(++++) THE MULTIFACETED NANCY

Fancy Nancy—10^th Anniversary Special Edition. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Harper. $17.99.

Fancy Nancy: Spring Fashion Fling. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Carolyn Bracken. HarperFestival. $4.99.

Fancy Nancy: Peanut Butter and Jellyfish. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Ted Enik. Harper. $3.99.

Fancy Nancy’s Perfectly Pink Playtime Purse. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. HarperFestival. $9.99.

Nancy Clancy: My Secret Diary. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Harper. $11.99.

Nancy Clancy, Book 5: Star of Stage and Screen. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Harper. $9.99.

     Fancy Nancy, who is about five or six years old, has turned 10, and it is time to celebrate. That is, the character called Fancy Nancy is around five or six, but the books featuring her have been around for a decade, and this is one 10^th-anniversary celebration in which fans will definitely want to take part. Nancy is a wonderful character: in love with anything and everything fancy (from clothes to food to words), far more oriented toward overdone fanciness than her matter-of-fact family (parents and little sister JoJo), but also a take-charge sort who likes to get things done – even when she messes them up. Jane O’Connor’s and Robin Preiss Glasser’s very first book about her sets the scene neatly by showing her original, non-fancy bedroom, then displaying the hilariously over-decorated room after Nancy goes to town with her version of style. Fancy Nancy, the book, is now available in a new edition – with a link to a free song – and is worth revisiting for little girls and parents who may have forgotten just how clever the whole concept has been from the start. The story introduces the characters, with Glasser doing an excellent job of visually contrasting the non-fancy family with Nancy; then Nancy, in take-charge mode, decides to teach everyone else how to be fancy, which she does – with hilarious results, as the four family members, looking thoroughly silly, stride proudly into a small local restaurant, to the befuddlement of everyone already eating there (but not to Nancy’s: she is sure everyone thinks they are movie stars). The meal goes well and suitably fancily, but Nancy gets tripped up, literally, at dessert, and suddenly home – fancy or not – looks like a mighty good place to be. Everything ends happily and reassuringly, and the scene is set for the many Fancy Nancy books that have followed, delightfully, for a decade.

     Some of those books have been spinoffs in paperback series or special offerings, generally using O’Connor’s words but having only cover illustrations by Glasser – other artists do the interior pictures. Fancy Nancy: Spring Fashion Fling has Nancy and her best friend, Bree, putting on a fashion show that features a runway made of paper, on which the models – dogs and dolls – are supposed to display the girls’ creations. Unfortunately, Nancy trips (as in the very first book) and makes a mess; fortunately (also as in the very first book) no one gets upset (except for Nancy – a little), the show goes on with some modifications, and everyone is happy. That includes young readers, who will enjoy both the story and the stickers supplied with this book. As for Fancy Nancy: Peanut Butter and Jellyfish, it is a Level 1 book (“simple sentences for eager new readers”) in the “I Can Read!” series. Yes, there are some “fancy” words in it – a list is given at the back – but this is basically an easy-to-read story about a class trip to the aquarium, where Nancy confronts and (thanks to her teacher) overcomes her fear of jellyfish, which dates to the time one of them stung her. The story neatly weaves in a bit about Nancy’s father having made too much homemade peanut butter – which turns out to come in handy when Nancy, now cured of her jellyfish fear, uses some of the leftover spread in a diorama she makes for class. A pleasantly told little tale, this will indeed help young readers learn to handle books on their own – and perhaps intrigue them enough to get them interested in reading the more-complex Fancy Nancy books for themselves.

     Not much reading is required in Fancy Nancy’s Perfectly Pink Playtime Purse and Nancy Clancy: My Secret Diary. These are activity books, the former including pictures to color and stickers to make the pictures (for instance, of a teapot, hat and three-tier birthday cake) fancier. There are things to draw, such as a tutu and tiara on Frenchy the dog, and connections to make, such as a shoe-matching game. Kids are asked to draw everything from Nancy herself (and a fancy dog leash she can use to walk Frenchy) to pirate mustaches on JoJo and her party guests (and on the long-suffering Frenchy). Easy to follow, the purse-shaped book is neatly tied in with Nancy’s love of big words – one page, for example, says to apply makeup to Nancy’s mom “to transform her from beautiful to exquisite.” As for Nancy Clancy: My Secret Diary, it is just what it sounds like, except that it ties to a couple-of-years-older version of Nancy. Fans are asked to draw their favorite things, write about their family, write about a best friend and what they like to do together, find hidden messages by crossing out letters, do some word searches and simple crossword puzzles, and so on. Here too there are some fancy words (“savory is fancy for salty,” “exasperated [fancy for frustrated],” and so on); and there are invitations to write your own story, make up your own unofficial holiday, and so forth. The illustrations of Nancy and other characters sprinkled throughout the book enliven what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward diary.

     Unfortunately, Nancy at around age nine is more straightforward than Nancy as a younger child: the Nancy Clancy books, while perfectly serviceable, are much less distinctive than those featuring the character when she is younger. The fifth older-Nancy book, Star of Stage and Screen, has a promising title and plot, since Nancy’s tendency to overdo things would seem to put her right on the road to some sort of public-performance orientation. But this (+++) book does not do very much to make Nancy’s attempted involvement in performing different from similar attempts by many other preteen characters. Nancy has difficulties interacting with her little sister, who was, according to Nancy’s mom, “born rambunctious.” Nancy has to do homework – she is creating a map of Wisconsin. Nancy gets to use some French expressions from time to time: “Sacre bleu! That was French for ‘Yipes!’” Nancy gets into a tiff about Bree’s constant practicing for a tap-dancing routine, and expresses her displeasure to several other girls just as Bree shows up – putting a strain on the Nancy-Bree friendship. Nancy tries repeatedly to apologize, but for a time Bree will have none of it; but eventually the two hug and make up, the show goes on, and Bree does beautifully. As for Nancy – well, she learns what stage fright is all about, but O’Connor pulls together all the threads of the story by having JoJo become super-helpful. Nancy does a great job, someone posts Nancy’s performance on YouTube, and Nancy – along with JoJo and Nancy’s friend Robert, who was also in the show – get to appear on a local TV show. The book is enjoyable enough, and it will appeal to readers who have outgrown the younger Fancy Nancy but still have a soft spot for the character and wish she could be closer to their age. Like the other Nancy Clancy books, this one is not as clever or offbeat as the books in the Fancy Nancy series, but fans will not be disappointed in finding that Nancy, as she gets older, continues to have interesting and pleasant adventures, if less distinctive ones than before.

(++++) OUR BODIES, THEMSELVES

Body of Truth: How Science, History and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do about It. By Harriet Brown. Da Capo. $25.99.

     Argumentative and determinedly one-sided, Harriet Brown’s Body of Truth is a highly useful corrective to the veritable flood of books warning people to watch their weight, change their weight, balance their weight, and pay constant attention to their weight in order to be healthy, fulfilled and happy. It is a book that will surely be read with relief, if not glee, by the legions of people who are weight-focused – including those that are, yes, obsessed – but who are nevertheless unhappy in their own skin and unconvinced that all the dieting, careful food choices, and constant attention to weight have done them any good.

     Brown’s argument here comes down to a single statement: “As with pretty much every aspect of the research on weight and health, there’s no absolute consensus, and there’s a lot we still don’t know.” This is quite true, in weight-related research as in other aspects of science, but if this is the kernel of Brown’s argument, it is not the entirety of it. She points out that some research studies (she offers copious citations: the book has just over 200 pages of text plus nearly 70 of notes, references and index entries) find a certain level of correlation of health issues with a person’s weight but that this does not establish causation. And this too is quite true – indeed, the vast majority of contemporary medical/scientific research turns up associations between one thing and another without showing, or being able to show, that Thing A is the cause of Thing B. This inability to establish causation is inherent in study design and directly related both to longitudinal issues (how long it takes to do convincing studies showing causation) and to medical/scientific ethics. But dissecting research is not Brown’s purpose here. Her concern is the harm that societal weight obsession demonstrably does, on an anecdotal basis, to people who get pulled into the orbit of a social environment and medical establishment that focus, often without strong scientific justification, on the importance of weight loss.

     The concerns expressed by Brown, a Syracuse University associate professor of magazine journalism, arise from personal circumstances, including 10 years she spent in therapy to try to deal with her own weight-related issues and a serious condition that affected her daughter: “A sixth-grade ‘wellness’ class kicked off both her anxiety about eating and her interest in health. Though her weight was normal, she started to worry about being fat. She cut out desserts, telling us she’d learned that sugar was unhealthy. Over the next six months or so, her restricting took on a life of its own, and eventually turned into full-blown anorexia that nearly killed her.” This situation, which Brown wrote about in a previous book, is certainly intense and frightening enough to send someone with research skills and writing ability into the world and the scientific literature in search of understanding and clarity.

     It is also, however, a recipe for confirmation bias – a flaw of which Brown is as guilty as are doctors who use anecdotal reports of weight-related health issues to make generalized statements about the way things “must” be for people in general. Confirmation bias is simply the tendency to give greater significance to matters that support your thesis while ignoring or simply not seeing ones that counter it. Doctors and scientists are as prone to this as anyone else, although the scientific method is a bulwark against it when properly understood and correctly applied. It is inevitable that Brown, convinced that weight focus is vastly overdone and done on the basis of insufficient data – and that the focus does tremendous harm to people such as her daughter and herself – will find material, scientific and anecdotal, to back up her assertions. The anecdotal items, sprinkled throughout the book, will connect most strongly with readers, but anecdotes are not research: they are pieces of information that may lead to research. So it is possible to accept as truth that every single quotation and life history in Body of Truth shows that some individuals are and have been significantly harmed through weight obsession without needing to accept the notion that weight obsession is provably a bad thing.

     Brown does search for such proof, but does not find it; it does not exist, any more than does certainty about the relationship between weight and disease. However, Brown does turn up some intriguing material. For example, she finds some convincing research that indicates that each individual has a normal body-weight range beyond which it is difficult to go, and that artificial goals set through Body Mass Index and other measurements are simply inappropriate. She also finds studies indicating that it is lack of exercise, not weight, that is the primary culprit in conditions usually thought of as weight-related, such as cardiovascular disease. And she comes back, again and again, to a life-changing question that her therapist posed to her: “What if you were OK with your body the way it is right now?”

     This is, in fact, one heck of a good question, and its impact grows the longer one contemplates it. Body of Truth is essentially an extended argument that it is OK to be OK with the body you have. It makes its point too intensely at times: early on, describing weight obsession as an epidemic, Brown writes, “You’d be hard-pressed to find a twenty-first-century culture that didn’t struggle with it,” a statement that ignores India, Bangladesh, central Asia and most of Africa. And Brown goes off track when she shows an unfortunately all-too-typical journalistic anti-business bias, stating that the fact that much research into obesity and other areas of health is funded by businesses that make products in those fields indicates skewed study design and even skewed results. Brown worriedly notes that “pharmaceutical companies fund about 70 percent of the [drug] research in the United States; the NIH [National Institutes of Health] funds the other 30 percent.” So 70% of research is tainted, or should not be believed? Should research funding be cut 70% to get rid of the involvement of corporations and their affiliated research foundations? Or should that 70% of funding come from…where, exactly? The NIH, which means the government, which means higher taxes and trusting future health discoveries to government employees? This kneejerk dislike of research funding methods is among the book’s weakest elements, indicating a political agenda rather than a carefully thought-through attempt to make an important point about how much we know, and do not know, about the relationship between weight and health.

     That point is nevertheless worth making: there is not settled scientific or medical research (no matter how funded) indicating a causative relationship between weight and a multiplicity of diseases, and there is evidence that societal and individual weight obsession can do and does do more harm than good – certainly for some individuals, and arguably for society as a whole. Body of Truth is unlikely to change Americans’ (or American doctors’ and nutritionists’) attitudes toward food, but it deserves credit not only for trying but also for offering an alternative to the way the weight-obsessed currently regard what they eat. Taking a cue from dietitian and eating specialist Ellyn Satter, Brown argues for “competent eating,” which includes a positive attitude toward eating and food, tuning in to one’s body’s hunger and fulfillment cues, being able to eat a variety of foods, and trusting oneself to manage food well. The last of these will be the most difficult for the weight-obsessed to, so to speak, swallow, but it is arguably the most important: trusting oneself around food, rather than trusting doctors or nutritionists or weight-loss programs or even one’s own family and friends, requires having a stronger sense of self and more inner fortitude than many people have. As Brown writes, “So long as we consistently look to other people and the culture to tell us we’re OK, we’re attractive, we belong, even those of us who are the most beautiful and self-confident will struggle. I think we have to learn not to look outward for that stamp of beauty approval.” This is good therapy-speak, but it is scarcely a simple (or even moderately complex) matter; and it is certainly not the sort of foundational attitudinal change that Body of Truth or any other book can provide. But at least Brown’s work can be a good first step toward it.

(+++) MOM AND DAD AND MORE

Pinkalicious: Mother’s Day Surprise. By Victoria Kann. HarperFestival. $6.99.

Just Fishing with Grandma. By Gina and Mercer Mayer. HarperFestival. $3.99.

Pete the Cat: Rock On, Mom and Dad! By James Dean. HarperFestival. $6.99.

Splat the Cat: The Big Helper. By J.E. Bright. Illustrations by Loryn Brantz. HarperFestival. $3.99.

     Spring brings with it the obligatory parental holidays, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and their approach signals the equally obligatory holiday-themed books for ages 4-8, featuring familiar characters having appropriate adventures. Victoria Kann’s Pinkalicious: Mother’s Day Surprise includes, in addition to the story, a poster, two picture frames, and stickers, all with a Mother’s Day theme. The story itself is suitably heartwarming: Pinkalicious wakes up early to make a special surprise for her mother, preparing a yogurt parfait, picking flowers and then writing an acrostic poem on the word “mommy.” But she cannot decide what the “y” should stand for, and after struggling for a while, tired Pinkalicious decides to take a quick nap – and oversleeps. When she does get up, she hears nothing going on in the house, so she decides she can still surprise mommy. But Pinkalicious herself gets the surprise – and the whole family helps complete the poem and make the day special.

     Mother’s Day is for grandmas, too, and Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter has an adventure with his grandmother that could be used as a delightful Mother’s Day story even though it never mentions the holiday. Little Critter wants to go fishing, but his mother and father have other things to do, and so does Grandpa. So Grandma offers to go with him, and the two endure a series of mishaps: they dig for worms but cannot find any (Grandma buys some), their fishing poles are hopelessly tangled (Grandma buys new ones), and they cannot manage to catch anything from their perch on the shore (Grandma rents a canoe). Then Little Critter catches a fish so big that it pulls his new rod and reel out of his hands and out into the lake (Grandma lets him use hers). And then a sudden cloudburst leaves Little Critter and Grandma soaked and sodden – but of course everything works out just fine after the two stop for lunch and order a “special fish fillet sandwich with wiggly fries.” Just Fishing with Grandma may not be a Mother’s Day story, but it is a nice tribute to grandmothers of all sorts – for that day or any day.

     There are aspects of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in James Dean’s Pete the Cat: Rock On, Mom and Dad! Like the Pinkalicious book, this one includes extras: a poster, cards and stickers. Also like that book, it features a central character who sleeps through an alarm – that is how the story starts, with Pete oversleeping and his parents helping him get ready for school on time anyway. This makes Pete realize how much his mom and dad do for him all the time, and he thinks about the fact that he never really thanks them – so he decides to make a surprise for them. But what surprise? All his ideas seem too ordinary: breakfast in bed, housecleaning, mowing the lawn, and so on. Pete asks his big brother, Bob, for advice, and Bob tells him that what matters is not what Pete does but how he does it – it has to be from his heart. So Pete writes his parents a song, and performs it for them, and sure enough, it is “the best surprise ever!” Like Mayer’s Little Critter book about Grandma, this one by Dean is not specifically a tie-in to either parental holiday, much less both of them; but it stands as the sort of appreciation of mother and father that may give young readers ideas of their own about how to celebrate their parents on the designated days – and, one hopes, others.

     Rob Scotton’s Splat the Cat deals with “father” issues in a book that is not actually created by Scotton but that uses his creation aptly. Splat the Cat: The Big Helper starts with a family meeting, at which Splat’s father gives Splat his very own to-do list so he can help keep things humming smoothly. Uh-oh: Splat has “a bad feeling about this.” So he ignores the list – even when his best friend, Seymour the mouse, reminds him of it – and goes back to playing a video game…until Splat’s mother says there will be no TV or video games until the list is completed. So Splat does what the list says in quick, slapdash fashion, making everything in his room even messier rather than straightening it all out. Splat’s dad is predictably disappointed, but instead of getting angry, he suggests that Splat try to make his chores fun. So Splat does just that, imagining he is fishing in the ocean while he makes his bed; thinking of his toys as pirate treasure and his toy box as a treasure chest in which to put them; and pretending to be a jungle explorer while watering his plant. Splat ends up having so much fun that, when his parents say he can go back to his video game, he notices some other chores that need doing, and decides to get them done while imagining a new adventure. It is highly unlikely that Splat’s example will immediately lead kids to do chores eagerly and with enthusiasm – but it can’t hurt to try. After all, the book is amusingly enjoyable, and even if human children do not quite share Splat’s newfound love of putting things away, maybe they could pretend they do – perhaps for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or both.

(+++) REVERSALS

A Dragon’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans. By Laurence Yep & Joanne Ryder. Illustrations by Mary GrandPré. Crown. $15.99.

The Nerdy Dozen #2: Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind. By Jeff Miller. Harper. $16.99.

     One of the ways to make fantasy adventures attractive to the 8-12 age group at which so many of them are aimed is to turn things upside-down in one way or another. That is the central conceit of A Dragon’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans, the first book of a planned trilogy by Laurence Yep and Joanne Ryder. The basic concept here is to explore the relationship between a 3,000-year-old dragon who frequently transforms into the human shape of Joan of Arc and goes by the name of Miss Drake – and a feisty 10-year-old girl named Winnie (protagonists are always feisty in fantasy adventures for preteens). Instead of having Winnie keep the dragon as a pet – something that has been done innumerable times before – this book has the dragon keep Winnie as a pet, one in a long line of human pets Miss Drake has had from Winnie’s family. Predictably, the two central characters clash from the start, but readers will realize very soon that they are much alike under the skin, or scales, as the case may be. Miss Drake, who narrates the book, is neither as crusty nor as unemotional as she wants Winnie to believe her to be; and Winnie, who takes care both of herself and of her injured and slowly healing mother, is not as independent and adult-before-her-time as she thinks she is. Obviously, both characters are misfits in the world – that is a trope of books like this, and one that Yep and Ryder make no attempt to turn upside-down – and both find, as the story progresses, that they have much to offer each other. Miss Drake slowly introduces Winnie to the magical world that dragons and other fantastic creatures inhabit, which coexists with San Francisco but which humans are prevented, by spells, from perceiving. However, it turns out that Winnie has some magic-making ability of her own – of a problematical kind. She is a talented young artist, constantly drawing in a sketchbook – which proves to be enchanted in a way that results in her drawings coming to life. Yep and Ryder throw in occasional real-world references to keep this rather frothy concoction of a novel interesting, but young readers may not get them. The Joan of Arc explanation, for example, never actually mentions Joan of Arc. Elsewhere, Miss Drake discusses a magical shopkeeper – an air sprite named Clipper – and says, “Over four hundred years ago, when I had been in London with my pet Renwick, I’d introduced her to a neighbor, an actor named William. Her large eyes and delicate features had inspired him to write a funny little piece about the midsummer that still seems to please audiences today.” Whether preteens will know that the authors are referring to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an open question. In any case, these passing references are not the core of the story; nor are Miss Drake’s often-amusing personality traits, such as her using a bank debit card and having “digital subscriptions to all the fashion magazines” so she can transform into a human wearing trendy clothing. The book’s climax involves a magic-eating monster that Miss Drake and Winnie conquer together at the Enchanters’ Fair, specifically at the Spelling Bee – which is a contest involving spellcasting. The book ends with the promise of further adventures, of course. And if the “turnaround” aspect of the who-is-the-pet issue wears thin long before the conclusion, the humor – abetted by some of Mary GrandPré’s usual high-quality illustrations – bids fair to continue as the sequence does.

     The turnaround in the second book of The Nerdy Dozen series is the same as in Jeff Miller’s first series entry: video-game-playing, bullied and misunderstood nerds are crucial for huge tasks such as, say, saving the world. Thirteen-year-old Neil Andertol (“Neanderthal,” and yes, he is really called that) gets contacted a second time by the government in Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind, which takes place four months after the first book (which was simply called The Nerdy Dozen – a play on The Dirty Dozen, although as with the Yep/Ryder book, this sort of thing may go right past the readers Miller is trying to reach). The dozen supernerds were the 12 highest scorers in a game called Chameleon, which turned out to be the training simulator for a real fighter jet. But even that game has lost its thrill for Neil and his friends in the wake of their successful first mission – so when there is a chance to up the ante by helping NASA recover a stolen, super-secret spacecraft, Neil of course jumps at the chance. So do all the others; and there you have the plot of Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind. As with the Yep/Ryder book, the basic turnaround element is really just a launching pad (so to speak) for this space adventure, which otherwise proceeds along entirely predictable lines. So do the dialogue and descriptive passages, as when Neil experiences weightlessness for the first time: “‘Whoa! This is unreal!’ said Neil. It felt like he was rising out of his seat after hitting a huge hill on a roller coaster, only gravity wasn’t pulling him back down.” Of course, Neil again has to contend with the biggest thorn in his side among the dozen nerds, Trevor: “Neil was impressed by Trevor’s consistency. Friend or enemy, he was a jerk to all.” It turns out that the secret ship the young teens are trying to recover was hijacked by two other teens – who are simply trying to find their parents on Mars, where they are sure the adults have survived even though they are believed long dead. And, let’s see, there are the usual video game requirements, or real-world requirements, or some blend of them: “Neil increased his speed. This was Earth’s only chance of survival. He drifted to the right, speeding ahead of the asteroid’s orbital path. …Having earned back his friends’ trust, Neil was never going to lose it again.” The elements of trust and friendship are paramount here, as in so many other books for this age group. At the end, everything works out just fine – Earth is still here, as you may have noticed – and the stage is set at the end of the book for the next, which is sure to be just as formulaic in its adventure and interpersonal elements as this one, even with the underlying twist that makes the entire series possible.

(+++) LOOKING BACK

New Renaissance. Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant and Matthew Greif). LAGQ. $16.99.

Autumn of the Soul: Music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Vicente Asencio, Angelo Gilardino, Alexandre Tansman and Pierre de Breville. Lorenzo Micheli, guitar. Contrastes Records. $18.99.

Little Girl Blue—from Nina Simone. Sonia Wieder-Atherton, cello; Bruno Fontaine, piano; Laurent Kraif, percussion. Naïve. $16.99.

Haydn: Seven Last Words. Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violins; Luke Fleming, viola; Andrew Yee, cello). Azica. $16.99.

Aaron Jay Kernis: Three Flavors (2002/2013); Two Movements (with Bells) (2007); Ballad(e ) out of the Blue(s)—Superstar Etude No. 3 (2007). Andrew Russo, piano; James Ehnes, violin; Albany Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Alan Miller. Naxos. $12.99.

Kim Maerkl: Stradivari’s Gift. Sir Roger Moore, narration; Key-Thomas Maerkl, violin; string orchestra. Atlantic Crossing Records. $19.99.

     Crossover music tends to be polarizing: rather than attracting listeners from the various genres that it samples, it tends to turn off many people who prefer their music to be “purely” of a specific type (and never mind the fact that cross-pollination in music is longstanding, the influence of jazz on 20^th-century classical composers being only one example). The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet may be more polarizing than most crossover groups: the players are absolutely first-rate, their understanding of classical guitar (and other forms of guitar playing) is substantial, and their familiarity with classical material dating as far back as the Renaissance is undoubted. But they use all that talent and knowledge to produce sounds and arrangements that are very far from what the original composers intended or, indeed, could have imagined. So the CD called New Renaissance, on the group’s own label, is specifically for those with a rather rarefied taste: listeners who love guitar playing for its own sake and are intrigued and even charmed by the notion of taking some very old music, arranging it in some very modern ways, and performing it with considerable abandon. The main work here is called “Music from the Time of Cervantes,” with the quotation marks as part of the title. This is a 16-movement suite originally created for the guitar ensemble’s theatrical show, which had its première in 2009, with John Cleese of Monty Python notoriety as narrator. The version heard on CD has no narration but plenty of spirit: the elements are arranged by William Kanengiser into a series of dances and vignettes that express a whole set of emotions – reflective of Don Quixote but equally so of modern life. What is so interesting here is that the original music really does date to Cervantes’ time, but the arrangements are decidedly contemporary, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet plays the music in its trademark imitation-of-other-instruments style, sounding sometimes like guitars, sometimes like zithers, sometimes like lutes, and sometimes even percussive. The elements of this suite last an average of only two minutes each, with the result that the half-hour-plus of the total suite simply zips by. The rest of the music on this disc is less intriguing but scarcely uninteresting. Second-longest and second only to the Cervantes suite in its attractiveness is Ian Krouse’s Music in Four Sharps (on Dowland’s “Frog Galliard”). Based on a popular piece by John Dowland, Shakespeare’s nearly exact contemporary (1563-1616), Krouse’s work builds up to the full galliard and then marches away from it, eventually ending with wisps of sound. Its exploration of a full range of guitar effects makes it particularly interesting to hear. Filling out the CD are three other works. Six Ricercars (on a Theme by F.C. da Milano) by Dušan Bogdanović takes a theme from Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543) and expands, contracts, builds, varies and generally disassembles and reassembles it in a wide variety of ways, using everything from jazz and polytonality to African rhythms. The work has the typical pluses and minuses of this sort of accretive technique: it overwhelms the theme and never settles into a discernible style, but will interest listeners through its variegated approach. Mon Pere si ma Marie is by da Milano himself, as arranged by Richard Savino, and provides an extreme contrast to the Bogdanović work. And Three French Chansons, arranged by Scott Tennant, is a pleasantly delicate and emotive treatment of works by Pierre Certon (c. 1510-1572), Pierre Passereau (1509-1553), and Josquin des Prez (c. 1440-1521). The CD as a whole is a real treat for guitar aficionados and for listeners interested in multiple reimaginings of music of four to five centuries ago.

     A single guitar rather than four is the focus of Autumn of the Soul, a Contrastes Records release of performances by Lorenzo Micheli. In strong contrast to the ebullience that marks the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet’s disc, Micheli’s is mostly quiet, introspective and meditative. Most of the music here – eight of the 17 tracks, four at the disc’s start and four at its conclusion – is from Platero y yo by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968). These suite elements are contrasted with Hommage à Chopin and Variations sur un thème de Scriabine by the prolific and long-lived Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), with some Tansman following the initial Platero material and the rest preceding the concluding tracks. In the middle of the CD are works by three other composers: Suite mistica by Vicente Asencio (1908-1979), Fantasia by Pierre de Breville (1861-1949), and – smack in the middle of the recital – Canzone notturna by Angelo Gilardino (born 1941). This rather odd sandwich design does not in fact work particularly well, especially as regards the separation of elements of Platero, for which there is no really good reason. The intent appears to be to pull listeners into this autumnal world through Castelnuovo-Tedesco, have them explore it through the works by the other composers, and then help them to the exit with more of what brought them in. The theory is interesting, but it is not especially successful from an auditory perspective. Micheli does play all the music very well and with considerable feeling, and there is enough similarity of approach among the composers so that the disc as a whole hangs together thematically – indeed, there may be rather too much sameness for some tastes. This is a CD for lovers of mostly non-avant-garde guitar music (although the Gilardino work has a comparatively contemporary sound) and for lovers of fine, restrained guitar playing.

     The playing of cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton is restrained as well, and autumnal and moody and dark-hued, on a Naïve disc entitled Little Girl Blue and built around songs by or associated with Nina Simone. Here the crossover elements are abundantly clear, not only from the use of classical cello and piano performances in pop music but also because two pieces of distinctly classical provenance are included among the 15 tracks. They are the Brahms arrangement of Bach’s Schmücke dich, o liebe seele and the Andante from Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in G minor, Op. 19. These slow-paced, atmospheric works are clearly intended to complement the other 13 tracks: Black Swann, Black Is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair, Little Girl Blue, Fodder on My Wings, Hey Buddy Bolden, Images, You Can Have Him, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, That’s All I Want from You, Brown Baby, Stars, Come Ye and Return Home. Simone’s focus was soul music and blues, and there is an overall bluesy feeling to Wieder-Atherton’s disc – the choice of title track is no accident. It is less known that Simone was influenced in part, in some of her standards, by Bachian counterpoint and fugal writing. Wieder-Atherton seems to have made a disc that is not so much a tribute to Simone as a recording inspired by her and showcasing ways in which her music can be adapted to a more overtly classical style and played by classical performers. This is, however, far more a recording for Simone fans than for lovers of classical music and classical cello – although the inclusion of percussion makes for an interesting tie-in between the genres, since percussive instruments are not only important in classical works but also were key to a great number of Simone’s performances and recordings (which often included percussionist Leopoldo Fleming).

     While Wieder-Atherton is concerned with rethinking Simone’s music by giving it a classical twist, the Attacca Quartet is interested in looking back at Haydn – whose complete string quartets the ensemble is in the midst of performing in a series of concerts – and reimagining the composer’s Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze (usually translated into English as The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross and often simply called Seven Last Words). This is actually a piece that Haydn himself rethought several times: the original orchestral version dates to 1786, Haydn adapted it as an oratorio in 1796, and the composer also approved (but did not compose) a version for piano. However, he did create a version for string quartet (in 1787), which makes the new Attacca Quartet arrangement seem a quixotic undertaking. The members of the quartet say they undertook the new arrangement because Haydn’s own seems unsatisfactory and may have been done hastily – a not entirely believable suggestion, since Haydn created it at the height of his powers and was always quite capable of dashing off a brand-new piece of music (not to mention an arrangement) in short order. On the other hand, it is possible that Haydn did not write the quartet version himself – its authenticity has been called into question for stylistic reasons, and quartets other than  the Attacca Quartet have sometimes made versions of their own. In any case, it is certainly true that the Attacca Quartet members wanted something they would prefer to play instead of the quartet form of Seven Last Words that has come down to us as Haydn’s own. To make something new, cellist Andrew Yee – the principal force behind the Attacca Quartet‘s version – started from the oratorio rather than, as Haydn did, from the original orchestral work. Since the oratorio was itself an expansion of the original, this gave Yee and the rest of the quartet a larger canvas from which to develop a new piece. By filling out some parts of the score and recasting orchestral elements for strings, such as L’introduzione II that was originally for 12 wind instruments, the quartet has ended up with a fuller and deeper four-string version than Haydn‘s – although obviously not as authentic a one, assuming Haydn did create his own. The principal structural difference that listeners familiar with Seven Last Words will notice is that six of the seven Sonatas are here prefaced by Haydn’s chorales. More importantly, listeners will find that the Attacca Quartet plays the work with feeling and emotional involvement, emphasizing its consolatory elements (of which there are many) before presenting the final Il Terremoto (earthquake) with striking intensity. Whatever the merits of the new version may be, the performance of the new version is sensitive and well worth experiencing.

     One of the works on a new Naxos CD featuring the music of Aaron Jay Kernis (born 1960) also looks back, but not as far as Haydn. The piece, like far too many contemporary works, has a rather overdone and over-cute title: Ballad(e ) out of the Blue(s)—Superstar Etude No. 3. The concept, though, is simple enough and is quite effective. This is a nine-minute work for solo piano that pays homage to George Gershwin, jazz (and the Jazz Age), and the blues – not the way Sonia Wieder-Atherton pays homage to Nina Simone, but by absorbing these musical styles and re-presenting them in Kernis’ own context. The work is compressed enough to move along at a smart pace, yet expansive enough to explore its subject matter at some length. Actually, there is blues influence in another work on this CD as well: Two Movements (with Bells), in which piano and violin echo the sort of singing at which Simone excelled in producing a memorial to Kernis’ father. The work is meditative almost throughout, its first movement labeled Poco Adagio and its second, very directly, A Song for My Father; and James Ehnes, for whom the piece was commissioned, plays it very feelingly and with fine interaction with Andrew Russo. Russo is not only soloist but also adapter of the longest work here, Three Flavors, originally written in 2002 as a concerto for toy piano and orchestra (a bit like Leopold Mozart’s Toy Symphony), then adapted for standard piano by Russo in 2013. The “flavors” here seem to be more than three: this is avowed crossover music, in which traditional classical elements are mixed with Indonesian gamelan, jazz and the lyrical quality of a central movement called Lullaby—Barcarolle (sandwiched between Ostinato and Blue Whirl). Kernis packs a bit too much into this package, whose exotic-sounding portions and piano-virtuoso ones coexist rather uneasily. But Russo and the Albany Symphony Orchestra under David Alan Miller certainly give the work their all, handling it with equal measures of bounce, breadth and enthusiasm.

     The way in which Kim Maerkl looks into the past in Stradivari’s Gift is different, for this work is a narrative-with-music intended for young listeners, designed to take 21^st-century children back to 17^th-century Italy and a place, Cremona, where the greatest violins ever made were produced by the greatest luthiers of all time – paramount among them Antonio Stradivari. This work is in 16 short sections – the whole Atlantic Crossing CD lasts just 37 minutes – with narration by Sir Roger Moore setting the scene and moving the story along as playing  by Key-Thomas Maerkl (accompanied by string orchestra) provides musical progress and commentary upon the narrative. In a nice touch, violinist Maerkl was able to use a 1692 Stradivarius to record his solos, giving listeners a chance to hear the sumptuous perfection of warmth and amazing evenness of sound for which Stradivarius violins are renowned (which does not, of course, mean that young listeners will be fully able to appreciate how incomparably better than most others this violin sounds). Stradivari’s Gift is a teaching tool as much as a musical experience, intended to bring children into a different time and help them appreciate a type of music with which they may not be at all familiar. It is actually one of two closely related Kim Maerkl works with this intention, the other being Amati’s Dream. It is rather unfortunate that the two allied pieces were not released on a single CD. The Stradivari’s Gift CD is nicely made and the performance, both narrative and musical, is quite good, but the cost for a short disc is high and may discourage families and schools from buying the recording. That would be too bad, since this is a well-meaning and well-wrought attempt (although scarcely the first one) to help make classical music understandable to young people and hopefully generate enthusiasm for it in a new generation. Music can in fact transport young and old, composer and performer and listener alike, to earlier times and distant places, and it will be wonderful if visions of the past, through works such as Stradivari’s Gift, encourage greater appreciation of the classical-music realm in the future.

(++++) OFF THE BEATEN CHARACTER PATH

Everybody Sleeps (But Not Fred). By Josh Schneider. Clarion. $16.99.

Bob and Flo. By Rebecca Ashdown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99.

     Sometimes it takes just a small tweak to make a seemingly ordinary character into an unusual one, and his or her adventures into extra-special fun for young readers – or even pre-readers. Josh Schneider’s Everybody Sleeps (But Not Fred) seems on the surface to be an ordinary enough bedtime book about a little boy who has trouble falling asleep but who, eventually, does. However, that straightforward story is told in a way that makes the book, and the boy, offbeat and pleasantly unusual. First of all, everyone else in the book is an animal, so the various able-to-sleep characters include chickens (one of them apparently mechanical), monkeys (in ballerina costumes), sheep (one wearing an accountant’s traditional eyeshade and using a calculator to, you know, count sheep), an anteater (sitting at a table at a French café specializing in ants), and so forth. Second of all, the reason Fred cannot sleep is far out of the ordinary: he is determined to get through a to-do list, and not just any to-do list. His includes breaking the world shouting record, testing his horn collection (which includes an alphorn so big and loud that it awakens whales sleeping peacefully in the ocean), hunting the Sasquatch (by checking out the various monsters scattered in beds in a room where bats hang from the rafters while a snake snoozes and a toucan – which reappears throughout the book – somehow manages to sleep hanging upside-down, like the bats). The funniest concept of all here is a self-referential one involving books just like this. It is about the way parents usually gets kids to sleep: “Having read a book or three,/ parents turn to poetry,/ reading from a book so boring,/ children soon are prone and snoring.” And sure enough, after this particular bit of poetic whimsy, Fred is discovered (by one of the monkey ballerinas) to have fallen asleep – and Schneider warns readers to close the book softly so Fred doesn’t wake up and start his to-do list all over again. Parents who choose this as bedtime reading should be prepared, at this point, for children to insist on slamming the book closed very loudly. Repeat as necessary.

     In Rebecca Ashdown’s Bob and Flo, there is also a simple and straightforward story: two preschoolers meet and become friends. That is the whole tale – but what sets it apart from many other books with the same plot is that these preschoolers are penguins. Flo wears a bow atop her head, and Bob wears – well, nothing at first, but he does admire the bucket in which Flo has brought her lunch (fish, of course). And soon, as Flo is busy painting, she notices that her bucket is missing and the fish are all over the floor. So Flo goes on a bucket quest, which is neither long-lasting nor difficult: Bob is wearing it on his head, then standing on it to build a tower of blocks, then using it to build sand castles, and then turning it into a drum. Instead of getting angry, upset or possessive, Flo uses the bucket to help Bob, who gets stuck at the top of the slide: she fills the bucket with water and uses it to wash him down the slide. By the end of the day, Bob is wearing the bucket to go home, and Flo is calling it “our bucket” and making plans for the next day – a sweet ending to a nicely conceived book whose very simple drawings only look like ones that young children might themselves make: it takes skill to produce work that looks so simplistic and naïve, just as it takes skill to turn a perfectly ordinary story into one whose characters make it special.

(+++) TALES OF THE FAMOUS AND ORDINARY

Mahalia Jackson: Walking with Kings and Queens. By Nina Nolan. Illustrated by John Holyfield. Amistad/HarperCollins. $17.99.

My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth. By Ann Turner. Illustrated by James Ransome. Harper. $17.99.

Harlem Renaissance Party. By Faith Ringgold. Amistad/HarperCollins. $17.99.

Bronzeville Boys and Girls. By Gwendolyn Brooks. Illustrated by Faith Ringgold. Amistad/HarperCollins. $6.99.

     It is a shame that self-segregation by self-identified groups of one kind or another makes it difficult today for members of other groups to appreciate the accomplishments of the ones that choose to stand apart. These four books all profile people whom it would benefit all young readers to know; but the books are deliberately targeted only at African-American children, presumably to show them larger-than-life (or at least very interesting) characters of their own color – but therefore turning the works into specialty items rather than the more-general-interest ones they deserve to be. This is largely the result of political correctness run amok, of special-interest groups using silly phrases such as “people of color” (all people have color, including albinos) while insisting that similar-sounding phrases such as “colored people” forever taint those using them. There is genuine pathos in this, if perhaps not out-and-out tragedy, because it means that people who are not within the chosen group for which these books were created are far less likely to benefit from the stories they tell.

     And there is plenty of benefit to be had here – for children of any color. Mahalia Jackson: Walking with Kings and Queens and My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth are both brief, surface-level biographies of women whose contributions to music and the abolitionist movement, respectively, are deservedly valued at very high levels. Both books tell their stories from a highly personal perspective, although Nina Nolan’s is narrated in the third person and Ann Turner’s in the first. The Mahalia Jackson story features John Holyfield illustrations in which all the prominent characters are subtly rounded and Mahalia herself constantly stands out from whatever background she is portrayed against. It briefly traces Jackson’s life from her birth in poverty in New Orleans in 1911 to her singing at Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963 (King’s widow spoke at Jackson’s own funeral in 1972, but the book omits Jackson’s later life). The focuses throughout the book are music; Jackson’s remarkable, untrained voice; and the ways in which Jackson’s chosen focus on gospel lifted the lives of African-Americans. The only individualized white person in the book, a singing teacher, is shown denigrating Jackson – a shame, since her music could and did reach beyond those of her own color. Similarly, Turner’s story of Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) features attractive, involving James Ransome illustrations of Truth and her family, with pictures of whites being done as caricatures that make such people look clownlike when they do not appear overtly evil. Truth’s story is a remarkable and uplifting one for people of any faith or no faith: although motivated by religion, what she preached was rights and equality, concepts that resonate with Americans of any color. The author’s note at the end of this book is a big help in understanding more about Truth’s life: the book itself is rather spare, providing more emotional impact than factual material. Readers who spend some time with the back-of-the-book material will appreciate the biography more fully than those who read only the story.

     Faith Ringgold pulls together African-Americans of many times and places and has them all show up in Harlem during the New Negro Movement, which was later called the Harlem Renaissance. An imaginary little boy named Lonnie goes to Harlem with his Uncle Bates to meet the many famous people there, encountering Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and many other celebrities. Lonnie is simply a device to draw readers of roughly his age to a story into which Ringgold not only places well-known people but also introduces specific locations: Harlem itself, the Harlem Opera House, the Savoy Ballroom, the offices of The Crisis magazine, the Schomburg Library, and so on. Ringgold’s five back-of-the-book pages about the characters and places in Harlem Renaissance are a virtual necessity for young readers trying to make sense of the book, which is densely packed with people and events. There is no particular story here – the book is basically a recitation of various people’s names and various locations – although Ringgold tries near the end to provide uplifting messages to her target readers by having Lonnie say, “I am so proud to be black” and by having him describe a dream in which “I was the proudest, littlest giant of the Harlem Renaissance.”

     Ringgold’s contribution as illustrator of Bronzeville Boys and Girls is actually more involving than is her writing-plus-illustration in Harlem Renaissance. The reason is that the Bronzeville children, created in 1956 in poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, seem real and alive and genuine, even though they are entirely fictional – unlike the stylized “important people” of Harlem Renaissance, who seem more like unidimensional cardboard characters even though they really lived. Bronzeville Boys and Girls is set in a section of Chicago, but could take place just about anywhere urban. All the characters here are black, but their personalities are such that children of any color can relate to them if only they have a reason to pick up the book (which dates to 2007 and is now available in paperback) in the first place. For instance, a poem featuring a boy named “De Koven” is an appealing eight-liner: “You are a dancy little thing,/ You are a rascal, star!/ You seem to be so near to me,/ And yet you are so far./ If I could get you in my hands/ You’d never get away./ I’d keep you with me always./ You’d shine both night and day.” And four lines are enough for “Robert, Who Is Often a Stranger to Himself,” which goes: “Do you ever look in the looking-glass/ And see a stranger there?/ A child you know and do not know,/ Wearing what you wear?” And “Michael Is Afraid of the Storm” offers emotions that any child who, like Michael, is eight years old, will understand, beginning: “Lightning is angry in the night./ Thunder spanks our house./ Rain is hating our old elm—/ It punishes the boughs.” Many of the names of children here are or were more common in African-American households than in other homes: Tawanda, Keziah, Eldora, Beulah, Mirthine. But aside from that, Bronzeville Boys and Girls is simply a story of urban children – not famous people, not people of a specific orientation or skin color, but simply children trying to cope with and understand life as they live it. This is a book that can reach out widely and effectively, and it does – but only if and when families beyond those obviously targeted by the book take the time to look for and explore it.

(+++) TAKING SIDES

The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation. By Thomas Fleming. Da Capo. $27.99.

     America’s rampant anti-intellectualism and suspicion of the “smart elite” has long had to contend, historically, with the unfortunate-to-those-of-this-persuasion reality that the nation was founded by well-born, elitist men of high intellect, steeped in the values of the Enlightenment (of which most modern Americans have never heard) and highly skilled in putting those values into practical context in elegantly written documents whose skilled prose resonated deeply with their contemporaries – even if few modern Americans have ever read the Declaration of Independence and Constitution from start to finish. Foremost among all the founding intellectuals was Thomas Jefferson, a rather poor speaker whose ability to communicate in writing was absolutely crucial to gaining support both at home and abroad for American independence from Great Britain. The anti-intellectuals of modern times have, however, had a field day bringing Jefferson down (or so they imagine) ever since the modern conclusion that he apparently fathered several of the children of his slave, Sally Hemings (an accusation that actually dates to Jefferson’s own lifetime but that only began to be used to “take him down a peg” in the 21^st century). Some people seem to think that by denigrating Jefferson, they raise their own standing (at least in their own estimation).

     Given these factors, it is a shame to find a well-known historian and prolific writer such as Thomas Fleming jumping on the bash-Jefferson bandwagon. Fleming does not specifically present The Great Divide on that basis, of course, being himself too erudite and too knowledgeable to appear overtly to throw in with modern know-nothingism. But in exploring the very real philosophical and political differences and outlooks of the nation’s first and third presidents, Fleming so thoroughly “talks down” Jefferson that his book comes across as far more inequitable than he likely intended it to be.

     The basic differences between the Washingtonian and Jeffersonian outlooks are actually well known, although they are rarely explored with the depth and intensity of The Great Divide. Washington believed in a very strong central government and a presidency that, if scarcely the “imperial” type of which some presidents have been accused, was primus inter pares in case of conflicts among the three branches of government – and certainly so in instances of disagreements with Congress. Counterbalancing the power of the presidency, Washington believed, was the limitation of the time for which any one man could hold it: his decision not to seek a third term, which he would surely have won had he wanted it, was one of his great gifts to the young nation.

     Jefferson had more respect for states’ rights and for individual rights, as shown (among many other examples) in his famous statement on religion, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.” Jefferson’s preference for a comparatively weak presidency meant he believed Congress should have more power than Washington thought it should, and Jefferson’s firm belief in individual rights as indispensable to freedom kept him an ardent supporter of the French Revolution (which was precipitated in part by the success of the American one) long after the violent excesses of the Reign of Terror had turned so many others against it.

     There are ironies aplenty in both men’s lives and actions – for example, Jefferson’s acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon represented just the kind of presidential overreaching to which Jefferson would have been adamantly opposed had it been practiced by anyone else. But The Great Divide goes beyond irony to paint Jefferson as a waffler and hypocrite, in contrast to the thoroughly upstanding Washington. For example, Fleming writes about Jefferson’s dislike of cities in general and of New York in particular: “Although he had five servants, including a slave chef , James Hemings, whom he had taken to Paris for training, as well as a maître d’hotel (essentially a butler) imported from the French capital, he told one correspondent that he was dismayed by the way hitherto unspoiled Americans were succumbing to extravagance and luxury. It was ‘a more baneful evil than Toryism was during the war.’” Fleming takes that obvious hyperbole and discusses it as if Jefferson meant it seriously and disingenuously (“the British and their loyalist American supporters were looking forward to hanging, drawing and quartering General Washington…”); and instead of interpreting Jefferson’s bringing of Hemings to Paris for culinary training as a positive thing, Fleming twists it into a negative “extravagance.”  And Fleming goes on, in a further discussion of Jefferson’s “hatred of cities” – in the context of arguments about where to locate the nation’s capital – to snidely remark, “It is hard to see how these convictions jibe with Jefferson’s faith in the ultimate triumph of the French Revolution, which was struggling to be born in one of the largest cities in the world, with an addiction to luxury that was second to none.”

     Then, writing about the eventual decision to create Washington, D.C., which “for the next two hundred years…would remain a small, isolated town, whose only industry was politics,” Fleming lays a truly bizarre criticism at Jefferson’s feet: “The preferences of three Virginia presidents (Jefferson and his two disciples, Madison and Monroe) played a significant part in Congress’s lack of interest in spending the money to create a federal metropolis. The million young men who died in the Civil War bear mute witness to one of the many prices America paid for this hostility to the kind of unified nation Washington and [Alexander] Hamilton hoped to create in America.”

     There is no doubt that Fleming means this extremely peculiar accusation sincerely. His writing is quite direct and forthright, although his style can be confusing and is scarcely error-free: “Thomas Jefferson displayed a painting of [Sir Francis] Bacon wherever he happened to be living, not unlike devout Catholics mounted portraits of favorite saints.” What is unfortunate is that Fleming’s highly skewed view of Jefferson creates thoroughgoing confirmation bias throughout The Great Divide: every hesitation by Jefferson is interpreted as a failure of decision-making ability, while every political action by Washington – and most of those by Hamilton – come across as forward-looking ones, actuated by the deepest possible commitment to a truly unified United States of America. The notion that Jefferson may have been led to his positions, even ones with which Fleming strongly disagrees, by deep intellectual curiosity and a kind of dogged determination, is simply absent here: Jefferson becomes a caricature, a would-be intellectual rather than a genuine one, a small man arranging for posterity to consider him larger than life through, in part, his denigration of the far greater Washington. Fleming is certainly quite free to make this argument – Jefferson would have supported his right to do so, and in fact put up with worse in his own lifetime – but hagiography of Washington and demonization of Jefferson do not, singly or together, make for a convincing interpretation or reinterpretation of the many and various philosophical, factional, sectional, regional and political disagreements (some of them extremely deep) among the Founders. The Great Divide is an interesting book to read and will surely make modern anti-intellectuals feel that they are somehow “one up” on Thomas Jefferson. But despite the many citations of primary as well as secondary sources, Fleming’s work is not particularly convincing as history and not particularly admirable from a scholarly or intellectual standpoint, being far too one-sided to make it possible for readers to know just where its clarities end and its condemnatory jeremiads begin.

(++++) SCANDINAVIAN SENSIBILITIES

Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (“Sinfonia espansiva”). Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. BIS. $21.99 (SACD).

Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1-6. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis. LSO Live. $29.99 (3 SACDs+Blu-ray Disc).

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 7. BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Thomas Søndergård. Linn Records. $22.99 (SACD).

UK/DK: Music for Recorder and Harpsichord by Malcolm Arnold, Henning Christiansen, Gordon Jacob, Vagn Holmboe, Daniel Kidane, Benjamin Britten, and Axel Borup-Jorgensen. Michala Petri, recorder; Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord. OUR Recordings. $16.99 (SACD).

     The exceptional clarity and precision of most SACD recordings are especially helpful in pinpointing the details of music as carefully structured and orchestrated as that of Carl Nielsen’s symphonies. The second volume in the BIS cycle by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Sakari Oramo is a fine case in point. Here as in the first volume, which included Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5, Oramo is a dedicated, committed, elegant advocate for Nielsen, shaping the music carefully while allowing its unusual structural and communicative elements to come through clearly. Thus, the oddity of Symphony No. 1 being in G minor but reaching – successfully – for a conclusion in C rather than G seems quite natural here. And the unusual tempo indication of the first movement, Allegro orgoglioso (“proud Allegro”), makes perfect sense as the music strides forward boldly and, yes, proudly from the first bar. The orchestra’s playing is fluid and natural, and the accents fall exactly where they should – the third movement is particularly impressive in this regard. In Symphony No. 3, the “Sinfonia espansiva,” Oramo does follow the Allegro espansivo indication of the first movement, but he makes sure that the expansiveness never bogs down: the forward propulsiveness is clear throughout and is very well managed. One of the few missteps in the recording comes in the second movement and is actually related to the high quality of the sound: in the vocalise section, baritone Karl-Magnus Frederiksson comes through more clearly than does soprano Anu Komsi, whose voice tends to stay too far in the background. It is possible that Oramo wants a stronger emphasis on the male voice, but more likely that the sonic precision here happens to make the baritone more prominent. The finale of this symphony is one of the most difficult movements in any Nielsen symphony to conduct successfully: it is straightforward, by intention, and can all too easily come across as drab and anticlimactic. Certainly the other three movements are more intrinsically interesting, but Oramo finds plenty that is worthwhile here as well, and his pacing prevents the music from dragging while allowing expression of the stately everyday-world viewpoint that Nielsen was here trying to bring forth. Both the interpretative quality and the fine orchestral playing make Oramo’s ongoing Nielsen cycle a first-rate one.

     The Nielsen symphonies under the late Sir Colin Davis are less idiomatic and not as immediately appealing, but they are very carefully thought out, the performances seem more convincing when heard repeatedly, and the LSO Live recording, if not as crisp as that given to Oramo, is well-balanced and clear. It is also quite a bargain, including not only three SACDs of the symphonies but also a Pure Audio Blu-ray disc containing all six – plus downloadable files that are transferable to a computer or portable device (although listening to these works in that way noticeably diminishes their effectiveness). These recordings, all made at live performances, date to 2009 (No. 5), 2010 (No. 4), and 2011 (Nos. 1-3 and 6). They represent the last word from Davis (1927-2013) on these symphonies, and a very well-considered last word it is. Compared with the Oramo version of No. 1, Davis’ is less forthright and ebullient, and the distinctiveness of Nielsen’s structure is less apparent, although the London Symphony Orchestra’s playing is very fine. No. 3 offers better balance between the vocalise soloists (baritone Marcus Farnsworth and soprano Lucy Hall), and more emotion in their performance, but otherwise the differences with Oramo are mostly slight – although Davis does pace the finale more quickly, which is not at all a bad idea. Symphony No. 2 (“The Four Temperaments”) is a bit milder and less exaggerated than it could be: the middle movements (representing the phlegmatic and melancholic personalities) are quite good, but the opening (choleric) and finale (sanguine) could have used greater intensity and even, in some sections, pomposity. The final three Nielsen symphonies receive the best performances in this cycle. No. 4 (“The Inextinguishable”) comes through with strength and intensity throughout, with the final sort-of triumph sounding distinctly hard-won and by no means a sure thing; that effect seems to be exactly what Nielsen wanted. No. 5, an even stronger and stranger work, sizzles, the threatening side-drum-led march (which is bound to make modern listeners think of Shostakovich’s much later Symphony No. 7) being genuinely disturbing and the overall mood of the work being one of barely contained worry, fear and uncertainty. This lack of comfort seems, like the mood Davis brings to No. 4, to be just what Nielsen intended; it is, in any case, highly effective. Symphony No. 6 (“Sinfonia semplice”), probably the hardest of Nielsen’s symphonies to bring off effectively, is not at quite as high a level as Nos. 4 and 5, but it still works very well. The underlying problem with this symphony is the difficulty of pinning down its attitude: is it entirely sarcastic or only partially, humorous as in “funny” or as in “wry” or “black humor,” deliberately disconnected or carefully staged for maximum contrast? Davis paces the highly differentiated movements well – the four seem collectively like a suite as much as a symphony – but is a touch too restrained in the first and, even more so, the Humoreske that follows. He appears to take the third movement, Proposta seria, at face value as a serious proposition; that increases the contrast between this movement and the finale, but it also makes their juxtaposition rather awkward. The concluding theme-and-variations movement itself, though, is very well done, filled with bizarre elements that scarcely hang together, with deliberate crudity and jocularity mixing uneasily until the end – which here really does sound as if the bassoons forgot to stop playing when everyone else did so. Davis does not have the panache that Oramo does in interpreting Nielsen’s symphonies, but his cycle is very cogent, thoughtfully conceived and quite well-played.

     Cogency and thoughtfulness are also the hallmarks of the start of a new Sibelius cycle featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Thomas Søndergård. The first Linn Records disc in this series offers an outstanding Symphony No. 2 and a less-special but nevertheless very well-done Symphony No. 7. In the Second, Søndergård’s pacing sounds inevitable: each movement proceeds at what seems to be just the right tempo or set of tempos, with the result that the work ebbs and flows stylishly and with a sense of constant unfolding. Søndergård is particularly strong in the second movement, using rubato (which is called for in the tempo indication) judiciously and carefully to build the effectiveness of the music; the result is that the third movement, Vivacissimo, produces an even more-intense contrast than usual, propelling the musical argument along strongly and helping make the finale a true capstone. The orchestra’s playing is warm, sensitive and knowing here, and the strength of the overall interpretation is aided significantly by the musicians’ clear sensitivity to Sibelius’ penchant for abrupt changes that, cumulatively, are highly effective in producing a mood of triumphal strength and a kind of defiance. The Seventh comes across almost as well. Originally seen by the composer as a fantasia, this single-movement symphony works best when it breaks down into individual sections while at the same time sounding cohesive throughout. Søndergård’s interpretation is a touch on the disconnected side: he highlights the changes in tempo and mood very effectively, but at the expense of an overall feeling of cohesion – a feeling, ironically, that he attains in the Second despite the distinct differences within and among that work’s four movements. The orchestra’s playing in the Seventh is, however, just as fine as in the Second, and Søndergård’s approach shows the ways in which Sibelius made individual portions of the Seventh stand out from others, not only through obvious tempo differences but also with subtle changes in rhythm, orchestration and emphasis. The very fine recorded sound of the disc enhances the performances throughout and indicates that Søndergård’s entire Sibelius cycle stands fair to be an excellent one.

     The clarity and folk-music orientation that both Nielsen of Denmark and Sibelius of Finland brought to their symphonies, albeit in very different ways, are less in evidence on an interesting, if in some ways rather odd, OUR Recordings disc that mixes British and Danish works under the title UK/DK. Really, the primary purpose of this recording is simply to showcase the unusual combination of recorder and harpsichord in music of the 20^th and 21^st centuries – most of it specifically and intriguingly written for these instruments, some of it arranged for them. The British composers are Malcolm Arnold, Gordon Jacob (represented by two works), Daniel Kidane and Benjamin Britten. Arnold’s Sonatina, Op. 41 of 1962 was written for recorder and piano, and considering how often harpsichord music is transcribed for piano, doing things the other way is especially attractive. The music is attractive, too: tuneful, witty, pleasant and all too short (the three movements last barely seven minutes). Jacobs’ Sonatina for recorder and harpsichord (written in 1983, the year before Jacobs died at 89, but showing no sign of flagging compositional ability) and An Encore for Michala (also 1983, requiring the performer both to play and to sing) are both very well-made and neatly structured for the recorder, and Michala Petri – for whom the “encore” was written, as were all the works on this disc except Arnold’s and Britten’s – handles both with consummate skill and the absolutely top-quality partnership of Mahan Esfahani. Daniel Kidane (born 1986) is represented by the most recent work on the disc, Tourbillon (2014), which has some interesting moments and intriguingly treats the two instruments as equals almost throughout – but which gives the impression of pulling all the usual contemporary tricks without really using them to communicate a great deal, and which goes on much too long: it says less in 11 minutes than the Jacobs sonatina’s four movements say in fewer than 10. As for Britten’s delightful little six-movement Alpine Suite (1965), it was written for recorder trio (two descants and treble) and, in this arrangement by Petri and Esfahani, offers a fascinating window into a little-known area of Britten’s interest: he was president of the British Society of Recorder Players from 1958 to 1976. The five works by four British composers are intermingled on the recording with three pieces by Danes; the concept of the disc, which is weaker than most of the music on it, is that Petri is Danish and Esfahan lives in England (he was born in Iran). Henning Christiansen’s It Is Spring (1970) is a pleasant little two-movement offering, easier to listen to than much of the music of the Fluxus movement, in which he was an important figure. Vagn Holmboe’s three-movement Sonata, Op. 145 (1980), written for recorder and harpsichord, is neatly juxtaposed with Jacobs’ sonatina and contrasts fascinatingly with it: here are two works of nearly equal length using the same two instruments in very different communicative roles. And the 1988 Fantasia by Axel Borup-Jorgensen, also written for this instrumental combination, contrasts in a different way: it lasts longer than either the Jacobs or Holmboe work, treats its material more freely, and allows the recorder a level of expressiveness that belies its frequent Baroque association and its comparatively simple construction. However, like Kidane’s piece, it is gesture-filled and often seems to be going through the overdone motions of modernity. The attraction of this recording lies in the chance to hear an unusual instrumental combination featuring two outstanding performers. Not all the music is equally compelling, but the way everything is handled certainly is, and listeners in search of material outside the mainstream but still very attractively composed and beautifully presented will find UK/DK a real treat.

(++++) UNUSUAL COLLECTIONS

Vivaldi: Complete Cello Concertos. Francesco Galligioni, cello; L’Arte dell’Arco conducted by Federico Guglielmo. Brilliant Classics. $19.99 (4 CDs).

Zemlinsky: Complete String Quartets. Brodsky Quartet (Daniel Rowland and Ian Belton, violins; Paul Cassidy, viola; Jacqueline Thomas, cello). Chandos. $37.99 (2 CDs).

     Lovers of classical music typically own at least a few “complete series” recordings: the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, a set of Mozart piano concertos (not necessarily all of them), Haydn’s “London” and “Paris” symphonies, and so forth. Increasingly, though, it has become possible to find exceptionally well-performed sets of music that listeners are unlikely to have encountered in complete format before. The results, sometimes, are highly salutary, as they are in the case of Brilliant Classics’ release of the 27 solo-cello concertos by Vivaldi. These are exceedingly attractive performances, featuring Francesco Galligioni performing on a Paulo Antonio Testore instrument from about 1740 and, on one of the four CDs, a five-string French cello from the 19^th century. Galligioni is a simply splendid interpreter of this music, treating every one of the three-movement works as an individual, carefully crafted piece rather than in blasé form as “just another Vivaldi concerto.” The fact is that these concertos – along with nine others that Vivaldi wrote for cello plus other solo instruments and, in one case, for two cellos – show the Venetian violinist to have been highly sensitive to the instrumental capabilities of his time, as the cello progressed to true solo capability rather than use only as a continuo contributor. Since the dates of Vivaldi’s solo-cello concertos are not precisely known, their sequencing for recording purposes needs some other basis, and Galligioni has found a perfect one: he arranges them according to their musical requirements. Thus, one CD includes concertos that he says need “lightness despite their intrinsic complexity” and that therefore come across as “solemn”; another features works requiring a high string – so Galligioni plays them on a five-string violoncello piccolo; another includes simpler concertos; and the fourth disc offers miscellany, including a concerto for which Vivaldi included a bassoon obbligato and two others for which Galligioni also thought the bassoon inclusion sensible (Vivaldi wrote more than three dozen concertos for bassoon and was particularly fond of the instrument). Galligioni plays all the concertos with real flair and tremendous stylistic understanding. For example, the works are split between minor keys (14 concertos) and major ones (13), and Galligioni knows just how deeply to probe the minor-key ones and just how bright to make the major-key ones sound. The outstanding period-instrument ensemble L’Arte dell’Arco, conducted by Federico Guglielmo, provides exactly the right accompaniment for the soloist, functioning at times as a true tutti and at others as, in effect, chamber-music players in a somewhat-larger-than-usual chamber ensemble. The net effect of all this expertise and liveliness is exhilarating, and the way in which this exceptionally well-priced set of concertos showcases a less-known side of Vivaldi (compared with his violin concertos) makes the collection a delight from the first notes to the last.

     “Delight” would be a stretch in describing the string quartets of Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942), whose seriousness of purpose and multifaceted intensity pervade all five of the works offered in a new Chandos recording. Zemlinsky was a very careful craftsman whose music is not especially approachable; he is nowadays known as much for being a lover of Alma Schindler before she became Alma Mahler, and for being Arnold Schoenberg’s brother-in-law, as for his compositions. The Schoenberg connection is actually a crucial one for these quartets, figuring largely in No. 2 (1913-15) and to a lesser extent in No. 3 (1924). Before these two quartets, Zemlinsky composed two others. One, in E minor, dates to about 1893 and is here recorded for the first time. It is quite an accessible work, especially by the standards of Zemlinsky’s music, with – in particular – a first movement whose harmonic ambiguities and metrical irregularities look ahead to the composer’s later creations. It uses the four instruments well and shows considerable understanding of their individual capabilities, but it is a somewhat uneven work, with second and third movements not up to the level of the first and with an energetic but not especially distinguished finale. The second quartet to be composed – the one designated No. 1 (1896) – takes Zemlinsky’s approach to harmony and meter somewhat farther, and is more thoroughly integrated. It is partly a response to criticism that Zemlinsky received from Brahms: the finale actually includes’ Brahms’ musical motif F-A-F (for frei aber froh, “free but happy”). The quartet is not, however, particularly Brahmsian: here Zemlinsky is already starting to solidify a style of his own. By the time of String Quartet No. 2, however, Zemlinsky was writing something much more personal. This quartet, whose dissonances and pervasive sense of despair make it difficult to listen to even today, reflects personal and professional reverses that Zemlinsky himself had suffered (including the end of his affair with Schindler) and, to an even greater extent, the affair that his sister – Schoenberg’s wife – had with the young painter Richard Gerstl, which led to Gerstl’s suicide and Schoenberg’s consideration of it. Knowing the tremendous turmoil that underlies this quartet helps a great deal in understanding its sound, which at times seems to be deliberately unpleasant. The work is so intensely personal that a really good performance – and the Brodsky Quartet’s is really good – makes a listener feel as if he or she is party to some deep and embarrassingly personal secrets, which is pretty much the case. String Quartet No. 3 can be hard to hear for a different reason: it is a dry and acerbic commentary on many trends in 20^th-century composition, including Schonberg’s twelve-tone system. It is a lighter work than No. 2 – parts of No. 3 even sound playful – but one of very serious purpose, as well as a piece with strong parodistic elements. String Quartet No. 4 (1936), written after Zemlinsky was forced to leave Germany because of the Nazi takeover and had moved back to his native Vienna, is subtitled “Suite” and modeled in part on Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, written 11 years earlier and dedicated to Zemlinsky. There are homages to Bach, Beethoven and Wagner here as well as to Berg, although the quartet’s careful structure and the interplay of highly serious contrapuntal elements with meditative and expressive ones clearly show Zemlinsky’s own style. Zemlinsky’s music, unlike Vivaldi’s, does not have wide immediate appeal to those unfamiliar with it, so this excellent quartet cycle will likely interest a more-limited audience than the Vivaldi cello concertos. Each of these collections, though, provides a welcome opportunity to explore a complete set of works in which a composer demonstrates all his interests and preoccupations regarding a specific instrument or instrumental group.