(++++) CHAMBER COMBINATIONS

Mendelssohn: Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2. Sitkovetsky Trio (Alexander Sitkovetsky, violin; Leonard Elschenbroich, cello; Wu Qian, piano). BIS. $21.99 (SACD).

Korngold: Piano Trio in D, Op. 1; Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand. Daniel Rowland and Priya Mitchell, violins; Julian Arp, cello; Luis Magalhães, piano. Two Pianists Records. $16.99.

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2; Evocation á la Chapelle Sixtine; Buxton Orr: A Carmen Fantasy; Martinů: Variations on a Theme of Rossini; Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Figaro. Lachezar Kostov, cello; Viktor Valkov, piano. Navona. $14.99.

Sibelius: String Quartet, “Voces Intimae”; Britten: Three Divertimenti; Turina: La Oración del Torero. Skyros Quartet (Sarah Pizzichemi and James Moat, violins; Justin Kurys, viola; William Braun, cello). Navona. $14.99.

American Dreams: String Quartets and other works by Peter Schickele, Ken Benshoof, Janice Giteck, and Bern Herbolsheimer. St. Helens String Quartet (Stephen Bryant and Adrianna Hulscher, violins; Michael Lieberman, viola; Peter Stockley, cello); Lisa Bergman, piano. Navona. $14.99.

Michael Matthews: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3; Miniatures. Clearwater Quartet (Gwen Hoebig and Daniel Scholz, violins; Yuri Hooker, viola; Karl Stobbe, cello). Ravello. $16.99.

     It was Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 that led Schumann to make the famous comment that Mendelssohn was “the Mozart of the 19^th century.” The trio is in fact a wonderful “bridge” work, with much Mozartean fleetness in the strings but a more forward-looking, Romantic piano part that in fact is reminiscent of some of the music of Schumann himself (Mendelssohn actually revised and expanded the piano’s role, on the advice of fellow composer Ferdinand Hiller). Despite the piano’s importance, the cello also plays a significant role in the work, notably in the first movement. But the finale, the movement that Mendelssohn changed the most on Hiller’s advice, is largely a piano showpiece – although contrasting cantabile sections provide moments of relaxation and thoroughly Mendelssohnian respite. Interestingly in light of the Mendelssohn-Mozart comparison, this trio is in D minor, like Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20; and like that concerto, it emerges at the end into D major. The Sitkovetsky Trio plays the work with considerable brio in a new BIS recording, emphasizing its light and fleet moments while never downplaying its more-serious ones. The performers have a very fine sense of balance, and their handoffs among the instruments are always managed with alacrity. This skill also stands them in good stead in Piano Trio No. 2, which – like the Symphony No. 5 – quotes an old chorale in its finale, in this case the 16^th-century Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, known in English as “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.” Brahms used melodies from this trio twice in his own works, once in Piano Sonata No. 3 and once in Piano Quartet No. 3. In Mendelssohn’s hands, the work flows with apparent effortlessness from start to finish, and its C minor tonality – which, interestingly, is that of Mozart’s other minor-key piano concerto, No. 24 – gives it both heft and wistfulness, but no sense of anything dire or doom-laden. Here as in the first trio, the performers’ excellent sense of ensemble combines with their individual skill to produce a winning combination that serves the music very well indeed.

     The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) is undergoing something of a reconsideration these days, and Two Pianists Records is poised to play a significant role in it through a series it is calling The Korngold Project. The first volume includes Korngold’s only Piano Trio, which is his first published work and was written when he was just 13 – showing him as a Mendelssohn-like prodigy. The trio was written when Korngold was studying with Alexander Zemlinsky, and it contains both late-Romantic intensity and high levels of lyricism. It also has some clever compositional elements, to which the performers are careful to pay close attention: notably, it has an almost circular structure, with the work’s opening theme repeated and reworked at the conclusion of the finale. Although it is easy to hear echoes of Brahms and Richard Strauss in the music, there is nothing overtly imitative in it, and its harmonic language is right in line with what would be expected for its time period (1909-10), showing that Korngold understood very early in life the direction in which music was going – even if he often chose in later works not to go that way. The Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand is later Korngold (1930) and significantly more mature in the sense of being written in a more-definitive, more-personal style. But it too draws largely on late-Romantic notions of harmony and emotional communication, and its five movements are evocative of exactly what their titles suggest: Präludium und Fuge, Walzer, Groteske, Lied and Rondo-Finale (Variationen). It was commissioned by pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I and was very pleased with the left-hand concerto that Korngold had previously written for him. Less thoroughly integrated than the early Trio, as befits a work labeled a suite, this piece gives the performers plenty of chances to showcase their individual parts (including a very demanding opening piano cadenza) as well as their ensemble work – Korngold was skilled at creating equal contributions to chamber music for all the participants. This entry in the budding Korngold revival bodes very well indeed for future releases in the same series.

     The cello-and-piano duo of Lachezar Kostov and Viktor Valkov offers three of its own arrangements of music and three works by composers for this instrumental combination on a new Navona CD. The performances are quite something: Kostov and Valkov seem determined throughout to push their instruments and their own abilities to the limit. Their arrangements of the first two Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt strongly emphasize virtuosity over what Liszt thought of as gypsy authenticity: Kostov and Valkov wring all the speed and intensity from the works that they can, along with some over-the-top emotion. Their paraphrase of Evocation á la Chapelle Sixtine is something different: it sounds only marginally like Liszt’s original, using Liszt as the basis for a sonic exploration of contemporary compositional and performance techniques. The result is something far from authentic and not really very much in line with what Liszt himself wrote, but highly intriguing to hear – at least once in a while. Whether it will have Liszt’s staying power is doubtful, although it could become a training work of sorts for other modern cello-and-piano duos. The three other works here were intended for this combination of instruments from the first. Buxton Orr (1924-1997) offers one of the many compilations of tunes from Carmen that have been created by various composers and for various instruments. In this case, that means a work whose salient features include an emphasis on carefully controlled use of vibrato on the cello. Variations on a Theme of Rossini by Bohuslav Martinů deliberately places Rossini’s music in 20^th-century garb, using Martinů’s own harmonic interests to bring Rossini “up to date” while producing a virtuoso showpiece. The work makes for an interesting contrast with, for example, Manuel Rosenthal’s updating of Offenbach in Gaité Parisienne. The original material is certainly there in both cases, but its treatment – while respectful, at least in a sense – is decidedly out of what would have been each original composer’s comfort zone. And speaking of comfort zones, Kostov and Valkov must have a wide one to include not only the Martinů treatment of Rossini but also the one by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, whose Figaro takes the ever-popular Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville through a paraphrase that, in addition to its undoubted virtuoso elements, is poised and graceful. This CD is an outgoing one from start to finish, providing listeners with some unfamiliar takes on familiar music, all with performances that showcase playing that couples a high level of musicianship with very considerable virtuosity.

     The virtuosity is more inward-looking on a new Navona CD featuring the Skyros Quartet in works by Sibelius, Britten and Joaquín Turina. The Sibelius “Voces Intimae” quartet, Sibelius’ fourth in the form but his only mature one, is the major work here: an extended five-movement exploration of emotion and thought whose very long slow movement is central both in placement and in meaning. The harmonic language here is noticeably that of mature Sibelius (the work dates to 1909, between the Third and Fourth Symphonies), and the piece includes folk and folklike elements; but the quartet has a strongly inward-looking feel throughout, a sense of thoughtfulness and even of looking back at life that might seem difficult for a young ensemble such as the Skyros Quartet to manage comfortably. Yet the performers seem quite at home with the music, allowing it to flow naturally among their instruments and never pushing it too far, too fast or too hard. The quartet members seem to have thought about this music for some time before recording it: their playing is not only technically assured but also very well attuned to the internal emotional focus of the music. The remainder of this CD is more colorful, more forthright and more extroverted. Turina’s La Oración del Torero gives the quartet a chance to show off its rhythmic adaptability to flamenco style and its flair for more-modern sounds than Sibelius offers. And Britten’s student piece, Three Divertimenti, offers just the right sort of diversion in its three short movements: March, Waltz and Burlesque. The titles are self-explanatory and the music is forthright, surface-level, enthusiastic and simply fun – nothing profound here (as in the Sibelius) and nothing exotic (as in the Turina), but a chance for the Skyros Quartet to throw itself with aplomb into short characteristic pieces that offer plenty of opportunities for display and plenty of chances for listeners to enjoy themselves.

     Two other new quartet recordings, one featuring American works and one focusing on Canadian composer Michael Matthews, are somewhat less winning and get (+++) ratings. The Navona CD called American Dreams is one of those offerings of music that straddles the classical and popular-music worlds, in this case including a large dose of folk music as well. Jazz influences are inevitable in music that crosses lines in this way, and Peter Schickele’s String Quartet No. 1, “American Dreams” (1983) is packed with them. It is a large-scale, five-movement work with vaguely rural imagery implicit in its choice of tunes, and it is a deliberate attempt to fuse classical, jazz and folk elements into a coherent whole – an effort that is worthy even though it does not quite succeed. More interesting as an experiment is Swing Low (2004) by Ken Benshoof, which shifts tones, harmonies and rhythms of the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot through eight variations that are not so much changes in the original as they are deconstructions and reassemblies of elements of it. Benshoof’s six-movement Diversions (2005), for violin and piano, also arranges and rearranges its material in some interesting ways, although neither of these works seems as directly communicative as his short Remember (1977), with its evocative cello part. Also here is a five-movement suite by Bern Herbolsheimer called Botanas (2008), which uses Mayan melodies in an attempt at a Mexican evocation and flavor. The contrast of the pizzicato and legato elements in the half-minute movement X’ni Pe (That Means Dog’s Nose) is a highlight. The CD is completed with two brief pieces by Janice Giteck: Where Can One Live Safely, Then? In Surrender (2005) and Ricercare (Dream upon Arrival) (2012). They are insistent works that try to communicate something about the inadequacies of modern living, but although they are well-made, they do not really relate to the topics their titles suggest.

     As for Ravello’s Michael Matthews CD, it too features music that is supposed to reflect on societal conditions but does not really do so except in the very general way of any serious and thoughtfully composed work. Miniatures (2000) is the least esoteric and least fraught work here, and comes across best. It is simply a sequence of 11 numbered movements, lasting from 17 seconds to just under three minutes, that collectively come across as a series of fragments, as if they are scattered memories of dreams or events in the composer’s life, set down in an order that could just as easily be a different one, beholden to Webern and other 20^th-century modernists but with a sense of questioning uncertainty emerging from time to time. This is highly intellectualized music, yet it is less so than the music of the quartets here, which simply insists on being heard (and interpreted) with the utmost seriousness and portentousness that, unfortunately, shades over again and again into pretentiousness. Quartet No. 2 (2002-03) seems to ask numerous questions and answer none, following in the footsteps of Schoenberg and his followers into a musical language that insists the fault is in the listener if he or she fails to accept what is being said and how. Quartet No. 3 (2008/2013) is more Shostakovich than Schoenberg or Webern, opening with intensity and continuing through second, third and fourth movements that are played attacca and that produce only a feeling of a stasis of pain. This is difficult music, but unlike much that is complex and has come before, it does not really repay the effort needed to plumb what depths it has. It is music that insists on its own importance, but in so doing minimizes itself. Matthews wants to raise significant existential questions through these works, but because he never fully involves listeners – never moves them in any way beyond the purely intellectual – what he creates contains its own distancing mechanisms, so that it ends up being interesting material (especially when heard more than once) but never makes the sort of visceral, emotional connection that would render its complexities worthwhile for most listeners to explore at greater length.

(++++) BEYOND THE SYMPHONIC

Sibelius: Pelléas et Mélisande; Musik zu einer Szene; Valse lyrique; Autrefois—Scène pastorale; Valse chevaleresque; Morceau romantique sur un motif de Monsieur Jakob von Julin. Pia Pajala, soprano; Sari Nordqvist, mezzo-soprano; Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam. Naxos. $12.99.

Bruch: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra, Volume 2—Violin Concerto No. 1; Serenade, Op. 75; “In Memoriam”—Adagio, Op. 65. Antje Weithaas, violin; NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Hermann Bäumer. CPO. $16.99.

Ippolitov-Ivanov: Symphony No. 1; Turkish Fragments; Turkish March. Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Choo Hoey. Naxos. $12.99.

Dutilleux: Symphony No. 2, “Le double”; Métaboles; Violin Concerto, “L’arbre des songes.” Augustin Hadelich, violin; Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot. Seattle Symphony Media. $16.99.

Live from Music City—Music of Michael Daugherty, Astor Piazzolla, Roberto Sierra, Richard Danielpour, and Stephen Paulus. Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Naxos. $9.99.

     Although best known as a symphonist, Sibelius was also an important theater composer in the early 20^th century, providing incidental music for 13 plays. The latest Naxos release of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam performing some of this stage material features the composer’s very ambitious music to Pelléas et Mélisande, which dates to 1905 and includes 10 numbers – one of them vocal. The overall somber tone of the music fits the story, which resembles that of Tristan and Isolde, quite well, and the music’s generally subdued palette and restrained atmosphere let the play speak for itself while enhancing its emotional qualities. Those who know the Debussy and Schoenberg handlings of the same dramatic material will find Sibelius’ particularly intriguing: it is less impressionistic than Debussy’s work and on a more-modest scale than Schoenberg’s. Segerstam and the orchestra handle it with care and fine attention to detail. They also offer other, shorter and lesser Sibelius works here. Musik zu einer Szene (1904) effectively contrasts a stormy opening section with a joyful later one. And there are four late pieces on the CD as well. Valse lyrique, Autrefois—Scène pastorale, and Valse chevaleresque date to 1921, 1919 and 1921, respectively, and bear the opus numbers 96a, b and c. The two waltzes, transcriptions of piano pieces and both with a strong flavor of Tchaikovsky, bracket a charming vocal work for soprano and mezzo-soprano whose words recall an old pastoral scene. The very brief final work on this CD dates to 1925 and is based on a waltz theme by an industrialist named Jakob von Julin. It is pleasant and romantic, a nice little bit of salon music from a composer whose complex and enigmatic symphonies show only one side of his personality.

     Max Bruch was a symphonist, too – he wrote three of them – but it is for his works for violin that he is remembered now, and it is those that CPO is presenting in a series of recordings featuring Antje Weithaas and the NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Hermann Bäumer. The second volume includes the single work by Bruch that everyone knows: his Violin Concerto No. 1, a piece so thoroughly Romantic that it seems to create its own form instead of abiding by any existing formal conventions, and one so expressive that a fine violinist, such as Weithaas, has to pay as much attention to holding back the emotional overflow as to bringing it forth. Bruch was alternately proud of this concerto and frustrated by the way all his other works were overshadowed by it – and this new release shows why. The concerto is so sui generis, so effective in its almost but not quite overwrought way, that the composer’s later and more carefully laid-out pieces for violin and orchestra come across as rather pale. Weithaas and Bäumer perform the Serenade and “In Memoriam” attentively and carefully, extracting from both as much warmth and thematic beauty as Bruch put into them. “In Memoriam” comes across better, its long, flowing melodic lines and effusive warmth making it possible to lose oneself in its upswell of near-wallowing in emotion. The Serenade, though, keeps drawing attention to its formal and structural elements, in a way that is the opposite of what the Concerto No. 1 does – and this is unfortunate, because Bruch was not very good at following formal precepts and tended to handle them formulaically. Attractive sections of Serenade appear several times, but when Bruch repeats a melodic element verbatim, he undercuts its original effect – and he does this many times (this work is half again as long as the Violin Concerto No. 1). Weithaas and Bäumer make an effort to vary the repetitive elements somewhat, even though Bruch does not indicate in the score that performers are to do this – and their efforts are repaid with a more-effective performance than they would otherwise have delivered. But because the performers do not overdo this sort of variation, Serenade must stand largely on its own merits. And while it certainly has some – Bruch was a marvelously fluid melodist – it also has numerous formal lacks that show clearly why it, like other Bruch violin-and-orchestra works, has always taken a back seat to the ever-fresh Concerto No. 1.

     The music that overshadows all the rest by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov is his Caucasian Sketches, colorful pieces evoking the sounds associated with ethnic minorities in Russia and, later, the Soviet Union. But Ippolitov-Ivanov, like Bruch, deserves to be known for more than a small portion of his output, as a new Naxos CD – actually a re-release of performances recorded in 1984 – demonstrates. The first of Ippolitov-Ivanov’s two symphonies dates to 1907 and fits squarely within the Russian nationalistic tradition, using folk material and melodies that recall the Russian Orthodox liturgy in a piece that follows conventional symphonic structure but contains some surprises – for example, a Scherzo that opens with slow chords. The symphony gets a sympathetic and well-balanced reading from the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under Choo Hoey, if perhaps not one as thoroughly immersed in the Russian sound as it might be. It is accompanied by two works that Ippolitov-Ivanov wrote late in life: Turkish Fragments from 1930 and Turkish March from 1932 (the composer died in 1935). These have more color and a greater sense of characteristic style than does the symphony, and in fact they hark back in their focus on ethnic sounds to the Caucasian Sketches. The four Turkish Fragments form a suite with movements called Caravan, At Rest, Night and Festival, each movement reflecting its title directly and effectively – but with some surprises, as in the Symphony No. 1. For example, At Rest starts and ends with the expected tranquility, but its middle section is considerably livelier than would be anticipated; and Festival, which begins and concludes with animated ebullience, breaks off for a Larghetto section in the middle. This is music of style and verve, nicely assembled by the composer and well-presented by the Singapore musicians.

     Like Ippolitov-Ivanov, Henri Dutilleux wrote two symphonies, but these are works that are as much of the mid-20^th-century (1951 and 1959) as Ippolitov-Ivanov’s are of earlier times. Ludovic Morlot is a champion of Dutilleux’ music, and his latest CD with the Seattle Symphony, on the orchestra’s own label, is entirely devoted to Dutilleux. Symphony No. 2 is called Le double and is set up in the style of an old-fashioned concerto grosso, but deliberately written against that tradition. That is, it includes a small group of 12 players who sit in the center of the stage, surrounded by the rest of the orchestra – but instead of the smaller group acting as soloists and leading the larger one, things are generally the other way around. The smaller ensemble echoes material introduced by the larger much of the time, and sometimes the two groups play entirely different things. Add in Dutilleux’ fondness for polytonality and polyrhythms and you have a recipe for music that often sounds chaotic, for all that Morlot does a good job of keeping the forces under control. Once the layout of the small and large groups and the way they intermingle become clear, this symphony does not seem to have much to say: it comes across as a formal experiment rather than a work seeking to communicate anything in particular to the audience. The Violin Concerto, commissioned for and dedicated to Isaac Stern, is a later work (1983-85) whose four movements are played continuously and intended to show expansion and development throughout. Entitled L’arbre des songes (“The Tree of Dreams”), the concerto uses three interludes to link its four movements and attempt to provide a feeling of both unity and growth. Like Symphony No. 2, it is of more interest intellectually than emotionally, and is apparently designed to be: both works reach out to and challenge performers to a greater extent than they appear intended to appeal to listeners. The third piece on this (+++) CD is Métaboles (1965), a sort of concerto for orchestra in which a different section dominates each of the first four parts and the fifth brings them all together. The most successful of the three works on this disc, Métaboles uses subtle, gradual thematic, rhythmic and harmonic changes throughout to create a feeling of slow metamorphosis that leads to its bright finale, which is marked Flamboyant. Morlot holds the orchestra back a bit in some parts here, perhaps to make that last movement more flashy. The net effect is one of drama and brightness, helping show why Métaboles is one of Dutilleux’ most-performed pieces.

     Symphonic works by other modern composers are sprinkled about a Naxos CD called Live from Music City. This is a curious (+++) disc designed to highlight Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony and coming across as a kind of souvenir recording – the sort of thing a concertgoer might pick up in the lobby afterwards as a memory of the occasion. Each of the five composers heard here is represented by two pieces, or rather by two tracks, since all 10 items on the disc are excerpts from longer works. There are a movement from Daugherty’s Deus ex machina and one from Metropolis Symphony; one part of Piazzolla’s Las 4 estaciones Porteñas and one from Bandoneon Concerto “Aconcagua”; two movements from Sierra’s Sinfonia No. 4 and two from Danielpour’s Darkness in the Ancient Valley; and, from Paulus, one of the Three Places of Enlightenment and a movement from Grand Concerto for Organ and Orchestra. These pieces have almost nothing in common, and the CD seems designed simply to showcase the playing of the orchestra, which is quite good, and the breadth of its repertoire, which is significant but not unusually so. Listeners already interested in the music of these composers will find little of value in this release, since it gives only snippets of the works. Listeners not already enamored of these particular creators will have no real reason to purchase the CD unless they happen to be fans of this orchestra and conductor and want to hear how they handle a variety of modern works. That seems a rather limited audience for what is, in effect, a sampler of material – if not intended as a souvenir of some sort, it is hard to see the recording’s reason for being.

(++++) ANIMALS AS TEACHERS

Picture This: Homes; Shapes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99 each.

How to Swallow a Pig: Step-by-Step Advice from the Animal Kingdom. By Steve Jenkins & Robin Page. Illustrations by Steve Jenkins. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $17.99.

     From France they come: visually striking, beautifully laid-out board books featuring excellent photos of animals and their Homes or the Shapes their bodies make. Significantly longer than most board books – Homes has 44 pages, Shapes 42 – the books originally appeared in 2014 in France with text by Judith Nouvion. Now they are available in an English translation by Vali Tamm. But the text is scarcely the point here. Each two-page spread in each book includes a background photo and a foreground explanation. In Homes, for example, there is a large picture, covering two pages, of a weaver-ant nest, with a small foreground close-up of one of the ants. There is also a large picture of a beaver lodge in a river, with a small foreground close-up of a beaver. And so forth. The text, although minimal, is occasionally surprising. For example, “Satin bowerbirds decorate their homes with blue objects they find: bottle caps, clothespins, straws, feathers – anything blue!” A child learning this is likely to ask “why?” But there are no answers here – these are not really science books except in an incidental way: they are visual feasts in what you see is all of what you get. That will be plenty for many children, though, especially younger ones who have started to outgrow more-typical, very brief board books. To be sure, it is fascinating to see both a clownfish and the sea anemone within which it lives. But it may also be frustrating to look at pages featuring a “tropical bird” – one that is not specifically identified – and its hanging nest. Homes has science-related flaws such as this one, but in the main is so visually attractive that parents can use it to get kids interested in the material and then find further information elsewhere. As for Shapes, it uses animals in some very creative ways to explore its topic. Yes, it is obvious that a starfish will be used to show the shape of a star, but a different form of starfish is used to show what a pentagon is – and the pentagon is not a shape often encountered in books for young children. Indeed, there is much that is unusual here. “Line” is illustrated by a row of birds on a wire; “rectangle” by a flying squirrel with flaps fully extended; “coil” with a look at the antlers of a male blackbuck antelope, and so on. The photos here are of the animals in their natural habits, while the foreground inset shows a drawing of the shape being illustrated and explains where to find it in each photo. Spotting the shapes is easy, but it is also uncommonly enjoyable to do so in the context of such fascinating pictures: the spiral in a chameleon’s tail and trapezoid (another of several uncommonly discussed shapes) of a peacock butterfly with spread wings are both intriguing and beautiful. Neither Homes nor Shapes provides significant detail on the subject matter, but both books introduce their topics with so much beauty that children will likely be inspired to look for more-detailed material somewhere else.

     The explanatory material is considerably more extensive in How to Swallow a Pig by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page – and as the book’s title indicates, this is a how-to book that is more than a little out of the ordinary. Jenkins and Page write the book as if the animals they show are actually instructing young readers in ways to do what the animals do naturally. A humpback whale, for example, explains the five stages of trapping fish: find some, tell your friends about them, slap the surface with your tail, swim in smaller and smaller circles beneath the fish to herd them, then swim straight up through the fish and gulp them down. The illustrations show the animals quite realistically, but are also designed to highlight each specific step of the “instructions” being given. Thus, for example, in the fourth of five steps of “How to Woo Like a Mountain Sheep,” the words say to “rear up on your hind legs, charge your opponent, and smash your head into his,” and the illustration shows two male sheep doing just that – but not quite at the point of contact yet. As for “How to Crack a Nut Like a Crow,” the text warns that “it’s probably best not to try this technique until you learn how to fly.” And the six steps of “How to Disguise Yourself Like an Octopus” not only show the mimic octopus assuming various shapes of which it is capable, but also show the actual appearance of the animals it imitates – a lionfish, for example, and a sea snake. And speaking of snakes, the book’s title refers to something that large constrictors, such as a python, can do, and the final entry explain how to go about it: the fifth of six steps, “Swallow,” says. “Unhinge your jaw (this takes practice),” while the final step, “Rest,” points out that “you won’t have to eat again for several months.” The facts in How to Swallow a Pig are scientifically accurate and carefully chosen, and additional information on the animals is provided at the back of the book. The illustrations really do show how animals do the various things they need to do in order to survive, and the narrative presents the information in such an interesting way that kids will find themselves being educated without really thinking of it as learning. Those characteristics add up to “how to teach about animal behavior in the style of Steve Jenkins and Robin Page” – which is not a book title, but a pretty good description of this one.

(++++) DAY TO DAY TO DAY

2016 Calendars: Page-a-Day—Non Sequitur; The Little World of Liz Climo; Cartoons from “The New Yorker”; Medical Cartoon-a-Day; Murphy’s Law. Andrews McMeel. $14.99 each.

     Choose your amusement. And choose wisely, because day in and day out, you will get a dose of it from the latest crop of calendars from Andrews McMeel. It’s a bumper crop, drawn from some sources that highlight cartoon art, others that focus on words, and some that mix the two in their own inimitable style. “Inimitable” is the right word for Wiley Miller, whose Non Sequitur calendar for 2016 continues his comic’s longstanding inability to find anything unworthy of satire. There are the usual targets, such as “speed dating for lawyers,” which goes about as you would expect. There are the continuing adventures of Captain Eddie (with a polar vortex) and young-but-cynical Danae (who, among many other things, strongly objects to snow in March). There are the one-time-only, out-of-nowhere panels that show just why Non Sequitur (“it does not follow”) deserves its name: the suggestion box at the foot of a pyramid up which prisoners are being marched for sacrifice; the surgeon tripping over his poorly tied shoes just before doing an operation; the torture chamber with a new twist of agony in the form of karaoke; the express lane to heaven “for those who always pick up after their dog”; the funeral of the would-be samurai-sword juggler, who is buried in four side-by-side graves; and the “morning in America” panel that asks the question, “So what new manufactured crisis is going to paralyze us with fear today?” Have no fear of Non Sequitur: its calendar dishes out a whole year of this sort of humor, day by day, fearlessly and with wry amusement.

     Non Sequitur is a newspaper comic, but as the age of newspapers fades, more and more cartoons are originating online – in places such as Liz Climo’s Tumblr blog. Hence The Little World of Liz Climo, which brings Climo’s anthropomorphic-animal humor into print. Climo plays off animals’ appearance for her humor: a snake asks a “pretty lady” why she is so sad until it is pointed out to him, “Dude, that’s a hose”; dolphins worry about passing a beach ball to a narwhal; a bear with a fishing pole teaches a cub how to catch fish while a fish with an old boot attaches it to the hook, explaining to a young fish that “that’s how you trick a bear”; a beached killer whale explains to an inquiring penguin that he just ate and is waiting an hour to go back in the water; a hammerhead shark finds it impossible to wear 3D glasses; a dog asks a flamingo to stop standing on the lawn because “you’re making it look tacky”; a remora irritates the shark to which it is attached by repeatedly asking “where we goin’ next?”; a frilled lizard has trouble with a turtleneck sweater; for a costume, an armadillo rolls up and becomes a basketball; a duck turns down a child’s offered crumbs because “I’m not eating carbs this week”; two T. rexes try without success to give each other high fives, then “hug it out” instead. The humor here is gentle rather than pointed, with some animals appearing repeatedly but always doing different things, and an occasional panel not using animals at all (such as one in which a washing machine becomes self-aware and exclaims, “Oh, gross! Dirty underpants!”). And Climo mixes up the humor with periodic doses of pure sentimentality, such as a panel in which a smiling little girl (one of the few humans to show up here) is hugging the very large, long-suffering but patient dog she has brushed and decorated with ribbons. Climo’s Tumblr fans will enjoy having her in the physical world through this calendar – and those discovering her for the first time may well be lured to the Internet after seeing her calendar pages.

     Fans of The New Yorker know who they are, and also tend to know what they are: sophisticates looking for offbeat humor that is not necessarily apparent to others. That is, in any case, the self-image that The New Yorker wants its readers to have, and it is one reinforced by cartoons that consistently juxtapose absurdly mismatched concepts in a way that not everyone will find humorous but that those who “get it” will, well, get. The latest calendar collection of these cartoons is entirely in line with what fans – perhaps they should be called devotees – of The New Yorker will expect and want. A smartly dressed young woman looks into a refrigerator that is empty except for a large jar containing a skull, and tells someone via cell phone, “Usually I’d be nervous, but the rest of his apartment is so nice.”  Two agents show up at a man’s door with a picture of a wanted chef, and ask the apartment’s occupant, “Well, if you haven’t seen him, do you know a good recipe for puff pastry?” In a restaurant booth, a woman dressed as an aviator tells the sad-looking man she is with, “I just wanted you to hear it from me first, before you read it in the sky.” A shopper at an outdoor flower stall that is crowded with blooms asks, “Which of these will look the prettiest without the others?” An “all-purpose protest” features three people carrying signs that simply read, “Unfair,” “Stop,” and “No.” A woman tells another, “I’ve only been gluten-free for a week, but I’m already really annoying.” A waiter informs two diners, “The starred menu items were available for celebrities only.” The art for these panels, although created by numerous cartoonists, has a certain recognizable style that aficionados will immediately recognize as belonging to The New Yorker. And the humor of the cartoons, although it sometimes tries a bit too hard to be sophisticated and esoteric, will be an everyday delight to people who consider this magazine the pinnacle of, um, sophisticated humorous esoterica.

     There is nothing particularly sophisticated in the Medical Cartoon-a-Day 2016 Calendar, featuring panels by Jonny Hawkins that are designed more to elicit guffaws of laughter than titters of amusement. To be sure, some of the humor here is pointed: “Recent studies indicate that recent studies are the leading cause of anxiety, headaches, insomnia, and heart attacks.” But most of the amusement is on the lighthearted side. An operating-room nurse tells the surgeon closing up a patient, “I can tell the embroidery classes have helped.” Humpty Dumpty asks his doctor, “How many years ‘till I’m rotten?” A panel shows two deep thinkers labeled “agnostic and diagnostic,” the first thinking, “There is no God,” and the second thinking, “Doctors are God.” A dentist warns a patient, “I’m going to do a cavity search.” A patient asks a plastic surgeon, “Can you remove the scars from my first marriage?” A man explains to a dog breeder, “I’m an acupuncturist. I need a pointer.” Both a gastroenterologist’s office and the auto repair service next door sport signs that say, “Funny noises? Bring it here!” And so on and so forth. None of this is, or tries to be, high-hat humor – it is generally down-to-earth, a bit wry but rarely sarcastic, and thoroughly suitable both for medical professionals and for people who merely need to visit them from time to time.

     All these calendars balance art and words in different ways, but some day-to-day calendars invite you simply to contemplate ideas every day – sayings, thoughts, beliefs, inspirational quotes, or, as in the Murphy’s Law calendar by Arthur Bloch, what might be called de-inspirational quotes. Taking off from the original Murphy’s Law (“If anything can go wrong, it will”), this calendar offers a daily dose of other notions of what can go wrong, how, and why that is probably just what will happen. Equally appropriate for workplace or home, this is a calendar that on one day invites you to contemplate Schroeder’s Law (“Indecision is the basis for flexibility”), on another asks you to think about Mark’s Rule (“Laziness is often mistaken for patience”), on a third suggests you consider Herblock’s Law (“If it’s good, they discontinue it”), and on a fourth recommends you pay heed to La Grange’s Law (“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice”). Sometimes the words of one day are followed on the next by a related commentary: Jones’s Motto (“Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate”) is immediately followed by McClaughry’s Codicil to Jones’s Motto (“To make an enemy, do someone a favor”). Other times, the comments stand on their own and can pretty much be counted on to apply to something-or-other that occurs on the day on which they appear on the calendar: Tussman’s Law (“Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come”), for example, or Kagel’s Law (“Anything adjustable will eventually need adjustment”). This is a calendar whose slightly skewed view of the world is reinforced day after day throughout the year, lending credence to the original Murphy’s Law while helping people figure out all the many, many other ways in which, doggone it, things that can go wrong do…and things that cannot possibly go wrong go wrong anyway. It does not have the immediate visual appeal of illustrated calendars, but it will set your own internal visuals into gear as you wonder just how many ways a particular day’s saying could affect your own life. Just contemplate, for instance, Robert’s Axiom, which makes the pithy statement, “Only errors exist.” Think about it all day, if that helps. But the cumulative wisdom of this calendar suggests that it won’t.

(++++) GREATEST OF THEM ALL

Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy. By Frank McLynn. Da Capo. $32.50.

     The Daesh death cult, which insults the prophet Mohammad and demeans all of Islam by referring to itself as “Islamic State,” is far from the first murderous group of thugs to have embarked on conquest in the name of its stated religious beliefs. For that matter, the thugs themselves – thuggee, who were sometimes Hindu, sometimes Muslim, and who flourished in India from the 14^th to the 19^th century – were not conquerors at all, but mere highwaymen relying for their livelihood on articles stolen from travelers that they killed after gaining their confidence. Yet the Daesh murderers and thuggee killers combined could scarcely hold the proverbial candle to the conquests and destruction wrought by Genghis Khan (1162-1227), a greater conqueror than Alexander the Great or Napoleon, a greater mass murderer than Hitler or Stalin, described in Frank McLynn’s book as “a ruthless, practical and pragmatic man, obsessed with war and conquest, totally unscrupulous in his pursuit of power, energetic, discerning, shrewd, charismatic, awe-inspiring, just, resolute, intrepid, implacable, sanguinary, a cruel butcher, generous and affable with his trusted friends and chosen ones but peevish, suspicious, jealous and even malevolent to all outside his magic circle. He claimed to be above all conventional religions as he was his own shaman and could converse both with [the primary Mongol god] Tengerri and with demons.” Such a man requires the most substantial possible biography, and McLynn gives him one that resoundingly demonstrates how intricately fascinating history can be.

     Sumptuous, erudite and stylish, careful to rely on often-contradictory primary sources when any such exist from so remote an era, McLynn’s Genghis Khan is a sweeping 650-page trek through times and peoples whose very names sound like the stuff of legend: Karakorum, Khwarezmia, Khorasan, Khitai – and those are just some among the K’s. The times of which McLynn writes were ones of tremendous ferment, little known to or studied by many who think only of the “dark ages” of Europe when contemplating these centuries. Genghis Khan’s empire came within Europe and was in contact with Europeans, but for the most part it was an Asian empire. McLynn is quite comfortable writing of Asia in a way that treats great and long-lasting events in a fraction of a paragraph: “In the eighth century the Tang emperors prohibited Buddhism but allowed the preaching of Christianity, at least until in a change of mind in 845 the Tang decreed Christianity to be illegal, alongside Buddhism and Manicheism. These two survived the onslaught better than Nestorianism, and in places there was a fusion or syncretism of Buddhism and Manicheism. Christianity declined seriously in the Liao and Jin dynasties, only to enjoy a spectacular revival when the Mongols conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty; it proved a fragile flower, however, and wilted rapidly under the Ming dynasty after 1368.”

     Against this sort of backdrop, McLynn vividly tells the story of the life of Temujin, the man who would later be called Genghis Khan: his early years, his early defeats, his “lost years,” his return, his ascent to enormous power, and his unparalleled success in battle after battle against nearly always numerically superior enemies – leading to his eventual establishment of the most far-reaching empire the world has ever known, which gained its fullest extent only after his death, through the efforts of his descendants and heirs. The sheer amount of detail about Genghis’ campaigns is astonishing, the descriptive prowess of McLynn when it comes to battles and geography and personalities of warriors amazing. There are many, many names here, and readers must be prepared to immerse themselves in unfamiliar nomenclature as well as geographical references: “Meanwhile on the upper Irtysh Genghis took stock of his position and reviewed his strategy. In his retinue were Qulan, his favourite wife, his sons Tolui, Chagatai and Ogodei, and all his important generals and advisers except for Jebe and Jochi, already engaged on the western front, and Muqali in China; the most important personality of all may have been Subedei, who acted as Genghis’ chief of staff and is usually credited with the brilliant strategy used against the shah. (The government of Mongolia had been left to Genghis’s brother Temuge.)”  This is a lot to follow and lot to swallow, but McLynn proves a sure and faithful guide, never downplaying the enormous brutality of the Mongols – the pyramids they made of the skulls of their enemies are an enduring image associated with them – but resolutely refusing to judge Genghis and others of his age by modern standards. The result is a feeling of reader participation, from afar both geographically and in time, in an immensely thrilling and terrifying historical movement whose importance, positive and negative, continues to stir debate.

     McLynn does his best to provide levity on occasion, when the context of the events makes it possible: “The two soon exemplified the old adage that the only fun in war is to be had from fighting your own side.” He accepts the difficulties he undertakes in this story: “The history of Genghis Khan and the Mongols can sometimes seem no more than an endless recital of massacres with pyramids of skulls.” And he fully understands how difficult it is to pin down facts relating to Genghis’ time period: “The hottest topic involving Genghis Khan and the Mongols is their responsibility for worldwide fatalities in the forty years or so after 1206. There is the wildest divergence here and although balance is necessary, it is hard to attain.” Yet given all the insurmountable difficulties attendant upon an extensive and detailed account of an age about which accurate information is impossible to come by, McLynn does a first-rate job of assembling what is known, making the best choices possible among various interpretations, and stating forthrightly that matters are confused or unknowable when that is the case. The result is a biography-cum-history that has the feeling of truth – along with its heft – even when elements of the truth are forever unknowable.

     There are a few stylistic irritations in McLynn’s writing that hamper what is otherwise free-flowing prose. He likes to use and reuse certain phrases: “needless to say” in succeeding paragraphs on pages 377 and 378, for example. Or, in another instance, in discussing Genghis’ predecessor Qaidu (ca. 1050-1100), McLynn colorfully writes that Qaidu “bequeathed to the Mongols a poisoned chalice in the shape of bitter feuding between the two principal clans” (page 26) – only to state, 350 pages later, that Genghis’ own decision on his successor, Ogodei, meant that, “If ever there was a poisoned chalice, it was here.” Furthermore, things will scarcely be as obvious to the reader as they are to McLynn after all his research: “The obvious starting point is the twenty-three-year war Genghis waged in Jin China” (page 496) and “The two obvious analogies for the Mongol invasion of 1211-1234…” (page 498) are by no means as obvious to readers, even those who have worked their way carefully all through the book, as they are to the author.

     Setting these relatively minor elements aside, Genghis Khan is a book that, to cite the, ahem, obvious cliché, makes history come alive. Not even Julius Caesar, or for that matter Rome at the height of its power, commanded an empire as great as that of the Mongols, whose utter ruthlessness, combined with their success in creating new forms of warfare, brought them, under Genghis’ leadership, to the command of lands stretching through almost all of Eurasia. It is impossible to read McLynn’s book without stopping at some point, or multiple points, in awe and wonder at the admixture of daring, terror, generosity, viciousness, and overall complexity both of the Mongols’ campaigns and of the man who spearheaded them and became the greatest conqueror of all time.

(+++) THRILLERS WITH TWISTS

The Singular Menace, Book 2: Outrage. By John Sandford & Michele Cook. Knopf. $18.99.

The Elementia Chronicles, Book One: Quest for Justice. By Sean Fay Wolfe. Harper. $9.99.

     Fast-paced adventures for teenagers and preteens follow a predictable path of peril, resourcefulness and ultimate success for their young protagonists. The way they follow that standard story arc, however, differs substantially from series to series. The Singular Menace is, on its face, an entirely predictable story of evil big corporations in cahoots with evil high-level members of the government, all conspiring to do earthshakingly awful things through their brilliance and nearly infinite amount of money – and all capable of being stopped by a few street-wise, poor but doughty teenagers with right and goodness on their side. It would all be laughable if John Sandford and Michele Cook allowed the slightest bit of humor into the story, so they are careful not to do so. The Singular Menace is as grim as they come, with plenty of twists and turns to keep readers occupied (if not exactly guessing) as it marches through its typical near-future dystopian plot. The second book, Outrage, is a clear continuation of the first, Uncaged, and will make very little sense to those who have not read the initial volume. Sandford and Cook make some attempts to bring new readers up to speed, but they are slipshod in doing so and leave more questions unanswered than answered – and some of the events in Outrage tie clearly to ones in Uncaged, so this really is a sequence that must be read, well, in sequence. What is going on here is a scientific quest for, ahem, immortality, undertaken by totally unscrupulous and evil military-style characters whom you can practically see twirling their metaphorical mustaches and saying “you are in my power – ha-ha-ha!” They are aided and abetted by just about every high-ranking person in just about every major federal government agency, or so it seems. They do their nefarious experiments on both humans and animals – efforts that The Singular Menace suggests are essentially equivalent, a subtext here being that animals are every bit as valuable as humans and maybe more so. Unfortunately for these rich, weaponized, perfectly protected, government-involved expert fighters and top scientists, they run afoul of some teenage ex-gang members, hackers and, yes, an artist – and the baddies have the misfortune to kidnap and torture Odin, brother of Shay Remby, a 16-year-old whom you do not want to cross no matter how much money and power you have. Uncaged was about the rescue of Odin; Outrage is about the drive for revenge that is now motivating Shay and her compatriots. Figuring largely in the second book are a partly biological, partly mechanical dog called X and a young woman named Fenfang who, like Odin, was trapped by Singular – but who, unlike him, was there as an experimental subject, and who therefore now shares her brain (or her mind; they are equivalent here) with none other than a demonically determined, very powerful U.S. senator. Shay and friends need to figure out how to expose Singular for the corrupt cesspool that it is while keeping Fenfang alive (the brain operation is causing seizures and will soon kill her) and while themselves avoiding capture and certain death at the hands of the militarily experienced but astonishingly inept enforcers of Singular, who remain resolutely one step behind the good guys despite all their spies, double agents, high-tech tracking ability, and contacts within major government agencies. Aimed at readers ages 14 and up, Outrage contains enough violence (such as one character knocking out another’s teeth) to seem “worldly” and “adult” to its intended audience. The fact that the whole thing is nonsense is neatly concealed by the fast-paced, cinematic writing and the utter disregard for plot holes and improbabilities/impossibilities in the good guys’ surreptitious battle against the forces of Singular and evil (which are pretty much the same thing). Outrage certainly qualifies as a thriller structurally and in pacing – a formulaic, highly manipulative one, yes, but that will matter little to the intended readers of The Singular Menace, especially those who were left panting with enthusiasm waiting for this sequel to Uncaged.

     Milder and less noir-ish, as befits a book for ages 8-12 rather than 14-plus, Quest for Justice is the start of a sequence called The Elementia Chronicles that is intended for fans of the video game “Minecraft.” Like video games themselves, Sean Fay Wolfe’s novel is filled with violence that sounds horrific but is so over-the-top that, unlike the violence in Outrage, it is hard to take seriously: “Minotaurus was the one who led the charge on the rioters now. He killed without mercy, slicing through anyone in his way with that giant battle-axe. Within a matter of minutes, the riot had stopped, but Minotaurus was still killing. It took five Potions of Slowness thrown by his own men to finally subdue him.” Wolfe makes an attempt to interest non-players of Minecraft in his story by featuring a new player as a protagonist: as the “noob” learns how the game works, so do readers. And the plot itself is supposed to pull in those unfamiliar with the video game, since it involves the evil king banishing noobs from the Elementia server, forcing the good-guy players to get together to protect the noobs and reform the kingdom. Or something. Minecraft is a cooperate-or-compete game – players can join other players and help them, or oppose and undermine them – and some of that flavor comes through in Quest for Justice. So, as the characters seek help from others, scenes such as this develop: “Stan, resigning himself to the fact that this player would not join him, turned to walk out the door. He was just walking down the steps when something hit him in the back of the head, knocking him to the street. He spun around, axe in hand, ready to confront the Mechanist who had attacked him, but instead he noticed a book that had landed next to him. It said Full Schematics of Element Castle’s Redstone Defenses, and the author was Mecha11. …Stan looked in awe at the book, which would allow them to safely predict the locations of all the King’s hidden automated traps in his courtyard while they attacked.” Stan cannot spend long looking at the book – there are zombies and skeletons roaming about – but the point is that help can come from unlikely and unexpected sources here, which of course means that evil can emerge unexpectedly as well. A big difference between The Elementia Chronicles and The Singular Menace is that Wolfe is always aware that he is writing a story about a world that does not and never could exist, one that is peopled (if that is the word) by characters and settings made of Lego-like blocks. The Singular Menace uses verisimilitude to indicate that its world could exist and maybe even does exist – maybe it is our world, however awful that idea seems. The Elementia Chronicles is fully aware of the game-play nature of the story in Quest for Justice, which  means that characters have names such as Mella, Oob and Blerge, and the characters themselves know they exist in a video game world: “‘Oh, we have vowed to never speak the name of the Sacred One again! We have received a sign from the almighty Notch that in repayment for his sacrifice, we are never to speak the name of the Sacred One again!’ ‘The almighty Notch? Who is Notch?’ asked Charlie… ‘He’s the guy who created Minecraft,’ hissed DZ under his breath…” So the twist here is that the action takes place within a video game world whose characters know that is where they are – and readers familiar with that world (or interested in becoming familiar with it) will find the narrative entertaining, if scarcely profound or even particularly enlightening about how the world of Minecraft really works.

(++++) THE SUNNY AND THE SERIOUS

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt conducted by Howard Griffiths. Klanglogo. $18.99.

Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings; Elegie in G; Josef Suk: Serenade for Strings; Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale “St. Wenceslas.” Dvořák Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kypros Markou. Fleur de Son. $18.99.

Nielsen: Maskarade. Stephen Milling, Johan Reuter, Niels Jørgen Riis, Stig Fogh Andersen, Dénise Beck, Anne Margrethe Dahl, Ditte Højgaard Andersen, Christian Damsgaard; Danish National Choir and Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Schønwandt. Dacapo. $32.99 (2 SACDs).

     Brahms was a composer who tended to think in pairs, and this is nowhere more evident than in his first two symphonies: the First, which took him so long to complete as he contemplated Beethoven ever-striding behind him, is lofty and serious and intense throughout; the Second, finished quite soon after No. 1, is altogether more lyrical, more relaxed and even brighter in contrast than a comparison of the two works’ keys (C minor and D major) would indicate. The symphonies’ contrasts come through with unusual clarity in new performances by the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt under Howard Griffiths on the Klanglogo label, largely because Griffiths takes parts of the works at faster-than-usual tempos and because he incorporates into his readings a variety of notations by conductor Fritz Steinbach (1855-1916), considered a preeminent interpreter of Brahms during the composer’s lifetime (Brahms is known to have attended a music festival organized by Steinbach). Some of the balances and tempo variations in Griffiths’ performances come directly from Steinbach’s notes on the symphonies, and while most of these are matters of degree rather than revelatory elements, they are enough to emphasize and contrast to a greater extent than usual the dark seriousness of the First with the warmth of the Second. The orchestra performs here with the sort of assured skill of an ensemble whose history dates back before Brahms (to 1842) and whose relationship with Griffiths, its principal conductor and musical director, is a tightly knit one of mutual respect and understanding. Indeed, there is a sense of intuitive balance and anticipatory sectional melding in these performances that makes them seem far fresher than Brahms’ well-known music often does. There is also a lighter-than-usual touch to some of the balance here – the brass, for example, does not overwhelm the other sections but blends into them – and the results are performances that combine a flavor of authenticity, from incorporating Steinbach’s ideas, with up-to-date but historically informed handling of the material. The one poor choice made here is to skip the repeat of the exposition in the first movement of Symphony No. 2. This may have actually been a producer’s determination rather than Griffiths’, since it allows the symphonies to fit on a single disc, which even without the repeat runs more than 80 minutes – as long as a CD can. Nevertheless, musically this is an unfortunate decision that, however, does not vitiate the overall beauty and solidity of the performance.

     Unlike Brahms’ music, Tchaikovsky’s tends to the morose most of the time – but there are exceptions, a notable one being the Serenade for Strings that is one of his sunniest scores. Written in the bright key of C, it contains plenty of elements that are integral to Tchaikovsky’s music: a second-movement waltz, a slow movement marked Elegie (whose tempo indication of Larghetto elegiaco emphasizes the point), and a spirited finale based on a Russian theme. Other upbeat Tchaikovsky works, including Capriccio Italien, some of the ballet music and Symphony No. 2, have some characteristics in common with Serenade for Strings, but the serenade possesses an overall lightness of feeling that goes beautifully with its modest orchestration and the overall positive emotions it evokes. The fine, light and elegant performance by the Dvořák Chamber Orchestra under Kypros Markou, on the Fleur de Son label, is well complemented by the ensemble’s reading of a more-typical if less-known Tchaikovsky work, Elegie. This reaches its G major conclusion only after a setup involving a foreboding minor-key introduction and a sense of urgency that seems at odds with the piece’s title (it was originally called A Grateful Greeting and was written for the golden jubilee of actor/playwright Ivan Samarin, whom Tchaikovsky knew at the Moscow Conservatory). Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings is often offered on CD along with Dvořák’s; but Markou takes a more interesting approach (despite his ensemble’s name) by pairing the Tchaikovsky with the early Serenade for Strings by Josef Suk, written when the composer was only 18. Like Tchaikovsky’s, this serenade is a bright work, in fact written after Dvořák specifically suggested that Suk – who was prone to melancholy and favored minor keys – write something “joyful.” The work is pleasant and charming rather than actually bright, and its longest movement, the Adagio, tugs at the heart. But as a whole it is warm and effective music, if not especially deep. It is interestingly paired in this recording with Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale “St. Wenceslas,” composed to counterbalance Austrian nationalism during World War I and becoming, after Czechoslovakia gained independence in 1918, a significant piece of Czech nationalism. An effective chorale elaboration, it is a stirring work whose evocation of the patron saint of the Czech people helps explain its continued popularity.

     The popularity of Nielsen’s Maskarade as evocative of the Danish national spirit has been integral to the work’s success ever since the opera’s debut in 1906. Maskarade is based loosely on a comedy by Ludvig Holberg – the same Holberg whose work underlies Grieg’s Holberg Suite – as altered and interpreted by Vilhelm Andersen. The libretto was originally considered by some to be disrespectful of the famed dramatist’s memory, but Nielsen’s music won just about everyone over from the work’s first performance. Essentially a serious composer, and one whose six symphonies are astonishingly different from each other, Nielsen in Maskarade produced a bubbling and frothy work that nevertheless seems to speak directly to and of the Danish character. The opera has become increasingly popular internationally, too, aided by the simplicity of its slight plot: young people have fun at masquerades and find true love there, despite parental disapproval. The new performance on Dacapo is a very fine one, managed by Michael Schønwandt with a sure hand and excellent feel for pacing, and featuring fine singing by soloists and the Danish National Choir – plus idiomatic, thoroughly engaging playing by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. A decade ago, Dacapo re-released on SACD the classic 1977 performance of Maskarade conducted by John Frandsen, and that was a reading to revel in. But Schønwandt’s does not take a back seat to it, and in some ways – notably the original rather than remastered SACD sound – it is even better. Maskarade is a thorough delight from the first bars of its bubbling overture to the final unmasking of all the characters and the happy uniting of young lovers Leander (Niels Jørgen Riis) and Leonora (Dénise Beck). Like Frandsen, Schønwandt wisely uses the entire opera as Nielsen originally conceived it, with the third act being the longest. Nielsen came to believe that the act needed significant cutting and perhaps even combining with Act II. But he never made the combination and couldn’t quite figure out what to cut – he kept removing pieces, then adding them back. The result here is a third act that rambles somewhat (the tightly knit first act is the best of the three); but there is so much joyous music and so much fun here that even the meandering is enjoyable. Making the whole production even better is Dacapo’s inclusion of the complete libretto in Danish and English – bravo, bravo, bravo! Anyone regarding Nielsen as exclusively a serious Danish composer really ought to hear this Maskarade: it is as Danish as can be, yes, but also as warm, free-spirited and filled with joy.

(++++) VOICES OLD AND NEW

Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Volume 4—Works by Nicholas Ludford, Robert Jones and Robert Hunt. Blue Heron Choir conducted by Scott Metcalfe. Blue Heron. $19.99.

Berlioz: Les Nuits d’été; Chausson: Poème de l’amour et de la mer; Henri Duparc: Three Songs. Soile Isokoski, soprano; Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds. Ondine. $16.99.

Ténor tenore! French and Italian Opera Arias. Yinjia Gong, tenor; Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Markus Lehtinen. BIS. $21.99 (SACD).

Daniel DeVasto: Winter Seven; John G. Bilotta: The Song of the Hermit Thrush; Paula Diehl: Anyone; Wedding Day. Navona. $16.99.

December Celebration: New Carols by Seven American Composers. Lisa Delan, soprano; Lester Lynch, baritone; Musicians of the New Century Chamber Orchestra conducted by Dawn Harms. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

     There is something exhilarating in hearing vocal music for the first time, whether that music be new or old – and that is in addition to the pleasures of hearing familiar vocal works presented by new performers. Among the roster of old but never-before-heard pieces, those in the Peterhouse Partbooks from the early 16^th century are especially fascinating for scholarly reasons, and highly worthy for musical ones as well. The books include works by a few composers who remain well-known today, such as Thomas Tallis; by others who were famed in their day but are little-known now, such as Nicholas Ludford; and by quite a few who are almost totally obscure. The excellent Blue Heron Choir is engaged in creating a five-CD set of Peterhouse Partbooks releases on its own label. This is no small project, in light of the fact that the tenor partbook is lost, as are some pages of the treble partbook. This has long prevented performance or even serious study of this music, which is a real shame – because the works shed fascinating light on pre-Reformation English polyphony and are simply wonderful to hear strictly on their own merits. The versions the Blue Heron Choir performs are reconstructions by Nick Sandon of the University of Essex, England, and while they cannot fully reproduce the originals, they are highly idiomatic and simply make the music sound wonderful – and very much of its time. The fourth Blue Heron Choir release includes Ave cujus conceptio by Ludford (c. 1490-1557); a moving and beautifully proportioned four-section Missa Spes nostra by Robert Jones (flourished 1520-35); an extended and lovely Stabat mater by Robert Hunt (early 16^th century); and a brief Sarum plainchant, Kyrie Deus creator omnium. The choir’s sound is balanced and elegant, Scott Metcalfe’s leadership is impeccable, and the recording provides rare insight into music of its time and a most welcome chance to hear some very fine works that have lain unperformed for century upon century.

     The music is much better known on a new Ondine recording featuring works by Berlioz, Chausson and Henri Duparc, but soprano Soile Isokoski is not – at least not outside Finland, where she has long been a noted singer of opera and lieder. Isokoski (born 1957) has a strong, warm, involving voice and is skilled at phrasing, all characteristics that contribute to a very fine reading of Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’été, with excellent support coming from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under John Storgårds. The sea-related elements of Berlioz’ cycle appear in different guise in Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer, and here too Isokoski brings considerable warmth and understanding to the very different Maurice Bouchor poems that open and close the work. The central orchestral interlude is handled skillfully by the orchestra, and Storgårds does a fine job of making this bridge between two disparate poems into a connecting element rather than one that serves only to separate La Fleur des eaux from La Mort de l'amour. Chausson’s work was dedicated to Henri Duparc (1848-1933), whose own music – he stopped composing in 1885 and only about 40 of his pieces survive – is not performed frequently anymore. To the extent that Duparc’s works are still heard, it is his 17 art songs that remain known. The three Duparc songs included here are effective, interesting both in themselves and in the context of the Berlioz and Chausson pieces with which they are offered. They are Le Manoir de Rosemonde, L’Invitation au Voyage, and Chanson Triste, and their sea-related and wistful, even sad themes nicely complement the mood of the Berlioz and Chausson works. As a whole, this recital of better-known and less-known French Romantic vocal music is touching, warm and sung and played with considerable involvement.

     A new BIS recording featuring tenor Yinjia Gong presents works that are even better-known, but it is not as enjoyable a listening experience and gets a (+++) rating. The problem is not Gong (born 1983): he has a solid if rather unremarkable tenor voice, a strong grounding in the music he performs (he studied at the Malmo Academy of Music and the University College of Opera in Stockholm), and fine support from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Markus Lehtinen. The problem is that this SACD is just another of the interminable series of discs of tenors singing typical tenor arias. It would be unfair to remind listeners of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado, with its line about “the amateur tenor whose vocal villainies all desire to shirk,” since Gong is not an amateur and does possess a voice that, as it develops, has considerable potential. But listeners may wish to “shirk” the specific repertoire heard here, since so little of it is even the slightest bit off the beaten track. From Puccini are offered E lucevan le stelle, Recondita armonia, Che gelida manina and, of course, Nessun dorma. From Donizetti come Ah! mes amis and Una furtiva lagrima. Verdi contributes La donna è mobile, Forse la soglia attinse and, inevitably, Celeste Aïda. From Adolphe Adam comes Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire – what else? Then there are Salut! demeure chaste et pure and Ah! lève-toi, soleil by Gounod; La fleur que tu m’avais jetée by Bizet; and, from Massenet, Pourquoi me réveiller and Ah! fuyez, douce image. There is not a single piece here that a budding tenor fails to study and re-study, sing and re-sing, and there is not a single one that opera aficionados will have failed to hear dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The appeal of this recording lies strictly in the chance to hear a new tenor who may become more prominent over time. The music itself, as wonderful as it is – and it is wonderful, which is why everybody sings it – is really not a reason to own the recording.

     Figuring out why to own the new Navona CD of works by David DeVasto, John G. Bilotta and Paula Diehl is also a bit difficult. These four modern vocal works have little in common and little real reason to share a disc. The most interesting is DeVasto’s Winter Seven for baritone (Scott Uddenberg), choir and chamber ensemble (flute, viola and piano), conducted by the composer. Its seven movements deal with both physical and metaphysical winter, portraying both the cold of the season and the cold aspects of human life. That means the work is written with very broad strokes – ending with an inevitable sign of coming spring called The Crocus, but including within itself the Black Death, American Civil War and other forms of destruction and bleakness before it moves into positive territory. The juxtaposition of the natural world with that of humanity has been done many times before, but that does not reduce the effectiveness of DeVasto’s use of the approach, through which he conveys sentiments both dark and accepting, if not always positive. Bilotta’s The Song of the Hermit Thrush for soprano (Sarita Cannon) and chamber group (the Divisa Ensemble: flute, oboe, violin, viola and cello) uses lines from Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d to acknowledge and even celebrate “cool-enfolding Death” – a wintry theme, to be sure, and one assembled with some care here, but not in an especially involving or convincing way. Bilotta’s work is, however, more emotive than the two songs by Diehl for baritone (Bradford Gleim) and piano (Chiharu Naruse). Diehl is one of those composers with a “system” that is surely of interest to her and may be so to other composers, but that leaves the audience in the lurch from a communicative standpoint. Diehl’s approach is based on the interval of the fourth: she overlaps fourths, then gradually separates them until they are completely apart. If this sounds dry and academic, that is because it is: the music here unfolds as an exercise in technique rather than one having any particular interest in reaching out to an audience. This CD as a whole gets a (+++) rating and will primarily attract listeners who simply want a chance to hear new vocal works by contemporary composers.

     Such listeners are better served by a (++++) PentaTone SACD featuring carols by Mark Adamo, Jake Heggie, David Garner, Luna Pearl Woolf, John Corigliano, Gordon Getty, and Joan Morris and William Bolcom. (That is eight composers, although the disc’s title specifies seven, apparently numbering the joint Morris/Bolcom work as if written by one person.) The winter portrayals here are more straightforward than those in DeVasto’s work, and the form these composers follow is a very old one – which, by and large, they absorb and use in a straightforward manner, not deeming Christmastime music an appropriate place for exercising their personal compositional predilections. What is interesting is how details of the composers’ styles nevertheless peep through in these seasonal works. Heggie’s On the Road to Christmas is an expansive six-movement tour, while Garner’s Three Carols and Getty’s Four Christmas Carols are simple, straightforward expressions of seasonal motifs. Adamo’s The Christmas Life and Corigliano’s Christmas at the Cloisters have a certain sense of modernity about them, even within the carol format. But the Morris/Bolcom Carol (Neighbors, on this Frosty Tide) is almost determinedly old-fashioned. Woolf’s extended How Bright the Darkness expands the carol form into something approaching that of an art song, and is considerably longer than any other carol here (more than seven minutes). It makes an intriguing contrast with the final work on the SACD, Getty’s sensitive arrangement of the always marvelous Silent Night by Franz Gruber (1787-1863) – a fitting conclusion to a very well-sung, fine-sounding recording that asserts eternal (or at least long-lasting) verities by presenting entirely new works in a form that has been around since at least the 12^th century, if not longer.