane trip, and the foldout pages near the book’s end provide the climax of a smooth takeoff before the inevitable “are we there yet?” question that concludes In the Air.  This is another virtuoso performance by an author with exceptional real-world communications skills.

      Biggs’ abilities translate well into board books for kids up to age four, with the result that 123 Beep Beep Beep!—A Counting Book and Stop! Go!—A Book of Opposites work well by using Biggs’ simple style and drawings and making them even simpler. But not too much simpler: the books get their information across with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of clarity. The counting book, for example, starts with one bus, continues through such vehicles as four vans and seven motorcycles, and ends up with 10 bicycles – and when all the vehicles are combined, what do you get? “1 BIG traffic jam!”  The opposites book is equally clever and well done. Up/down, dirty/clean, full/empty and so forth are nicely and very clearly illustrated, with cars, trucks, motorcycles, even unicycles being used to show the meanings of opposite words. The final contrast here uses the book’s title – with a police car waiting at a stop sign while a convertible painted to look like a flame rushes past…leaving kids to figure out, or adults to explain, what is likely to happen next.  Like Biggs’ other books, these are age-appropriate, amusing, informative and thoroughly enjoyable.

      Reading books aloud to children is one of the best ways to make them into lifelong readers – and help them absorb new information. But having kids hear professionals do the readings of favorite stories is a different kind of joy – and a very substantial one in a new GPR Records release featuring three of the best-loved books for children. This is a thoroughly marvelous mixture of good reading, pleasant singing and delightful music, all built around The Runaway Bunny, The Story of Babar and Goodnight Moon. Catherine Zeta-Jones reads Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny to a piano trio composed by Glen Roven, and the story is offered in its full version and also in a shorter one for younger children. Younger listeners also get not one but two versions of Brown’s Goodnight Moon, again with music by Roven, with performances by baritone Mark Stone and the GPR Festival Choir. Slightly older children get a different treat: The Story of Babar read by Michael Douglas, with music by Francis Poulenc. This is one of those CDs that are a collaborative effort among many talented people: composer Roven is artistic director of GPR Records; his music for The Runaway Bunny is played by Trio 21 (pianist Jeffrey Bigel, violinist Kinga Augustyn and cellist Robert deMaine); and Poulenc’s music for The Story of Babar is played by pianist Jason Wirth. Interestingly, though, it is not the star-studded cast that matters here, because Zeta-Jones and Douglas do a fine job of focusing attention on the stories they are reading, not on themselves – which is, in its own way, just what parents ideally do when reading these books to their own children.  A portion of the profits from this recording is being donated to a school that helps children who have language-based learning disabilities, too – a nice bonus, although not a reason in itself for parents to buy the CD. What is reason enough is the excellent combination of words and music and the sensitive but not overdone readings that will result in children enjoying hearing these books over and over, and hopefully encourage them to read the books themselves when they are able to do so.

(++++) GRAMMAR GOODIES

Exclamation Mark! By Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld. Scholastic. $17.99.

Pigs in Pajamas. By Maggie Smith. Knopf. $15.99.

Miss Pell Never Misspells. By Steve Martin. Illustrated by Martin Remphry and Michael Garton. Scholastic. $9.99.

      The simple, hilarious yet touching tale of a punctuation mark that, unlike all the round periods, sports a long line atop his head, Exclamation Mark! is all about finding fulfillment at the end of a sentence and accepting that different characters all have their place in life (and writing) and are all well-equipped for their purposes. The title character in this latest delightful collaboration between Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld has the usual concerns of young children: he just doesn’t fit in, isn’t like everyone else, and is “confused, flummoxed, and deflated” (with each of those words causing his usually straight above-the-head line to droop in a different way).  Then the exclamation meets someone (something?) else with an atop-the-head drawing, but while the exclamation’s is straight, this one is hook-shaped. Yes, it is a question mark, talking entirely in questions – incessant questions, repetitious questions (“Is there an echo in here?” needs to be asked twice), an endless stream of questions that becomes so out-of-control that the exclamation point eventually yells, very loudly, “STOP!” Well, “He didn’t know he had it in him,” but now he does, and as the questions continue (at a slower pace), the exclamation mark “pushed himself a bit more,” exclaiming more and more emphatically in “a world of endless possibilities,” and then he rushes to all the periods to show them what he can do.  Everyone is delighted, everyone is happy, the anthropomorphized punctuation marks are adorable and genuinely funny, and the book manages both to show how exclamation points and question marks are used and to make an effective point (that is, a punctuation point) about the importance of being an individual and living up to your particular role in life. Clever, very clever, from start to finish!

      The story is more straightforward in Pigs in Pajamas, but this tale too has a lesson behind it: the many and varied uses of the letter p. Penelope Pig has a sleepover party, for which she prepares with her parrot watching all the activity and exclaiming, “Polly loves a party!” “Polly wants a present!” “Polly wants a peanut!” The piggies at the party bring presents, eat punch and pies and pudding, have pizza topped with pickles, pin tails on a pony, play piano and prance about, then get so pooped that they pick plop-down spots where they plump up pillows and fall asleep – without the usual “z’s” indicating sleep because, as a mouse in the corner of the room points out, “This book is about the letter P!”  And there is more here than just the story: the final page invites young readers to search for many “p” objects in the illustrations – penguin, pillows, pick-up sticks, pansies, piano, pancakes, pineapple, pigeons, perfume, pincushion, and so on.  Maggie Smith keeps the poetry (another “p” word!) light and lively, the illustrations amusing, and the whole production’s pacing perfectly pleasant.

      Miss Pell Never Misspells is a more overtly instructional book, offering memory techniques for language, math, geography, science, history and other subjects. The book’s title shows its approach: the word “misspell” is easy to misspell, but not if you think of it as “Miss Pell.” Along the same lines, when learning a foreign language, you can remember that the Spanish word for “whale” is “ballena” by picturing a whale dressed as a ballerina. The sillier the association, the better, because it is the silliness that jogs your memory.  Subtitled “More Cool Ways to Remember Stuff” and also published under the title In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue, this book offers acronyms (PEMDAS [or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally] for the order of operations in a math problem: parentheses, exponents, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction ); mnemonic images (to recall that the Antarctic is the south pole area, not the north, imagine an ant heading south for vacation); and absurd sentences (energy from the longest wave to the shortest can be recalled with “Rich Men Inflate Vegetables Lovingly Using Xylophones. Great!”  (The first letters stand for radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma radiation.)  These techniques are applied to all sorts of information: “Symphonies Played With Brilliance,” for example, to remember the instrumental sections in an orchestra – strings, percussion, woodwind and brass. But some memory aids are easier to use than others: there is a perfectly reasonable poem containing the names of all of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, but remembering the poem is itself a considerable chore.  Still, the basic approaches here are usable in a wide variety of situations, and the discussion of techniques at the book’s conclusion (explaining chunking, the memory palace and other approaches) can help young readers construct their own memory aids for use in many circumstances. There are also suggestions for memory games to play on your own or with someone else – a way to make memorizing, which can easily descend into drudgery, considerably more interesting and enjoyable.

(+++) RELATING TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS

The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t—What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. By Sonja Lyubomirsky. Penguin. $27.95.

Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love: Relationship Repair in a Flash. By Nancy Dreyfus, Psy.D. Tarcher/Penguin. $17.95.

Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love: Relationship Repair in a Flash—64 Flash Cards for Real Life. By Nancy Dreyfus, Psy.D. Tarcher/Penguin. $15.95.

      The “I’ll be happy when” mentality is the enemy of happiness, argues psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky in The Myths of Happiness. A happiness researcher – yes, there are such people – Lyubomirsky says that expecting happiness upon attainment of certain milestones, such as wealth or professional accomplishment, leads only to disappointment when those events do not in fact “:automatically” produce a feeling of happiness. And the same is true of negative events that we expect to destroy or prevent happiness. As Lyubomirsky puts it, “Research on hedonic adaptation shows that we swiftly grow accustomed to most negative events.” In fact, she argues that humans’ adaptability prevents us from becoming supremely happy under certain circumstances and wallowing in misery under others. Thus, there is no doubt that we tend to feel happy after getting a raise or beginning a new romantic relationship, but the increased happiness does not last for long, and we soon return to our individual happiness level, the one at which we were living before the pleasurable occurrence.  This sounds fatalistic, and indeed there is some level of fatalism underlying The Myths of Happiness, as if there is not much we can do to make ourselves happier because we tend to return to our “default happiness setting” whether good things or bad befall us.  But Lyubomirsky takes pains to indicate that this is not so – after all, this would not be much of a self-help book if it reveled in “happiness predestination.” Lyubomirsky says research suggests that unanticipated pleasures are the most rewarding, so we should enjoy them when they occur, even if the pleasant feelings they engender do not last; friendship is a great leveling agent for the ups and downs of life, so we should focus on building and maintaining social relationships – which, for humans as for other primates, are crucial to our happiness; the frequency of positive emotions is good for health, but the intensity of positive feelings is less important; remembering and replaying positive experiences without analyzing them leads to happiness, while analyzing rather than reliving negative events is a key to absorbing them and boosting happiness; and so on. Some of these arguments are more convincing than others, and some of Lyubomirsky’s statements are marred by either careless writing or careless editing, as when she asserts that divorced parents have difficulty “diffusing [rather than “defusing”] parent-child conflict.”  And some of the methods Lyubomirsky recommends to increase happiness fail to take into account significant differences in people’s psychological organization. For example, she says to “spend your money on experiences rather than possessions,” which sounds fine, but other research has shown that people who are more strongly extroverted are more likely to find experiential spending rewarding – which means that introverts who try this prescription are likely to “go against the grain” of their personalities, raise their stress and decrease their happiness.  Her recommendation that people take more risks (she suggests one per month) is similarly more readily applicable to the extroverted than the introverted.  Lyubomirsky deserves credit for trying to find ”action items” that people can use to boost happiness – in light of research by herself and others showing that happiness tends to return to a not-always-golden mean whether one’s experiences are positive or negative.  However, her explanation of the reasons that apparent happiness boosters and happiness suppressors both tend to have minimal long-term effect proves more interesting and valuable than her prescriptions for going beyond one’s individual normal setting for happiness.

      Relationships, to which Lyubomirsky pays some attention, are the entire focus of Nancy Dreyfus’ Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love, whose newly revised edition incorporates two additional sections. The book dates back to 1993 but retains an up-to-date feel, because Dreyfus focuses not on building a relationship and not on whether a new or enduring relationship brings happiness, but on the inevitable bumps in the relationship road and ways to use flash cards to smooth them.  Yes, the “in a flash” portion of the subtitle refers to flash cards, and yes, there is a new version of the book that is a set of flash cards -- although there are just 64 of them, compared with 127 entries in the book itself.  Dreyfus’ book has a strong and focused layout: simple, direct statements on red left-hand pages are followed by explanatory material and usage suggestions for the statements on more-traditional-looking right-hand pages. In the card deck, the simple statements appear on the front and the more-extended discussions on the back.  Dreyfus, a psychotherapist and couples therapist, divides her book into 11 sections: Shifting Gears, Setting Limits, Feeling Vulnerable, Taking Responsibility, Giving Information, Getting Clarification, Apologizing, Loving, Making Up, Making Love, and Deepening Trust. The last two sections are new.  A sample flash card may say, “I want us to stop what we are doing to each other. Both of us. Now.” Among the comments on this is, “This is a willingness to honor your partnership when it would be so easy to take sides, as it were.”  Another example: “Your behavior embarrassed me. I’m trying to tell you, not to make you feel bad, but so I can feel close to you again.” Part of the discussion: “This flash card is for when you end up, say, haranguing your partner on the car ride home from the scene of your embarrassment.”  One more: “Right now, I’d do anything for you to know how much I love you.” Commentary: “This card was not designed to be a profound declaration of love to a partner who may be doubting it. It was designed to infuse your interchange with a dose of goodwill…”  The whole setup of Dreyfus’ book is artificial and gimmicky, and will not appeal to many couples, especially since it requires each party to decide, during a stressful time, just which section that particular stress fits into and just which flash card is most appropriate to offer.  On the other hand, the very artificiality of the approach will have a cooling effect on many arguments, and couples who are willing to try it may find that the need to pause and reflect on just what to say via flash card actually helps defuse volatile situations. The actual flash-card deck is even more gimmicky than the book, but has the virtue of presenting less discussion and less information on each card – making these cards more usable for quick responses to explosive or potentially explosive situations. Couples willing to try an approach that seems facile on its face but that has some good thinking behind it may find Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love, in either of its forms, a worthwhile way to attempt at least partial relationship repair – maybe only temporarily, maybe not “in a flash,” but maybe for long enough to provide a chance to get through the surface-level difficulties and try to handle their underlying foundations.

(+++) SPECIALTY FOODS

Skinny Smoothies: 101 Delicious Drinks That Help You Detox and Lose Weight. By Shell Harris and Elizabeth Johnson. Da Capo. $16.

Paleo Desserts: 125 Delicious Everyday Favorites, Gluten- and Grain-Free. By Jane Barthelemy. Da Capo. $18.99.

      It is one of the most-common New Year’s resolutions, and one of the greatest sources of frustration when it is broken, as it so often is: to lose weight.  There really is only one way to reduce body mass: eat less and exercise more. But that simple-sounding prescription is very difficult indeed to implement, and as a result, there is quite an industry out there of books purporting to make the whole process simpler: quick and painless exercise, delicious foods that prevent you from feeling deprived but that help the pounds melt away, etc.  Skinny Smoothies is no different from many other “easy diet” books in its proclamations: “We’re not recommending a radical program that includes deprivation and starvation,” write Shell Harris and Elizabeth Johnson. “We’re recommending a lifestyle change that you can stick with for the rest of your life.”  Smoothies should not be the only thing you consume, the authors say (rather obviously), but they can be the cornerstone of a diet that is better for you, helps you lose weight, and rids your body of toxins – one of those “food fad” prescriptions currently in vogue.  True, the authors recognize that “there are so many ‘cleansing’ and ‘detox’ diets out there that it is hard to know what is healthy and safe and what is dangerous,” and they are careful to include the usual see-your-doctor disclaimers and warnings to seek medical advice if you notice health symptoms or if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, under 18, over 65, ill, recovering from illness, or left-handed (all right, they don’t mention that last one, but these lawyer-driven admonitions do become very tiresome very quickly).  The meat (so to speak) of this book, though, is not the popular-health-science approach but the smoothie recipes themselves. They are decked out in all sorts of prescriptive clothing: best for different budgets, best for detoxing, best to get the day started, best for workouts (before and after), and so forth.  But the reality is that this is a book for people who simply love smoothies: Harris runs the Web site www.smoothieweb.com.  It can be fun to page through the book (or open it at random) and find different recipes that you may want to try. “The ‘Basic’ Weight Loss Smoothie,” for instance, includes skim milk, plain yogurt, banana and berries; the health-oriented “Peachy Fling” has peaches, lemon yogurt, protein powder and brewer’s yeast; “Tropical Ginger Smoothie” includes apple juice, coconut milk, banana, pineapple and ginger root; “Green Dew Mint Smoothie” contains cucumber, honeydew melon, pear juice, lime juice and mint leaves.  A big attraction of all these recipes is that, once you assemble the ingredients, preparation is a snap: just blend together. There are no elaborate cooking requirements here.  And since Harris and Johnson provide complete nutritional information about each smoothie, you can make your own decisions about which ones to try, when, and for what purpose.  The health-related claims may or may not have value: “Ginger helps speed up your circulation, promoting healthy sweating and supporting liver function, therefore helping your body in its efforts to detoxify.”  But smoothies themselves can be delicious as part of a balanced diet, and their ease of preparation makes them ideal for a quick breakfast, lunch or pick-me-up.  They are really not ideal diet foods or solutions to a range of health problems, but they are tasty and easy to make, and the recipes in Skinny Smoothies certainly offer smoothie lovers a wide variety of possibilities.

      A dietary-advocacy book of a different sort, Paleo Desserts is based on the Paleo diet, which supposedly helps modern people eat as hunter-gatherers did 10,000 years ago – ignoring inconvenient questions such as what a modern urban or suburban lifestyle has in common with a hunting-and-gathering, nomadic existence.  Paleo advocates consider their approach more “natural” than that of modern diets, with an emphasis on fresh produce, nuts and roots, wild-caught fish, free-range poultry, grass-fed beef, and all the other trappings of the trendy (in fact, hunter-gatherers ate pretty much whatever they could grow or catch that appeared even reasonably edible; theirs was not an existence to be envied by today’s smartphone-equipped, computer-savvy food consumers). Paleo Desserts is interesting primarily because it applies the Paleo principles to desserts, offering gluten-free, grain-free, low-carb, diabetic-friendly meal-enders and taste treats such as Raspberry Rose Delight Mousse, Mocha Mudd Milkshake and Mint Grasshopper Ice Cream.  Jane Barthelemy’s recipes are the antithesis of those in Skinny Smoothies, requiring a wide range of sometimes-exotic ingredients and often needing considerable preparation time and a fair degree of kitchen skill.  Barthelemy’s inclusion of a where-to-buy section to find some of those specialized ingredients is quite helpful, but it also draws attention to just how many such ingredients there are.  This is not a book for the time-pressed: even the chocolate-chip-cookie recipe requires 13 ingredients and contains the admonition to use medium-shredded unsweetened coconut flakes, not coconut flour.  Committed Paleo enthusiasts will not mind being told, when making “Gell-o with Fruit and Whipped Cream,” to use “Just Like Sugar Table Top natural chicory root sweetener (not Baking) – I do not recommend any other sweetener for this,” but anyone who is not already devoted to Paleo beliefs will likely find the instructions on the overbearing side.  Paleo Desserts is preaching to the choir: it is written for people so immersed in one particular style of eating that they accept as matters of course ingredient lists and preparation instructions that the majority of cooks and bakers will likely find overdone.  For its intended audience, the book is just fine, and certainly the 16 pages of color photos make everything look scrumptious.  But if you are not already a Paleo enthusiast, you will find plenty of other dessert books more appetizing.

(++++) THE OPERATIC ATMOSPHERE

Wagner: Die Feen. Alfred Reiter, Tamara Wilson, Anja Fidelia Ulrich, Juanita Lascarro, Burkhard Fritz, Brenda Rae, Michael Nagy; Chor der Oper Frankfurt and Frankfurter Opern-und Museumsorchester conducted by Sebastian Weigle. Oehms. $39.99 (3 CDs).

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde. Stephen Gould, Nina Stemme, Kwangchul Youn, Johan Reuter, Michelle Breedt, Simon Pauly, Clemens Birber, Arttu Kataja, Timothy Fallon; Rundfunkchor Berlin and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Marek Janowski. PentaTone. $49.99 (3 SACDs).

Rossini: Complete Overtures, Volume 1—La gazza ladra; Semiramide; Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (Il barbiere di Siviglia); Otello; Le siège de Corinthe; Sinfonia in D “al Conventello”; Ermione. Prague Philharmonic Choir and Prague Sinfonia Orchestra conducted by Christian Benda. Naxos. $9.99.

Elgar: The “Longed-for Light”—Elgar’s Music in Wartime. Simon Catlow, speaker; Susan Gritton, soprano; BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by John Wilson. SOMM. $18.98.

      Before he began to cement his personal style in Der Fliegende Holländer, his fourth completed opera, Wagner made three excursions into existing operatic styles. His third opera, Rienzi, is hyper-grand opera in the manner of Meyerbeer, and in fact is quite a fine work that deserves more-frequent performance (although it is devilishly difficult to sing, much less stage – as are many of Meyerbeer’s works).  Wagner’s second opera, Das Liebesverbot, is based on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and is Italianate in approach – Wagner channeling Rossini, although not entirely convincingly (although the work does have some attractive elements).  Wagner’s very first finished opera, Die Feen, can fairly be “damned with faint praise” by observing that it out-Marschners Marschner. Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861), whose work is almost unknown today, was the most important German opera composer after Weber, until Wagner came along. Marschner was much given to supernatural horror, and his Der Vampyr, based on John Polidori’s novel, is particularly effective. Wagner was quite significantly influenced by Marschner – as, to a lesser extent, was Schumann – and Die Feen shows the influence most strongly. It is a complex story of fairies and humans, secrets kept and revealed, transformations and immortality. And it is the artistic ability of the hero, Arindal, that eventually turns him into a hero – a look ahead toward Die Meistersinger.  In fact, there are glimmers of later Wagner throughout Die Feen, which receives a very strong and interesting performance from the Frankfurt forces under Sebastian Weigle. Even this early, for example, Wagner is moving beyond “number opera,” with its series of set pieces, by using orchestral transitions and primitive leitmotifs to propel the action and unify the work. There is no question that the music is derivative: when not sounding like Marschner, Wagner here sounds like Mendelssohn, Weber, Mozart, even Gluck. But this is very well-structured music, and the third act’s use of music itself as the redemptive force (Arindal uses it to restore his wife to life after she has been turned to stone) is very much in keeping with a theme that Wagner was to adhere to throughout his career. The Oehms presentation is a fine one throughout, and even includes the German libretto – although, unfortunately for English speakers, without translation.  It is worth noting that Wagner himself wrote the libretto, based on works by Carlo Gozzi. In this literary aspect of creativity as well as some musical ones, Wagner’s Die Feen literally sets the stage for the composer’s approach to his later works.

      One of the greatest of those works, Tristan und Isolde, is the fifth in the outstanding in-progress PentaTone series of Wagner’s 10 major operas conducted by Marek Janowski. This live performance from March 2012 is both propulsive and tender, gripping from first note to last, and utterly convincing. The doomed lovers are sung wonderfully by Stephen Gould and Nina Stemme. Gould’s rather low-range Heldentenor voice is firm and powerful throughout, and Gould manages to bring different vocal qualities to the three acts: authority in the first, warmth in the second and controlled passion in what is essentially a “mad scene” in the third. Stemme combines a wonderful top range with a warm middle one, resulting in a passionate and deeply committed Isolde with toughness at her core. Her final Liebestod is simply radiant – reaching beyond the earthly toward transcendence and eventually attaining sublimity.  The supporting cast ranges from satisfactory to excellent. Michelle Breedt as Brangäne sings beautifully and with conviction, although her voice is on the light side and therefore takes some getting used to. Johan Reuter is firm and strong as Kurwenal; Kwangchul Youn is a stolid, straightforward König Marke, if not an especially distinctive one; and Timothy Fallon brings considerable intensity – maybe a bit too much of it – to the small role of the young sailor. The members of the Rundfunkchor Berlin show their usual mettle in their offstage parts as Tristan’s crew in the first act. And the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin is simply splendid: flexible, responsive, warm, deep and blessed with outstanding recording quality that itself is an almost palpable element of the production. The release is filled with felicitous recording touches, from the offstage horns in the second act to the miking of the voice of Brangäne as she keeps watch over the lovers. And Janowski’s conducting is splendid throughout – a complete triumph, and the fifth straight remarkably effective recording in what is turning out to be a truly exceptional series of releases of Wagner operas.

      A Wagner opera can easily take four hours; Rossini’s complete opera overtures take about the same amount of time to perform. But what a different sonic environment they offer! The first of four CDs in a Naxos series conducted by Christian Benda showcases the many moods of Rossini, whose typecasting as a creator of lightweight comedies is belied by the seriousness of mood in the openings of Otello, Semiramide and Le siège de Corinthe. The Prague Sinfonia Orchestra plays these works with as much seriousness of purpose and intensity as they deserve, and lightens up considerably for La gazza ladra and Rossini’s most famous double-duty overture, which introduced the serious Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra in 1815 and, four months later, opened the composer’s most famous comedy, Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini never hesitated to reuse themes as well as full pieces: the Sinfonia in D “al Conventello,” for example, includes a theme later used in the opera Il Signor Bruschino.  And Rossini was more creative in some of his overtures than he is often credited with being: the opening of Ermione, a tragedy dealing with Trojan War figures, includes a chorus of Trojan prisoners lamenting their fate – an unusual element in an opera overture in Rossini’s time and thereafter. Well played and, in the Ermione overture, well sung, the music on this CD bodes well for the other three in the series.

      The sentiments are highly operatic even though the music, strictly speaking, is not, on a very well-played SOMM CD with the unusual title, The “Longed-for Light”—Elgar’s Music in Wartime. Actually, not all the music dates to the years of World War I: Sursum Corda, which concludes the disc with suitable solemnity, is from 1894. But most pieces here were created during “the war to end war,” and there are some vocal works that make the anguish of wartime – and its effect on Elgar’s output – quite clear. Two are for speaker and orchestra: Carillon and Le Drapeau Belge, both delivered feelingly (perhaps a bit too feelingly) by Simon Callow, who knows how to get to the heart of Elgar – a recent Chandos release has him narrating The Starlight Express, another wartime work although it is, on the surface, a children’s play with incidental music.  On this CD, the two pieces presented solely by Callow and Une Voix dans le Désert, sung plaintively by Susan Gritton with Callow narrating, are all based on works by Belgian poet Emile Cammaerts, lamenting his country’s suffering. There are several small, atmospheric pieces here that enhance the longer ones: the gentle Sospiri for strings, harp and organ, the charming Carissima, and the poignant Rosemary (referring to Ophelia’s line, “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance”).  One of the two most-extended works here is Polonia, a tribute to the people of Poland (Wagner wrote an overture with the same name, which is very rarely performed). It includes the expected patriotic themes, mixed with music by Chopin and Paderewski and original material by Elgar, and features a particularly lovely violin solo. The other extended piece is something of a discovery, or rediscovery: The Sanguine Fan, a ballet written for a wartime charity concert, whose scenario is based on a drawing showing figures in 18^th-century dress plus cupids, Echo and Pan. The story involves lovers who part angrily, after which the man curses Eros, is attracted to Pan’s beloved, Echo, and is struck down by Pan. The music mixes lyricism with intense and dark drama and is filled with mood changes. John Wilson conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra with considerable spirit and rhythmic intensity in the ballet, and brings a subtle hand and careful attention to nuance to all the works on the CD – Polonia, for example, has great sweep and strength. Elgar never wrote an opera, but the musical and verbal expressions of his wartime music show his communicative strengths very clearly indeed, and Wilson’s strong, sustained, flexible performances make the composer’s troubled concerns about war and its effects as clear as any music drama could.

(++++) MAINSTREAM AND BEYOND

Brahms: Symphony No. 1. Wiener Symphoniker conducted by Sergiu Celibidache. Wiener Symphoniker. $18.99.

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 3; Coronation March. Russian National Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6; Capriccio Italien. Russian National Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Mahler: Symphony No. 8. Barbara Haveman, Orla Boylan, Christiane Oelze and Anna Palimina, sopranos; Petra Lang, mezzo-soprano; Maria Radner, contralto; Brandon Jovanovich, tenor; Hanno Müller-Brachmann, baritone; Günther Groissböck, bass; Mädchen und Knaben der Chöre am Kölner Dom, Chor des Bach-Vereins Köln, Domkantorei Köln, Kartäuserkantorei Köln, Philharmonischer Chor der Stadt Bonn, Vokalensemble Kölner Dom and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz. Oehms. $19.99 (SACD).

Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by José Serebrier. Warner. $18.99.

Weber: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2; Bassoon Concerto; Invitation to the Dance. Karen Geoghegan, bassoon; BBC Philharmonic conducted by Juanjo Mena. Chandos. $18.99

Vierne: Complete Organ Symphonies, Volume 1—Nos. 1 and 2. Hans-Eberhard Roß, organ. Audite. $19.99 (SACD).

      The field of symphonies is so vast that it is easy to choose ones that are quite familiar, less familiar or almost totally unfamiliar – and still be within the general purview of the word “symphony.” Brahms’ First is as mainstream as symphonies get, but the new recording on the Wiener Symphoniker’s own label is almost certainly unknown to today’s listeners. It is in fact not a “new” recording at all, but an expert remastering of a recording dating back to 1952 and featuring Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996). Celibidache was no fan of recordings, stating that they would be the death of music because they could never reproduce the concert-hall experience effectively. That is true as far as it goes, even for live recordings, but the type of experience that CDs (and, before them, cassettes and vinyl and 78s) offer is just as valid as that in the concert hall – albeit different.  As it turns out, Celibidache’s reading of Brahms’ First makes a strong case for recorded sound. The original engineers must have done an exceptional-for-its-time job with microphone placement, because the recording – of a live performance and originally in mono – is surprisingly full, rich and detailed, and the orchestra, among the best in the world at the time if not the very best of all, sounds absolutely wonderful.  The horn resonance alone is a major surprise – the modern engineers clearly did as fine a job as did the original ones.  The performance is an interesting, even quirky one. The first two movements flow beautifully and with considerable strength. The third, though, is quite slow, almost bringing the forward motion to a halt.  And the finale, which Celibidache clearly saw as the work’s capstone and a monumental achievement in its own right, is just plain strange: after the opening Adagio section, Celibidache holds back so far on the start of the main section that he nearly achieves stasis – surely not Brahms’ intent. Then he speeds up the tempo and turns the fourth movement into an impressively grand one.  The performance will not be to all tastes, for sure, and neither will the 60-year-old sound, no matter how impressively it has been restored.  But the disc is nevertheless a significant accomplishment and an important addition to the lengthy catalog of readings of this symphony.

      There are fewer renditions of Tchaikovsky’s Third available: this is a mainstream symphony, yes, but it is the least-played of Tchaikovsky’s six (and the only one in a major key: D). Mikhail Pletnev’s now-complete Tchaikovsky cycle for PentaTone, despite uniformly top-notch playing by the Russian National Orchestra, has been quite uneven, ranging from excellent to distinctly disappointing, so it is good to discover that his Third is a winner. The tempos are well chosen, the balletic elements so important to this symphony are well communicated and thoroughly understood, the lighter moments are nicely contrasted with the more-serious ones, and the overall effect is of a substantial work with considerable drive, brightness and elegance.  The only disappointment is the third of the fifth movements, the central Andante, which Pletnev takes too slowly and deliberately, so that it somewhat overweights the symphony as a whole in its direction. The interpretation is justifiable, but in light of the mostly jaunty tempos elsewhere, the movement seems a bit overthought and overdone. Still, that is a relatively small quibble about what is as a whole an effective and well-structured performance. One irritation: Pletnev’s Tchaikovsky SACDs are not particularly generous with filler material, and this one is no exception – the 46-minute symphony is complemented only by the six-minute Coronation March, a well-written occasional piece composed for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III, who commissioned it. It contains quotes from the Russian national anthem and from the royal anthem of Denmark (the empress was a Danish princess), all within an appropriate setting of pomp and circumstance. Like the symphony, it is exceptionally well played, but it is not a particularly significant work or a very generous addition to the symphonic offering.

      Pletnev’s PentaTone version of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth will inevitably be compared with the one he and his orchestra made for Virgin Classics in 1991 as their first-ever recording, which was a bombshell: an outstanding, deeply felt and remarkably well-played rendition of the symphony that was declared the best recorded performance ever in some quarters.  The PentaTone version bears the comparison exceptionally well: it is amazingly well played, exceptionally well recorded (much better than the 20-year-old version), and filled with highly sensitive touches. The opening bassoon, for example, sounds particularly gloomy here, while the gorgeous main theme of the first movement has a yearning wistfulness that is deeply felt without being mawkish or overdone.  Pletnev has broadened his view of the symphony: the first and last movements on PentaTone are both longer than on Virgin Classics, where they were already expansive.  But nothing in them feels stretched; nor do the middle movements sound rushed.  The second movement flows with considerable beauty and elegance, while the scurrying, speedy opening of the third effectively introduces a movement whose increasingly frenetic tone makes the depressive start of the finale all the more pathétique. The last movement starts almost languidly, moving more deeply into despair as it progresses and eventually fading into nothingness with a very moving sigh of resignation.  This performance reaffirms the symphony’s firm place in the classical-music canon and Pletnev’s expertise with the work.  And the contrast with Capriccio Italien – the filler material on this SACD and an equally mainstream composition – is a particularly strong one. Pletnev and the RNO are expansive here, too, well-focused on instrumental details and rhythms and on the generally upbeat nature of the piece.

      Mahler’s Eighth Symphony exists on the fringes of the mainstream repertoire. Its huge performance requirements – it earned the nickname “Symphony of a Thousand” at its première – prevent it from being presented with great frequency, but it has become a popular recording project in part because of the huge sonic demands it makes.  The pairing of the ninth-century hymn, Veni, creator spiritus, with the final scene from Goethe’s Faust, remains an unusual and highly effective one, and Mahler’s brilliant workmanship in having themes from the first part penetrate and permeate the second makes the Eighth a tour de force for conductors, singers and audiences alike.  Markus Stenz is a very fine Mahler conductor, and his Eighth reaffirms his reputation. The first part strides forth speedily and with intensity, sweeping all before it into an affirmative call not so much for divinity as for creativity.  The second part opens with particularly effective orchestral scene-painting – this is the only portion of the Eighth that sounds immediately and indubitably “Mahlerian.”  Stenz focuses on the instrumental elements of this second part, very clearly delineating sections that bring back themes from the first portion of the work.  His soloists are all fine, although they sometimes compete with the orchestra and lose out: Brandon Jovanovich is an emotionally strong Doctor Marianus, for example, but his voice sometimes is subsumed within the instrumental portions of the music.  Stenz manages to keep all six choir ensembles together and quite precise in their entrances and the juxtapositions of their sections – no small achievement. And by the time of the last 10 minutes of the work, with their climb into ethereality and affirmation of the Eternal Feminine, Stenz has produced a sense of anticipation that is brilliantly fulfilled in the wonderful final Chorus Mysticus and concluding instrumental chords. This is a performance that reaches for the stars and attains them.

      Like the Mahler Eighth, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 is not quite mainstream, although it does appear occasionally on concert programs (years ago, when only five Dvořák symphonies were known, it was designated No. 1).  The third volume in José Serebrier’s Dvořák cycle pairs it with the Symphony No. 3, which is almost wholly unknown.  The Third is Dvořák’s only three-movement symphony, with two lengthy and closely connected movements followed by a less-than-wholly-satisfactory, shorter finale – Dvořák had difficulty concluding his symphonies, with No. 6 in fact being the first whose final movement is fully satisfactory.  Serebrier takes a few too many liberties with the first movement of the Third, being a little too fond of rubato, as indeed he was in the previous recordings in this series.  And the Bournemouth Symphony, although it plays quite well, does not have the full, lush string sound that maximizes Dvořák’s effectiveness.  But all in all, the Third gets an effective performance, and the conclusion is rousing.  In the Sixth, the most Brahmsian of Dvořák’s symphonies, Serebrier again lets his tendency to tinker with opening movements carry him away, slowing down repeatedly in the Allegro non tanto in an apparent bid for emotional involvement that succeeds only in bringing the movement nearly to a halt again and again.  Since Serebrier correctly observes the repeat of the exposition, this creates a symphony overweighted toward its opening rather than one simply built on the large canvas that Dvořák intended.  The third and fourth movements are the best here, with Serebrier generally allowing them full expression as Dvořák intended, although even in these movements (notably in the coda of the finale) the conductor imposes some unwarranted tempo alterations on the music – not to its benefit.  The CD has many strengths, but gets a (+++) rating because of Serebrier’s capriciousness.

      The symphonies of Carl Maria von Weber are far more modest in scale than those of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Dvořák, but they are delightful pieces redolent of the sensibilities of Haydn – that is how Weber planned them – and showing a later age looking back at the Classical era in much the same way that Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony did in the next century. Both the Weber symphonies are in C, and both are light, bright and very well balanced – although not quite as elegant in formal structure as their models in Haydn.  The themes are well-chosen, nicely developed and allowed to go on just long enough; there is nothing heaven-storming about these modest and highly attractive works. In a new (++++) recording, the BBC Philharmonic under Juanjo Mena plays them with verve and just the right amount of spiritedness: these symphonies are not heard particularly often, but they should be offered  more frequently, having much to commend themselves in their sunny dispositions and Weber’s skillful orchestration. This Chandos CD also contains Weber’s Bassoon Concerto, which gets a rousing rendition from Karen Geoghegan. The concerto, which requires even more virtuosity than do the many bassoon concertos of Vivaldi, is tuneful and elegant, reserving the more amusing elements of the instrument’s sound for the finale, while otherwise treating the bassoon simply as a virtuoso woodwind.  And the CD also includes one of Weber’s most popular works, Invitation to the Dance, in the colorful orchestral version by Berlioz.  This makes a great curtain-raiser or encore piece – it occupies the first position on this particular CD – and Mena leads it with spirit and a fine sense of rhythmic vitality.  Weber was certainly not a major symphonist – he is, justly, most famous for his operas – but he had considerable skill in instrumentation and melodic invention, and that skill is fully on display here.

      For symphonies that are really outside the mainstream, listeners can turn to the six Organ Symphonies of Louis Vierne (1870-1937).  These are huge works, decidedly symphonic in scope although not always in structure (No. 1 has six movements, No. 2 a somewhat-more-usual five).  Vierne was a master organist, and his works are enormously challenging to play. Full cycles of them are exceptionally difficult to bring off, but Audite’s new one by Hans-Eberhard Roß shows tremendous promise, based on its first volume.  Roß plays the recently completed Goll Organ of St. Martin, Memmingen, which is a particularly felicitous choice for these Vierne works: its fullness and power are nicely complemented by delicacy and lyricism, providing the tremendous sonic and emotional range that these pieces require. And the polyphony of the music comes through clearly, thanks to the fine acoustics.  There is always a deep spiritual dimension to Vierne’s works, and Roß is sensitive to it without ever becoming overbearing or pushing the music too hard in a particular direction.  These are masterful works that truly deserve to be called symphonies, sounding not at all like the organ works of Bach and other masters of the Baroque – but clearly influenced by them; this too is an element of which Roß is quite aware.  The fine sound of this (++++) SACD here washes over the listener, pulling him or her entirely into Vierne’s universe, and showing that the symphonic form, in its many variations and incarnations, has retained its power over the centuries and can even be used in a highly effective way for pieces created for a single instrument – provided that the instrument has symphonic capabilities, as the great organs (including that of St. Martin, Memmingen) decidedly do.