(+++) ANGST AND SELF-IMPORTANCE

The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York. By Ed Hamilton. Červená Barva Press. $18.

This Way Home. By Wes Moore with Shawn Goodman. Delacorte Press. $17.99.

     There is no U.S. city as sophisticated as New York, and none as provincial. New Yorkers hold the first label dear and are deeply shocked at the second, almost unable even to hear it. Yet New York is a city so inward-looking, so focused on itself, that its residents are unaware of the accent with which they speak even though it is gratingly evident to others; it is a place so determined to be the city-of-cities that it looks at its own suburbs with disdain, as if living there is somehow a step below grinding out the meanest of existences in even the most rundown hovel that has those magical two words, “New York,” as an identifier. The Chintz Age is for dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers only; even New Yorker wannabes (there are some such) will not “get” all the glamor of squatting in flophouses, peering in other people’s windows, witnessing cold-blooded murder, and crawling through abandoned underground tunnels. Ed Hamilton’s collection of seven short stories and a novella takes off from the notion that the golden age, if there ever was one, is long gone; the gilded age has passed; everything is cheaper and somehow more tawdry now. Well, all right – this is scarcely an unusual notion, but it is a good enough basis for storytelling, although scarcely confined to New York City. Indeed, the changing ethos that Hamilton explores and bemoans is one that has recently received more attention in San Francisco and California’s Silicon Valley than on the East Coast: the notion that advancement in certain material ways has undermined the “authentic” character of a city or region, displacing the people who created that “character” with faceless, upward-striving gentrifiers. Aww…poor little artistic types – forced to do more than hang out and pretend to be with-it, sophisticated, living a real and meaningful life…

     These are precisely the sorts of people whose lives, limited by the blinders they have themselves created and that they wear willingly, Hamilton explores in The Chintz Age. “In short, Theo wanted out. Problem was, there was nowhere else to go, nowhere affordable anyway; to change apartments meant leaving New York, and that, for Theo as for most New Yorkers, would be to admit defeat.” Readers must accept this mindset, expressed in these words in “Plagiarism” but pervasive throughout The Chintz Age, to make any sense at all of the book’s characters and events. New York is simply the place, to the point that one story, “Rock of the Lower East Side,” is about a man’s obsession over his onetime life in a “squat” with a woman who, when he sees her years after they have split up, is likely using crack cocaine, “had lost some teeth and her skin had lost its luster, become dry, ashen. Same with her hair: in it’s [sic] absurd eighties style it was frizzy and brittle. …No, they would have been happy together.” The woman does not “stand for” the city – Hamilton writes small pieces about small people, not stories of metaphor and extensiveness – but her onetime lover’s wholly unrealistic thoughts and beliefs about her are much the same as those of all Hamilton’s characters, and apparently Hamilton himself, about New York City. Even the stories’ venues emit New York provincialism: only people who know that “the Lower East Side” is a neighborhood with particular resonance for New Yorkers will be at all involved in this story, and only those who know what the first word of the title “Highline/Highlife” means in a New York context will be able to make sense of that sad fairy tale. The best story here, and the only one with a touch of mythic resonance that reaches beyond the constrained worldview of New Yorkers, is “King of the Underground,” in which a mentally compromised resident of a rundown nursing home unexpectedly finds his way into the world outside and thence to a strange beneath-the-streets throwback of a settlement resembling “a medieval village or even a stone-age camp.” Although set in Brooklyn, this story does not have to take place in New York City, and that is its strength. The rest of the book, however, is and must be set in New York, and while that fact will provide nostalgia-prone New Yorkers with some excuses for head-nodding and navel gazing, it will provoke only bewilderment or, worse from a New York perspective, indifference in people whose horizons are broader than those of New Yorkers.

     Aimed at teenagers rather than adults, set in Baltimore rather than New York, This Way Home is an even grittier book than The Chintz Age, its concerns expressed without a haze of wishful thinking, its story determinedly told to elicit shock, anger, upset and an eventual feeling of possible – just possible – hope. So carefully structured as to be outright manipulative of the reader, the novel by Wes Moore with Shawn Goodman goes out of its way to tell readers that its events could happen wherever there are mean streets: “Elijah knew it wasn’t as perfect as it seemed; if you scratched the surface, you’d find plenty of bad things. Alcoholic parents. Money problems. Divorce. The same as anywhere else.” That list, early in the book, omits cold-blooded murder and extensive gang activity, but those turn out to be omnipresent, too. This Way Home is primarily Elijah’s story: he is 17 and a high-quality basketball player, determined to use his talent and drive to succeed in the world. With his friends Michael and Dylan, Elijah plays through a local basketball tournament that he hopes will lead to much greater things – but this is not a basketball story, except incidentally. It is a story about friendship and betrayal, about finding oneself (a de rigueur element of books for teens), about trying to do the right thing when each and every possible thing seems wrong. This is a heady if scarcely unusual mixture, handled here by introducing a series of cardboard characters and predictable situations that nevertheless have impact because the book’s events are presented in a hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners fashion that gives them the ring of plausibility. It seems there is a frightening and mysterious gang in the neighborhood called Blood Street Nation, which somehow has gotten wind of Elijah’s abilities and wants his team to wear gang colors in the upcoming tournament. Deciding what to do and how to do it becomes the crux of the book: Elijah finds out how hard it is to do the right thing and what serious consequences ensue if you do it, and in the process learns more than he ever knew about his mother, his absent father, and his friends. Money and equipment, the meaning of “we’ve got your back” in a place where people get shot in the back, the discovery of what levers turn a friend into a traitor and what family really means – these themes and more occur and recur here. The gruff army veteran Banks, for whom Elijah ends up working at a series of increasingly difficult and improbable tasks, is so obvious a father figure that the initially unstated mystery of his background is scarcely a surprise when finally revealed; and Banks’ daughter, Kerri, is so obviously a potential love interest – and bright and focused into the bargain – that she quickly becomes a more interesting character than the rather dull Elijah himself. Moore and Goodman seem to sense this: they pull her out of crucial portions near the book’s climax and never let any romantic relationship develop beyond the hinting-at-it stage. The deaths and violence in This Way Home are carefully placed by the authors so as to teach Elijah and, through him, readers some lessons about life; indeed; the whole novel has a feeling of careful placement of characters and events, things arranged just so on a structural chessboard so that the authors can nudge readers in specific directions at specific times. There are effective scenes in the book, or parts of scenes, but This Way Home is too contrived and carefully managed to be as fully convincing and involving as Moore and Goodman want it to be: it comes across more as preachy than as demonstrative of the need to make hard choices, accept the consequences and find a way to move on in life.

(++++) LIFT UP THY VOICES

Bach: Mass in B Minor. Hannah Morrison, soprano; Esther Brazil, mezzo-soprano; Meg Bragle and Kate Symonds-Joy, altos; Peter Davoren and Nick Pritchard, tenors; Alex Ashworth and David Shipley, basses; Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. SDG. $34.99 (2 CDs).

Bach: Cantatas, Volume 5—“Birthday Cantatas,” BWV 213 and 214. Joanne Lunn, soprano; Robin Blaze, countertenor; Makoto Sakurada, tenor; Dominik Wörner, bass; Bach Collegium Japan conducted by Masaaki Suzuki. BIS. $21.99 (SACD).

He Is Born. BYU Vocal Point. BYU Records. $16.99.

Carols from King’s: 60^th Anniversary Edition. Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury. Choir of King’s College DVD. $18.99.

Simon Mayr: Requiem. Siri Karoline Thornhill and Katharina Ruckgaber, sopranos;  Theresa Holzhauser and Brigitte Thoma, altos; Markus Schäfer and Robert Sellier, tenors; Martin Berner, Ludwig Mittelhammer and Virgil Mischok, basses; Simon Mayr Chorus and Ensemble conducted by Franz Hauk. Naxos. $25.99 (2 CDs).

     Thirty years after recording a splendid Bach Mass in B Minor with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, Sir John Eliot Gardiner has recorded another – with the same groups, although the members of the groups have changed (there is actually a single choir holdover). The new recording, like the old one, is one of the very best readings of this music available, and in fact the SDG release does not so much supplant the earlier version as supplement it. Gardiner’s approach has become more refined, a touch more sure-handed, even a bit more elegant, but it is essentially the same as it was in 1985, when it was excellent. The soloists, who are members of the choir, handle themselves with grace and beauty, and the choral and orchestral forces are well-balanced, poised, well-versed in historic performance practices, and thoroughly at home with the music, to such an extent that everything here comes across as simply sounding right and as being performed, as the recording label’s full name indicates, Soli Deo Gloria (in this context, “only for the glory of God”). The sole element of the recording that may provoke some controversy is Gardiner’s refusal to perform the mass in one-to-a-part fashion, as many other historically aware conductors do. Gardiner does not believe the one-to-a-part notion has been proved, and he dislikes the thinness of its sound, amusingly referring to the result as “the B minor madrigal.” This is an argument more for scholars and high-end performers than for listeners, however: what matters is whether Gardiner’s approach works, and that it most assuredly does. Nothing here is heavy-handed in the slightest, and everything is convincingly sung and played – and very well recorded indeed. A high point among high points is the Credo, delivered with sure understanding, firm control and exceptional beauty. But in fact beauty, along with devotion, permeates this recording, which is so well done that even listeners who already own other versions of the Mass in B Minor – including those who own Gardiner’s previous recording – should consider adding this one to their collections.

     Bach’s secular music can be as splendid in its way as his devotional music is in its very different one. The fifth BIS volume of Bach cantatas from Bach Collegium Japan is a delightful case in point. It contains two cantatas written for birthdays: BWV 213, Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen (“Let us be careful, let us watch”), written in 1733 for the 11^th birthday of Crown Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony; and BWV 214, Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten! (“Sound, drums! Ring out, trumpets!”), from the same year, written for the 34^th birthday of Maria Josepha, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. BWV 213 is based on the story of “Hercules at the Crossroads,” having to choose between virtue and following his desires and deciding, of course, to take the proper path. Bach uses the final bass arioso as a direct address to the young crown prince, making the relevance of the classical myth abundantly clear. BWV 214 has, in accordance with its title, a chorus that opens with a timpani solo – an unusual approach for Bach, and quite an effective one. Both cantatas are very well sung by soloists and chorus alike, and the orchestra plays in fine style and with considerable clarity. Bach called each of these cantatas a “dramma per musica,” so their celebratory aspects are only part of what performers need to communicate. The dramatic ones also come through very nicely in these performances. And it is worth noting that the secular-sacred ties in Bach’s music are many, with these cantatas being no exceptions: Bach actually used parts of both of them, in revised form, in his Christmas Oratorio.

     Eleven examples of Christmas music from Brigham Young University – although nothing by Bach – can be heard in fine form on a new BYU Records release featuring singers collectively known as BYU Vocal Point. Their point in this recording is simply a seasonal celebration mixing mostly familiar music with a few less-known numbers, with everything arranged to highlight the singers’ fine vocal qualities. The musical mix is a trifle odd at times: Silent Night is immediately followed by an arrangement of Leroy Anderson’s ubiquitous Sleigh Ride, for example. And the CD will not fully please either people seeking the familiar or those looking for something seasonal but out of the ordinary: it includes God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; He Is Born; a combination called Christmas Eve / Sarajevo 12/24; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; One Single Bell; Nuttin’ for Christmas, followed immediately by Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, which is succeeded by Infant Holy, Infant Lowly; and, lastly, Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful. This is a very well-sung recording whose slightly odd musical mixture makes it a (+++) release for most listeners, although those who enjoy the very high-quality vocalizing for which Brigham Young singers are justifiably known will certainly enjoy it for its sheer sound as well as for its content.

     There is even more singing, and all of it is equally excellent in a very different way, on a new Choir of King’s College DVD memorializing the 60^th anniversary of the first televised carol service from King’s College, Cambridge. The choristers here have a certain crispness to go with their warmth, and Stephen Cleobury’s conducting is absolutely spot-on in quality, pacing, vocal blending and overall sound. The release is strictly for people who want a lot of Christmas music from the same ensemble, and a lot of material on the ensemble itself – it is a (+++) release because of this limited appeal. But there is no question that those to whom it does appeal will get a great deal for their money. There are 20 carols here, plus an entire BBC documentary on the history of the King’s College carol service – well over two hours of music and talk in all. The choir shows its range and adeptness by including material from Bach (Von Himmel hoch, BWV 606), Gustav Holst (In the Bleak Mid-winter), Sir John Tavener (The Lamb and God Is with Us), Peter Warlock (Benedicamus Domino), and Herbert Howells (A Spotless Rose). The selections also include Once in Royal David’s City; Up! Good Christian Folk;  A Tender Shoot; Sussex Carol; Stille Nacht; It Came upon the Midnight Clear; Gabriel’s Message; Joys Seven; God Rest You [sic] Merry, Gentlemen; Ding! Dong! Merrily on High; Noël Nouvelet; The Three Kings; A Babe Is Born; and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. French, German, Basque, English – whatever tradition the carols come from, Cleobury and his singers present them with grace and sensitivity, and always with a lovely blending of voices resulting in a full, warm sound. Despite the decided Christmas focus, this is as much a DVD about the choir as it is about the season and the music. On that basis it transcends the season that it celebrates with such vocal skill.

     There is also some fine singing on a new Naxos release of music that transcends all seasons: the 1815 Grande Messa da Requiem by Simon Mayr. Like Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), Mayr (1763-1845) is a transitional musical figure, and as a result has been thought of as neither here nor there – not fully Classical in orientation despite being born while Mozart was alive, but not entirely Romantic in perspective either. This has resulted in general neglect of Mayr’s music (and Hummel’s), although the fact that Mayr taught Donizetti and was himself the composer of more than 60 operas has brought him occasional attention. His seven requiem masses, however, have been almost wholly neglected, and this performance, led with determination and flexibility by Franz Hauk, is a world première recording. This Requiem is a work on a grand scale, running very nearly two hours, and features some exceptionally fine vocal writing. In fact, small sections of the piece were composed by Donizetti – then corrected (today we might say “massaged”) by Mayr. The edition used for this recording is itself something special, having been assembled from the autograph manuscripts; the result is a work more elaborate and altogether larger in instrumentation and overall scale than the published version of the same music. What is most interesting here, however, is how exceptionally clearly this work shows the transitional nature of Mayr’s style. The Kyrie eleison/Christe eleison has all the makings of bel canto material, with lovely flow and the requisite vocal acrobatics (although not too many, this being, after all, a mass for the dead). On the other hand, the Agnus dei sounds so Mozartean that it will likely make listeners sit up in surprise and take notice. This section could have come essentially unchanged from a Mozart comic opera – not because there is anything amusing in the setting, but because the treatment of the vocal lines and the lovely woodwind touches have all the bounce and beauty that Mozart brought to the opera stage again and again. Mayr’s style was considered a fusion of German and Italian elements, but this Grande Messa da Requiem actually sounds more French than anything else; and in some senses – including the intensity of its Dies irae – it looks forward to the requiem by Berlioz, written 22 years later. Mayr’s opening funeral march and his excellent brass writing in Libera me are among the highlights of a work that very definitely deserves to be better known and to take its place among the important requiem masses of the 19^th century. This (++++) recording should help raise its profile, and that of its composer, significantly.

(++++) EXPANSIVE VIEWS

Schubert: String Quintet in C, D. 956. Michael Kannen, cello; Brentano Quartet (Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violins; Misha Amory, viola; Nina Lee, cello). Azica. $16.99.

Bliss: Morning Heroes—A Symphony for Orator, Chorus and Orchestra; Hymn to Apollo. Samuel West, orator; BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Chandos. $19.99 (SACD).

James Brawn in Recital, Volume 2: Music of Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Gershwin. MSR Classics. $19.95 (2 CDs).

     There are few Romantic-era chamber pieces as challenging to perform as Schubert’s final chamber work, the String Quintet in C. As broad in scope as anything in chamber music – lasting nearly an hour – it requires excellent ensemble playing and unremitting beauty of tone from all five players, plus an understanding of the exceptional warmth of sound for which Schubert was striving when he added a second cello rather than the more-typical second viola to the traditional string quartet. The second-movement Adagio, in particular, is so lovely, so intimately involving, that it has been picked up as an atmosphere-setter in a wide variety of films. But it is far deeper than those superficial uses would indicate, and the performers on a new Azica CD – which was put together from three live performances offered over a single weekend at Amherst College in Massachusetts – show just how much depth the music truly has. This is Schubert’s only string quintet and, although composed just two months before his death, it is quite pensive but not at all death-haunted. A better description of the music would be “autumnal,” an adjective applied often to Brahms but rarely to Schubert; yet it fits here, particularly as the Brentano String Quartet – plus Michael Kannen, one of the quartet’s founding members – present the music. Indeed, Schubert’s work inspired Brahms’ Piano Quintet, which the later composer originally scored for the same instruments used here by Schubert. The sound of the two cellos gives the music a rich, burnished sound, which the performers here are careful to give plenty of time to unfold. The movements are taken mostly at a stately pace, although the Adagio is actually a touch on the fast side by the clock (but it never feels the slightest bit rushed). The intimacy of this music is exceptional, and these performers know it: the reading is colorful and controlled, intimate and (in the Scherzo) outgoing, involving from start to finish, and altogether convincing. The excitement of live performances comes through even before the rapturous applause at the disc’s conclusion, but the audience is remarkably quiet during the playing itself, no doubt as entranced by the intricate beauty of this music as are the first-rate performers.

     A work of similar length, grander scale, but ultimately less effectiveness, Sir Arthur Bliss’ Morning Heroes—A Symphony for Orator, Chorus and Orchestra gets  appropriately reflective treatment from Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on a new Chandos SACD. The work is as much cantata or oratorio as symphony, using a narrator (the very fine Samuel West) to intone war-related texts from The Iliad, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols. The work’s quietly unfolding beginning, during which West speaks lines from Homer’s epic, establishes a mood of quiet and remembrance that is sustained throughout – and that drags somewhat through its sheer persistence. Bliss dedicated this work, first performed in 1930, to the memory of his brother, who was killed on the Somme in 1916; Bliss himself was wounded and gassed during World War I. But there is no anger in Morning Heroes – although there is intensity in two martial scherzos that enclose a central slow movement. The work gives the overall impression of a thoughtful, mostly quiet requiem for all the victims of what was at the time still called the Great War. It has some effective moments, such as the start of the finale, when words by Owen are accompanied only by timpani. But emotionally, it is both rather pallid and a bit of a stretch in comparing grinding trench warfare to a Homeric epic. Morning Heroes is particularly effective as a choral work – the writing for chorus is very fine – but is ultimately not particularly trenchant or emotionally convincing, despite its fraught subject matter. It is paired here with the première recording of the original (1926) version of Hymn to Apollo, which is actually more effective in communicating wistful sadness, anger and anguish in less than 10 minutes than Morning Heroes is in 55. The comparison is inevitable, since both pieces are tributes to Bliss’ brother and reflections of feelings engendered by World War I. Bliss was scarcely a miniaturist, but in this case he made a better connection in a short form than in a rather overblown long one. The Apollo of this hymn is the physician and seer – Apollo as god of the sun is heard only near the end – with Bliss developing a ritualistic procession from quiet woodwind and harp phrases at the start of the work. Bliss significantly revised Hymn to Apollo in 1964, both in form and in orchestration, which he reduced; he said his second thoughts on his works were generally better than his first. In this case, though, the original version makes a strong impression in juxtaposition with Morning Heroes. This is a (+++) recording, simply because the music is not especially compelling and has not worn particularly well; but it is certainly very well-played and will be attractive for listeners interested in Bliss, or simply in British music between the two world wars.

     The time frame is much greater in a new two-CD release featuring pianist James Brawn. In an hour and three quarters, Brawn handles nearly 300 years of music for MSR Classics. How well he spans the centuries, though, is a matter of opinion – and not because of his playing, which is as high-quality as usual. The issue is rather one of this being a kind of “greatest hits survey” even without actually including many “greatest hits.” For example, Beethoven is represented only by the charming trifle Für Elise, while Rachmaninoff gets five preludes. Chopin gets more music here than anyone else: seven pieces, including three preludes and four études – but the other quintessential Romantic-era composer/pianist, Liszt, is represented by a single piece, Consolation No. 3. It is hard to see this release as being more than an indulgence by and for Brawn. He includes seven works written for harpsichord – two Scarlatti sonatas and five Bach preludes from the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier – plus minute-and-a-half works by both Grieg and Gershwin. From Mozart there are the Fantasia in D minor and Rondo alla Turca from the K. 331 sonata – the latter being a piece that does indeed qualify for “greatest hits” status. But Schubert is represented only by Moment Musicale No. 3 and Impromptu No. 3, Brahms by the little Waltz in A-flat minor and more-substantial Intermezzo in A, Scriabin by a single étude, and Prokofiev only by the Toccata in D. The chronological arrangement of the release, starting with Scarlatti and ending with Gershwin, emphasizes its “survey” character, and the inclusion of Chopin both at the end of the first CD and at the start of the second is clever in turning the composer into a sort of bridge between halves of the program. The program itself, though, is one that it is hard to listen to with much enthusiasm: this (+++) release would do well in a music-instruction context, perhaps, and could serve as an example for piano students of the sorts of works that they could learn to perform over time. But any serious listener surely already has these pieces already, in their correct context (and, in the case of Scarlatti and Bach, played on the intended instrument). Brawn breaks no new interpretative ground with this material, playing it well but, in the end, not to very much purpose.

(++++) VIRTUOSI AT WORK

No Yelling! “Baby Blues” Scrapbook 32. By Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.

Zits Apocalypse: A “Zits” Treasury. By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.

Playtime: A “Mutts” Treasury. By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $19.99.

     One wonderful thing about watching virtuoso performers is seeing how easy they make everything look. The great violinists, pianists, conductors – all seem to go through motions that, you might think, you too could duplicate easily enough (“that conductor is just waving a baton, after all!”). But try anything requiring virtuosic skill, if you ever have the chance, and be prepared to be, if not humiliated or at least embarrassed, very quickly educated in what makes great performers virtuosi and you – well, you. As with music, so with art: “my six-year-old could do that” quickly becomes “how in the world did he get that effect?” if you, much less your six-year-old, should ever try to do the same thing. And comic-strip art? Well, it’s just black-and-white drawings, really, exaggerations and simplifications done with a few lines here and there, and jokes that, especially when taken from real-life situations, pretty much write themselves.

     Oh, yeah? Try it sometime. Try for the pacing, the characterization, the integral words-and-pictures communication, the humor and occasional pathos and frequent perfectly reasonable bizarrerie of strips such as Baby Blues and Zits, and then come back humbled and thoroughly apologetic for thinking you could pull off something like this just because you have the artistic talent of, say, Scott Adams or Stephan Pastis (no denigration intended – well, maybe just a little). “Family” comic strips have been around just about as long as have comic strips themselves, but Baby Blues and Zits are at such a high level, and stay there so consistently, that their sheer virtuosity is a source of amazement time after time. And so it is in the latest collections of both strips, which share almost nothing in terms of artistic style but a great deal in terms of perception of what modern families endure, surely thanks in large part to the fact that Jerry Scott writes them both (and long may he continue doing so). Both new collections include comments by Scott and artists (and they are artists) Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) and Jim Borgman (Zits); and while the comments are not up to the level of the writing within the strips themselves, they are delightfully informative. At one point, for example, Kirkman draws attention to the specific Baby Blues strip in which baby Wren’s hair has its own “growth spurt. She more than doubled her three hairs since her last appearance.” And Borgman, commenting on a Sunday Zits strip in which the huge middle panel has Jeremy getting ready for school so quickly that his multiple activities occur outside the space/time continuum, notes, “This middle panel is pretty much what we live for.” As for Scott, he comments of one Baby Blues character, “Trent is looking more menacing as he gets older. He’s even making me nervous, and I invented him.” And he notes the sort of thing he lives for in Zits plotting: “The bigger Mom’s frustration with Jeremy, the more I like it. The poor woman.”

     None of the comments would really matter if the strips themselves weren’t so good, so consistently. But they are; they are. In both strips, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (totality > words + art, for those of a mathematical inclination). No Yelling! includes, for example, a wonderful sequence in which ultra-boy Hammie meets a girl who looks just like him, named Sammie (what else?), whose favorite things are “video games, mixed martial arts, and driving my sister crazy.” Hammie explains that his are “the same, but in reverse order” – and in the next strip, when Zoe sees Hammie and Sammie together and has an ultimate-freaked-out reaction, it is easy to understand Hammie’s preferences. Things actually go better when Zoe and Hammie are at odds: at one point he claims that she ruined his favorite comic book because “she liked it,” which leads Kirkman to remark wryly, “Ah, welcome to the real world, Hammie.” How real? Well, an outstanding Sunday strip featuring what Kirkman calls “the oddest panel I’ve ever drawn” shows Wanda’s face as seen through the many holes in an old pair of Darryl’s underwear that he refuses to throw out because it’s his favorite – things don’t get much realer than that. Hammie’s uncertainty about how to open a letter from Grandma – “Where do you double-click it?” – is at the same level. Baby Blues has scenes that every parent will recognize, such as the one in which Zoe demands back a toy she gave Hammie because “I didn’t think he was going to have so much fun with it,” and the one in which Wanda worries about Hammie playing football because “it terrifies me to imagine a bunch of little boys running around smashing into each other,” while Darryl points out that to him, “that’s a selling point.” Figuring out how to pace these scenes, though, and just what dialogue to include, what to show and what not to show, how many points to make verbally and how many visually – that’s virtuosity.

     And Zits has plenty of it, too. Connie, Jeremy’s too-involved mom, cannot come up with a theme she likes for Jeremy’s prom, so father Walt suggests “Libidos in Tuxedos.” Connie does not exactly react favorably, but she has aces up her sleeve for such matters – or, rather, drones. Zits does keep up with technology: in one Sunday strip, showing Jeremy and Sara cuddled in a hammock, Sara comments on the pleasant sound of cicadas, and Jeremy realizes there aren’t any this year and says, “Call off your drone, Mom!” Not likely: in another Sunday sequence, Connie uses it to lift a sleeping Jeremy by the seat of his underwear and guide him to supervised lawn mowing, trash-taking-out and shopping-bag-carrying – and as so often in Zits, it is hard to say which is funnier here: the concept or the illustrations. Borgman brings a delightful sense of cartoon history into Zits from time to time, too, often paying tribute to Peanuts by having Jeremy use the roof outside his room for “big thoughts,” noting that “it’s our equivalent of Snoopy musing on top of his doghouse,” and also showing items bearing the same zigzag design as Charlie Brown’s sweater – as “quiet homage to one of the greats.” It is not all Peanuts, though: a strip showing Connie and Walt transformed into Fred and Wilma Flintstone is hilariously apt and makes its point even more, umm, pointedly than it otherwise would.

     It is worth mentioning that there are forms and degrees of virtuosity, with Kirkman/Scott exemplifying one such and Scott/Borgman another. A third is that of Patrick McDonnell, whose sense of cartoon and art history is even more pervasive in Mutts than comic-strip history is in Baby Blues or Zits. In addition, McDonnell’s drawings often have a Zen-like stillness and elegance taken directly from Oriental art. One example in the new Mutts collection, Playtime, is a four-panel Sunday sequence using the old joke about it being so hot that characters melt. That is just what Earl the dog and Mooch the cat do as they sit beneath a tree, but the extreme stylization of the tree and the deliberate hyper-simplicity of the orange ball representing the sun, together with the design of the strip’s title, make the Oriental connection abundantly clear. McDonnell’s virtuosity shows itself in the apparently (only apparently) off-handed way he incorporates fine art and older comic-strip art into Mutts. One Sunday title panel, for instance, is a perfect take on Jeff Smith’s Bone, another Sunday pays homage to Otto Soglow’s The Little King, and still another Sunday offers an entire strip based on Winsor McCay’s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Nor are the references simply in the art: one daily strip has Mooch, beaned by an acorn thrown by the squirrels Bip and Bop, saying “Li’l angel” after he gets hit – leading a squirrel to comment, “Crazy Cat.” That Mutts strip encapsulates George Herriman’s famous Krazy Kat in three panels. Many readers will not pick up on these references at all, but it scarcely matters: they are integral to McDonnell’s work but generally not necessary for readers to understand in order to get the point of Mutts. Part of that point is visible through McDonnell’s frequent use of Earl and Mooch in the form of a yin/yang symbol; but in fact the two friends are, in many ways, not as opposite as all that: they cooperate as often as they go at things from differing directions. McDonnell mixes multi-panel strips that include small adventures (trying to hibernate, visiting a farm sanctuary, the recurring “Shelter Stories” strips advocating adoption by showing endearing animals waiting for their forever homes) with single-long-panel ones that go well beyond the bounds of other comics. One series on love includes quotes, one per day, from Lord Byron, Goethe, and Albert Camus. Another, “Mooch’s Dear Diary,” includes daily cat thoughts such as “Purr – when there’s nothing left to say.” And another offers one scene per day of a summer vacation beach trip. McDonnell’s sheer versatility is amazing. One week of strips has Bip and Bop interacting with (that is, hitting with acorns) Superman, The Flash, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Mister Fantastic and Batman – with final panels giving clues to (or reminders of) who the characters are. Another has the little girl, Doozy, complaining about going back to school and telling Earl and Mooch, “Nobody makes you do anything! Animals have it so easy in the world,” leading Earl to comment, “She has a lot to learn,” and Mooch to add, “Yesh.” That is in some ways a quintessential Mutts strip, showing a high level of sensitivity to animals’ needs and concerns while staying strictly within the bounds of comic-strip form and even offering a laugh, albeit a rather wry one. McDonnell sometimes overdoes the animal friendliness of Mutts, to the point of becoming preachy. But again and again, he offers readers experiences not to be found in any other comic strip. Playtime, for example, includes a hilarious sequence in which Mooch makes the whole strip disappear for several days, eventually managing to bring himself and Earl back – to Linus’ pumpkin patch from Peanuts. Now that’s magic, and so is Mutts – the magic of a true cartooning virtuoso.

(++++) BELIEVING IN, COUNTING UP, PIGGING OUT

Believe It or Not, My Brother Has a Monster! By Kenn Nesbitt. Pictures by David Slonim. Scholastic. $16.99.

Ten Pigs: An Epic Bath Adventure. By Derek Anderson. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $16.99.

The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig. By Emer Stamp. Scholastic. $9.99.

     Counting books do not come much sillier, or much more enjoyable, than Kenn Nesbitt’s Believe It or Not, My Brother Has a Monster! The thing is, you see, that the narrator’s big brother has one and only one monster, picked up in a dark park back at Halloween. “I hope our parents don’t find out,” the narrator says, and this worry becomes the refrain of a deliciously offbeat accumulation of strange things that the older brother discovers and brings into his darkened room. Soon after the monster arrives, the older brother finds two gigantic spiders, and then three rats. “My brother liked his creepy pets,” the narrator explains, but actually, the critters in David Slonim’s highly amusing illustrations look anything but creepy: the spiders and rats both wear big smiles, and the rats spend their time playing with the older brother’s underwear. But the narrator is still worried about their parents finding out. How, after all, could they not find out about the four toads involved in a bouncing-balls game, the five black cats playing the stereo, the six computer-focused lizards? “They poked, they pounced, they pushed, they pried,/ until his new computer died.” The weirdnesses mount as the numbers do, until eventually, inevitably, the boys’ parents do walk into the older brother’s room – just when nine gigantic slugs are playing on the older brother’s skateboard. But – surprise! – what the parents see is not what the boys see. The slugs are harmless caterpillars, the seven ravens are lovely butterflies, the three horrid rats are small and peacefully sleeping mice, and the monster that started all this is merely “1 shaggy dog, just big and hairy,” whose playful antics win the parents over immediately. In fact, the parents are so delighted at all the cute and mischievous creatures they see that they give the boys permission to keep them all. And so we have a happy ending – except that so far the counting has only gone up to nine. What happened to 10? Well, that comes in at the very end of the book, on a page on which the sweet and harmless critters have again been transformed into what the narrator said they were in the first place – and have now been joined by 10 snakes. “I hope our parents don’t find out” is the book’s last line – just as it ought to be.

     The animals are more ordinary in Derek Anderson’s Ten Pigs: An Epic Bath Adventure, but there really is an adventure here, starting with one big-eyed and “VERY happy pig” lounging with his rubber duck in a bathtub. But two’s company, and soon enough, along comes a second pig, wearing a bathing suit and carrying a beach ball bigger than he is. Can they fit in the tub, too? Well, yes – but just barely. And then three’s a crowd: the tub certainly gets crowded when a pig wearing a snorkel and swim fins arrives to join the bubbly fun. Next – uh, oh! “This tub is too full./ That’s it, no more./ Oh no! Here comes pig number FOUR.” This one arrives with an inner tube, and succeeding ones – yes, they keep coming – show up in a pirate costume, playing the tuba (an especially ingenious bit of hilarity), bringing a toy boat, toting a sand castle in a pail, and…well, to say that it all gets crowded is a huge understatement. The tub looks like one of those circus cars containing far more clowns than could possibly be inside: there is no way the pigs and all their gear could possibly get into that tub! But they do – to the increasing frustration of the first pig. But then something starts toward the tub that causes all the pigs to leap out of the water and run away: it’s a wolf! Or – hmm. This wolf has a zipper down the front, and sure enough, it is the original pig, back in the bubbles and alone with his rubber duck once more. The counting here is almost incidental to the crowding and the increasing accumulation of things that could not under any circumstances fit in the bathtub and really don’t belong there in the first place. The two-page illustration of the nine intruding pigs and all their gear, all of them just noticing the approach of the “wolf,” makes for a hilarious climax – kids will have a great time picking out just what thing each of the pigs has brought along to the tub. Count on it.

     Speaking of frustrated pigs, the one responsible for Emer Stamp’s The Unbelievable Top Secret Diary of Pig is beyond frustration and all the way into anger mixed with fear. It seems there are evil chickens in cahoots with a farmer who once seemed friendly but now looks at Pig with suspiciously hungry intent, and a helpful duck may not be enough to prevent the spaceship launch or turn it into something beneficial. Hmm. OK, too much information, too fast. Back at the beginning, Pig sets the tone of his diary thus: “Me I is Pig. I is 465 sunsets old, but every day I gets older, so this fact is only correct right now, on the day I is writing.” And thus begins an amply illustrated diary in which Pig is constantly at odds with the evil farm chickens (he writes the word “evil” next to a drawing of one of them five times, including arrows pointing to the chicken). The chickens peck Pig’s head, “does little poos all over” the cow, steal Duck’s special food, and “has nasty evil little eyes.” Pig and Duck are friends, which is good for the narrative, because Duck fluently speaks “Pig, Chicken, Cow, Sheep and Farmer,” while Pig speaks only Pig and Duck and a little bit of Cow and Sheep. Pig is more than a trifle naïve: he does not have any clue as to why Farmer is fattening him up, and refuses to listens to Duck’s warnings about what is going to happen. Soon enough, though, Pig learns the truth, and even sees a chart that shows “how to cut me up into lots of different pieces.” Clearly escape is called for. How about going to Pluto? This is where the chickens’ master plot comes into play: they have created a hybrid tractor and rocket called, of course, a Trocket, and they want an expendable animal to fly it. That would be Pig. Again Duck conveys a warning, and by now Pig is predisposed to listen rather than dismiss what Duck says. And so this exceedingly improbable story becomes ever more fantastical and convoluted, with the wonderfully Piggish drawings perfectly complementing the thoroughly Piggish text: “I is trying very hard not to think about what will happen if there is no slops on Pluto. This would be very bad. But I still thinks that being chip-chopped up by Farmer would be worse.” The story eventually reaches for (and finds) a happy ending, for Pig and Duck if not for the chickens and Farmer, and the two heroes end up hopeful that they and the other farm animals will soon be under the care of a “Vegytarian Farmer” who will use the helpfully included map to find out how to rescue and care for Pig, Duck and the rest of the animals. This may indeed all be unbelievable, but for maximum fun, you just have to believe it anyway.

(++++) MERRY, MERRY, HAPPY, HAPPY

Enzo and the Christmas Tree Hunt! By Garth Stein. Illustrated by R.W. Alley. Harper. $17.99.

Little Elfie One. By Pamela Jane. Illustrated by Jane Manning. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $17.99.

Splat the Cat: Christmas Countdown. By Rob Scotton. HarperFestival. $6.99.

All I Want for Christmas Is You. By Mariah Carey. Illustrated by Colleen Madden. Doubleday. $17.99.

Christmas to Color. By Mary Tanana. Harper. $15.99.

     ’Tis the season for seasonal delights of all sorts, including, inevitably and delightfully, Christmas-themed books featuring familiar-to-kids characters having amusing but always surface-level adventures. Make that almost always surface-level, because Garth Stein goes deeper than most in Enzo and the Christmas Tree Hunt! Yes, it starts as a typical searching-for-just-the-right-tree story, as Zoë and her dad, Denny, head for a Christmas tree farm to choose a tree that Zoë repeatedly insists has to be “perfect.” Enzo gets his first introduction to snow, shares some of the cookies that the tree farm puts out for customers, meets “a young person with a red hat” who tells girl and dog that he is “a very tall elf,” and so on. This is a cut-your-own-tree establishment, which uses huge Newfoundlands to pull the trees on sleds after customers choose and fell them. There are plenty of strictly-typical-for-the-season scenes, all of them winningly illustrated by R.W. Alley – one of Enzo with a snowflake on his nose is particularly cute. But the story takes a darker turn when, after playing in the snow as Denny keeps searching for just the right tree, Zoë and Enzo find themselves alone: the man whom Zoë believes to be her father turns out to be someone else who is dressed the same way. Soon “Zoe zigs and zags between the trees, sometimes stumbling in the snow” as she looks for Denny, but he is nowhere to be found, and it is snowing harder and harder, and Zoë says she is afraid, and Enzo, who narrates the book, laments that “I have no words I can use to tell her” to stay calm and not be frightened. So resourceful Enzo uses the sounds he does have to help, howling loudly toward the Newfoundlands, and sure enough, soon one of them hears and responds, and there is a delightful rescue-and-reunion scene in which it turns out that the tree under which Zoë and Enzo took shelter is the perfect Christmas tree – Enzo is the one who notices that, too. Enzo’s “sign of respect and gratitude” to the Newfie who found them is as heartwarming as the reuniting of the human characters, and so is Enzo’s conclusion – once everyone is safely back at home, with the tree nicely decorated – that Christmas is all about love. That is super-sentimental and, in context, perfectly appropriate.

     Something lighter for the same age range of 4-8 is the rewriting by Pamela Jane of the song “Over in the Meadow,” with suitably cute illustrations by Jane Manning. Little Elfie One starts with, of course, one little elf, soon moving on to two little mousies, then three little “gingies” – gingerbread boys, that is: the adorable nicknames for the small beings here are a big part of what makes the book enjoyable. Little polar bears are “polies,” for instance, and small stars are “starries.” The mousies nibble, the “gingies” run, and carolers carol and “polies” swim and “snowies” (small snowmen) shiver, and so on. The winter scenes are pleasantly drawn – warm in spirit if not in the decidedly chilly things they portray – and the recasting of the old song is quite well done, with good rhythm and aptly chosen rhymes: “five” for the “polies” rhymes with “dive,” “seven” for the “starries” with “heaven,” and as for the reindeer, including Rudolph, the “little reindeer nine” soar “o’er the tall snowy pine.” Young children who know the original song will especially enjoy this Christmas variant of it, and if kids do not know the original yet, there is certainly nothing wrong with introducing them to it through Jane’s clever reworking.

     For even younger children, up to age four, Rob Scotton offers a touch-and-feel board book featuring the seasonal antics of Splat the Cat. The story is, of course, short and simple, but the touch-and-feel elements of the book fit it particularly well. Splat puts up a Christmas tree that feels gritty on the page; he puts a smooth-feeling gold star on top of it; he wraps gifts and gets covered in ribbon – which feels like ribbon; he sleeps quietly as Santa comes down the chimney, wearing a red outfit that feels fuzzy; and on Christmas morning, Splat and his family, still in nightclothes,  have “the best Christmas ever,” and kids get to feel Splat’s furry belly where the top and bottom of his pajamas do not quite meet. A solidly constructed book, Splat the Cat: Christmas Countdown is, of course, purely seasonal,  but it is made well enough, and tells its seasonal tale with enough zest, so that families can keep it after the holiday and bring it out again for future Christmas use. Splat will be just as enthusiastic and cutely silly in other years as he is in this one.

     Another fun-for-year-after-year book is based on a fun-for-year-after-year song that dates back to 1993 and was first released the following year: All I Want for Christmas Is You. Mariah Carey wrote the words and Walter Afanasieff the music, and the song has become a modern standard in somewhat the same way that Johnny Marks’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer became a seasonal staple soon after its first commercial performances in 1949. Carey’s lyrics, addressed by an adult to her lover, are prettily transformed for children by Colleen Madden’s illustrations into the story of a wished-for puppy that a little girl eventually gets for Christmas after drawing puppy pictures, making puppy cookies, wrapping gifts in puppy paper, even creating a snowdog while all the others kids are making more-traditional snow sculptures. In the real world, giving an animal, and its attendant responsibilities, as a holiday gift, is rarely a good idea: shelters have a huge upsurge in unwanted pets dropped off after holidays, as people discover just how much work it is to be responsible for a dog, cat, Easter chick or bunny, or other living creature every hour of every day for year after year. But in the pleasant not-quite-real world of All I Want for Christmas Is You, the whole story moves as inexorably toward a uniting of little girl and puppy as fairy tales move toward happily-ever-after marriages. Not realistic, perhaps, but oh-so-feel-good! The multiracial family in the book cooperates to get the little girl what she wants so much – and thank goodness the puppy comes from an adoption agency rather than a breeder or pet shop! Madden’s picture of the puppy being carried in an open box, just one of its eyes visible through an air hole, is beyond cute, and the story as a whole is as warmhearted as it can possibly be. Missing here is an endnote reminding parents and children not to become so swept up in holiday cheer that they bring home an animal they are unable or unwilling to care for over many years; that would have been a responsible touch. In its absence, parents will need to be a bit Scrooge-like when All I Want for Christmas Is You inevitably leads to kids saying how much they want a puppy. Popular songs and beautiful pictures are all well and good, but someone has to balance them with a real-life message about responsibility – even at Christmas. The many charms of All I Want for Christmas Is You are clear on page after page and will stay that way year after year. Puppies, however, grow into dogs, and kittens into cats. Children grow, too, and it is never too soon to remind them gently, even in the bright holiday season, that the real world is not the same thing as the world of popular songs and attractive picture books.

     Of course, there is nothing wrong with wishing that the real world could be more Christmas-like all the time, and not just during one part of the year. Some time spent coloring Mary Tanana’s Christmas to Color may even bring the Christmas spirit close for a longer time. This is a wonderful family-bonding book: almost wordless (except for occasional suitable seasonal expressions, such as “Wishing You Joy” and “Let Your Heart Be as Light as a Song”), the book offers some really lovely black-and-white art that kids and adults alike can color to their heart’s content. The intricacy of the pictures is quite something to see: even without color, they are thoroughly delightful. And many of the scenes Tanana chooses are not the typical ones usually associated with Christmas. Yes, there are some pinecones and reindeer and stars, but they are shown in ways that take them beyond standard Christmas fare (Tanana says she is influenced by the folk art of Ukraine, Hungary, Russia and Poland). And there are some scenes here that are very special indeed: peacock feathers nestled in a lovely vase, full pages of what could be snowflakes except for the fact that they have 12 rather than six points, a set of eight partridges suitable for anyone’s pear tree, a fascinating two pages on one of which there is an elaborate border around an empty tree-shaped space, and on the other of which is nothing but a tree – all this and much more. The sentiments “Peace on Earth,” “Deck the Halls” and “Joyeux Noël” are clearly written and surrounded by elaborate décor; a two-page scene showing four stockings tied to a pine garland is wonderful to look at for the elaborate and very different detail of each stocking; and the pages showing ornaments suggest a riot of color beyond what most people are likely to have in the real world. So Christmas to Color becomes, in a sense, realer than real, especially when readers get together to make it as colorful as it can be – which is very, very colorful indeed.

(+++) JUST FOR THE SOUND OF IT

Celebration of Christmas: Carol of Joy. BYU Singers conducted by Ronald Staheli; BYU Men’s Chorus and BYU Concert Choir conducted by Rosalind Hall; BYU Women’s Chorus conducted by Jean Applonie; BYU Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kory Katseanes. BYU Records. $13.99.

Make the Season Bright. United States Air Force Concert Band and Singing Sergeants conducted by Colonel Lowell E. Graham. Klavier. $16.99.

Rundumadum. Grassauer Blechbläser Ensemble conducted by Wolfgang Diem. Klanglogo. $18.99.

Flourishes, Tales and Symphonies: Music for Brass and Organ by Carlyle Sharpe, Giuseppe Verdi, William White, David Marlatt, Jaromír Weinberger, Camille Saint-Saëns and Peter Meechan. Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble conducted by Rodney Holmes. MSR Classics. $12.95.

1615: Gabrieli in Venice. Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and His Majesty’s Sagbutts & Cornetts conducted by Stephen Cleobury. Choir of King’s College. $25.99 (Blu-ray Disc+SACD).

     When it comes to the celebratory side of Christmas, few universities let the season ring out as joyfully as Brigham Young University does. BYU ensembles excel in seasonal music both vocal and instrumental, as is strongly evident throughout the new BYU Records release, Celebration of Christmas: Carol of Joy. What is most on display here is indeed joy, not only in the words of the 15 mostly familiar works on the disc but also in the art of music-making itself. These are singers and players who sound as if they revel in what they are doing, whether the orchestra is delivering delightfully dashing versions of Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride and the Trepak and Waltz of the Flowers from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, or the combined choirs are feelingly offering the words of Angels We Have Heard on High or, with the orchestra, O Come, All Ye Faithful. There is no downplaying here of the religious significance of Christmas, but there is no proselytizing, either, except to the extent that the performances are so warm and welcoming that they invite believers and nonbelievers alike to share in some Christmas magic. All the works are a delight to hear: Sing We Now of Christmas, Carol of Joy, Dryads’ Bells, Gesù Bambino, The First Noel, Gaudete, The Wexford Carol, Sussex Carol, The Goslings, and The Baby Softly Stills.

     The pleasures are similar but the sound very different – although equally engaging – in Make the Season Bright on the Klavier label. The 13 tracks here include more than that number of selections, because A Few Festive Things is a five-carol medley, The Many Moods of Christmas, Suite 3 contains four, Christmas Wonderland includes three, and there are five in Christmas Visitors. The suites jump from piece to piece pleasantly, with some juxtapositions especially effective: What Child Is This followed by Hark! The Herald Angels Sing in Many Moods of Christmas, Suite 3, for example, and Frosty the Snowman succeeded by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Christmas Visitors. Almost all the music here is upbeat and is sung and played with enthusiasm, with the United States Air Force Concert Band and Singing Sergeants under Colonel Lowell E. Graham bringing the material a sound very different from that of the Brigham Young performers – this disc’s version of Anderson’s Sleigh Ride is a particularly clear example. Also here are Jingle Bells, December Makes Me Feel This Way, Variations on a West Country Carol, The Polar Express, The Twelve Days of Christmas, a two-tune offering of The Christmas Song/Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and an unusual and affecting choice, Polonaise from “La Nuit de Noël” by Rimsky-Korsakov. The many lively tunes and fine band performance do indeed make the season bright.

     Even without vocals, seasonal music offers many delights, sometimes including offbeat ones. On a new Klanglogo CD called Rundumadum (Bavarian for “round and round”), the 10 members of Grassauer Blechbläser Ensemble (the Grassau Brass Band) combine expected instruments (French horn, trombone) with unexpected ones (alphorn, Baroque trumpet) in an all-brass program that, because of the wide range of instruments, has more color and more sonic variation than music by brass ensembles typically does. There are 20 works offered here, ranging from the one-minute Der güldene Rosenkranz to the seven-movements-in-nine-minutes Münchner Weinacht, a neat encapsulation of a Bavarian Christmas. Few of these pieces, other than The Christmas Song and Adeste Fidelis, will be familiar to non-German listeners, and as it turns out, that is all to the good, since the holiday flavor of the offerings comes through clearly even without knowing the tunes – and in the absence of singing, listeners can simply sit back and enjoy some excellent brass playing on instruments both familiar and unfamiliar. The Grassauer Blechbläser Ensemble is a group whose acquaintance it is well worth making, at Christmastime or anytime.

     The association of brass with Christmas is a longstanding one, but the pleasures of brass music are far from seasonal – and far from time-bound, as becomes clear on an intriguing new MSR Classics release featuring the interestingly named Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble, which is conducted by its founder, Rodney Holmes. Started in 1992 at the University of Chicago, the ensemble took its name from the gargoyles at the school’s campus, which unfortunately means that, despite the name, the players are not themselves gargoyles (that would be a sight to see). Listeners who get over the disappointment of being gargoyle-less will here encounter some interesting juxtapositions of brass-focused works from the Romantic and contemporary eras. The mixing and matching does not always work seamlessly, but the attempt to bridge the musical gap through repertoire choice and some fine arrangements of Verdi, Weinberger and Saint-Saëns by Craig Garner is an intriguing one. From Verdi we get the famous brindisi from Act I of La Traviata; from Weinberger, the well-known polka and fugue from Schwanda, the Bagpiper; and from Saint-Saëns, a portion of the “Organ” symphony. Taking the first two of these out of context does them little harm, but doing so with the Saint-Saëns material is less justifiable, although clearly the purpose here is to showcase the ensemble’s playing rather than delve into the subtleties of the composer’s Symphony No. 3. Alternating with these works from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries are ones from the 21^st: Flourishes (2005/2010) and Prelude, Elegy and Scherzo (2012) by Carlyle Sharpe; The Dwarf Planets (2012) by William White; Earthscape (2014) by David Marlatt; and Velvet Blue (2012) by Peter Meehan. White’s five-movement suite offers some interesting instrumentation, although it does not really differentiate the dwarf planets particularly intelligibly (a difficult task in instrumental music). The other contemporary pieces offer solid understanding of writing for brass, and Sharpe’s in particular show sensitivity to the instruments’ capabilities and sound qualities. None of the modern works is highly distinctive, however: all are well-crafted without appearing to stem from the kind of inspiration that has kept the older pieces (in the forms in which they were originally written) in the concert and opera repertoire for so long a time.

     When it comes to considering the longevity of brass music, the works of Giovanni Gabrieli come immediately to mind. A new release featuring the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, on its own label, shows why in unusually striking terms. The sheer sonic splendor of Gabrieli’s brass music, when heard as it is here – using historically accurate performance practices and reproductions of the instruments of Gabrieli’s time – is quite astonishing. And the release of this recording both in SACD format and on a Blu-ray audio disc is no mere marketing ploy: a new Dolby sound-enhancement system called Atmos is employed here for the first time on a classical-music release. It is likely that the combination of Dolby Atmos with the excellent acoustics of the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, is what makes the music here sound so balanced, clear and well-rounded, enveloping listeners and involving them rather than being directed at them from a single location. The experience is a touch unsettling, being more like what moviegoers get in theaters – for which Dolby Atmos was developed – than what classical-concert attendees are accustomed to. In some repertoire, this type of sound would simply be gimmicky. But for the 13 works by Gabrieli heard here, it works exceptionally well: Gabrieli’s music, after all, was generally designed for celebratory occasions, and under such circumstances, the notion of having music surround listeners and pull them into a sonic experience was as valid 500 years ago as it is today. Only the technology has changed – and this recording represents an unusually attractive melding of the latest recording techniques with some of the oldest and still most elegant brass music ever written. For Christmas season or any season – these Gabrieli works are actually more attuned to Easter than Christmas – a recording like this one provides ample reason simply to sit back and indulge oneself in the sound of absolutely first-rate choral singing, wonderfully idiomatic brass playing, and a sonic presentation that keeps every nuance of the music as clear and beautiful as it can possibly be.

(+++) THE PEACE SEEKERS

Arvo Pärt and Robert Wilson: The Lost Paradise—A Film by Günter Atteln. Accentus Music DVD. $29.99.

Arvo Pärt and Robert Wilson: Adam’s Passion. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste. Accentus Music DVD. $24.99.

Bernstein: Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish”; Missa Brevis; The Lark. Claire Bloom, narrator; Kelley Nassief, soprano; Paulo Mestre, countertenor; Maryland State Boychoir, Washington Chorus, São Paulo Symphony Choir, Members of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $12.99.

Constance Hauman: Falling into Now. Constance Hauman, vocals and piano; Ross Pederson, drums, percussion, bass, guitar and midi. Isotopia Records. $16.99.

     Fans of the gentle, evanescent music of Arvo Pärt and the gentle, evanescent thinking of the man behind it will be overjoyed at the release of two new Accentus Music DVDs focused on Estonia’s most-famous contemporary composer. The Lost Paradise is a film in which German director Günter Atteln follows Pärt for a year, through Estonia and to Japan, Germany and Italy. Learning that Pärt feels especially at home in Estonia’s quiet forests is no surprise – his music reflects those woodlands as clearly as that of Sibelius reflects the countryside of Finland as well as its history. But Pärt’s work has a spiritual undercurrent that is missing in that of Sibelius, and a pervasive quietness that paradoxically comes through even in its louder sections. In the documentary, Pärt himself speaks of the experience of pain and its positive elements, the way in which one comes through it with greater understanding, empathy, sensitivity. His music may not reflect this directly – it is too insubstantial for anything as prosaic as a specific program – but the sensibility surely pervades the sounds that Pärt carefully crafts (seeing the meticulous way he works at his piano is a highlight of The Lost Paradise). Pärt, who is now 80, looks fragile in this documentary, and he speaks slowly and sometimes haltingly, yet the conviction with which he approaches his music and its communicative ability comes through clearly. The Lost Paradise becomes, in addition to a look at a year in Pärt’s life, a kind of framing tale for Adam’s Passion, a stage work in which director Robert Wilson uses four pieces by Pärt to tell the familiar tale of the Fall – a story that Pärt considers both individual to everyone who sees and hears it, and universal as a tragic foundation for all of humanity.

     Adam’s Passion itself is available in its entirety as a separate DVD, recorded at the work’s world première in Tallinn in May 2015. This is a composite work containing four Pärt pieces: Sequentia, Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa and Miserere. The music itself is scarcely uplifting either in its sequence or within its individual sections – Pärt does see Adam’s story as essentially tragic, as many have before him – yet there is a level of comfort communicated by the way Pärt delicately balances vocal and instrumental forces, and through the deliberate pacing of so much of the material. Pärt himself is religious in a largely orthodox way, and his works attempt to connect the human with the divine again and again, with full acceptance of the difficulty of doing this and the uncertainty of success. Indeed, Pärt’s music can remind devout listeners that if God answers all prayers, sometimes the answer is “no.” Neither Pärt’s philosophy nor his mostly quiet but not-always-serene music is to all tastes: his works sometimes seem emotionally, if not harmonically, like throwbacks to a much earlier time of simple faith and forthright belief. Yet Pärt is intellectually curious about the universe and humanity’s place in it, and his music is more reflective than insistent in its spirituality. It is rarefied, yes, but it is rarefied for a reason. Aldous Huxley once wrote, "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” The comment is particularly appropriate where the music of Pärt is concerned. The DVDs of The Lost Paradise and Adam’s Passion show that for Pärt, silence and music are inextricably intertwined, and both are expressions of faith and devotion, as well as a questing toward higher realms without any certainty of reaching them, and without knowing what will be discovered if one does reach them – except for one thing: surcease of pain.

     Pain, and a way past it to peace, are equally central in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish,” whose original 1963 version is offered under Marin Alsop’s leadership on a new Naxos CD. Alsop considers herself a Bernstein protégé, and certainly she shows rare sensitivity to his thinking and his wrestling with the issue of faith in this recording. The original version of this symphony features a woman narrator, and that lends the questioning and uncertainty of the work an additional layer of intensity and pathos, which Alsop fully explores. “Kaddish” is the Jewish prayer for the dead, but in this symphony the narrator offers to say it not for a human being but for God – and then goes on, through four movements in which Bernstein characteristically juxtaposes tonality and atonality and sets the two approaches against each other, to strive for peace and contentment that remain elusive even at the work’s end. Claire Bloom is an effective narrator, and the solo and choral elements of the symphony are well handled here, with the music feelingly played by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The underlying layer of intellectuality beneath the emotional side of Bernstein’s work gets somewhat short shrift in a performance designed to grab listeners and hold their attention as Bernstein works through his personal issues of faith and, through them, issues that may well be troubling the audience as well. Bernstein eventually suggests that interdependence of God and humanity, not slavish obedience of one to the other, is the route to understanding and a better world – but even this, the music tells listeners, is not a fully satisfactory solution, and in fact such a solution may not exist on Earth at all. The considerable thoughtfulness of the “Kaddish” symphony comes through especially well in this performance, and the firm hand with which Alsop guides the performers is welcome. The symphony is bracketed on the CD by two works that are musically related to each other and related thematically to the symphony’s concerns – and are both performed by musicians from São Paulo rather than Baltimore. The Lark, which originally dates to 1955, is based on the life of Joan of Arc as interpreted by Lillian Hellman in L’Alouette. Changes to the work in 2008 and 2012 resulted in the concert version with narration heard here, which makes the spiritual elements of the story – elements whose certainty contrasts strongly with the questioning of faith in the symphony – come clearly to the fore. Bernstein adapted the music of The Lark into his 1988 Missa Brevis, and this work too has a forthright certainty of faith that is noticeably and quite deliberately absent in the symphony. Both The Lark and Missa Brevis also contain significant theatrical elements – Bernstein was as much a man of the theater as of the concert hall – and it is these to which Alsop pays particular attention in her interpretations, making the entire CD into a work in which the theatrical and musical worlds intersect to probe the grand questions that continue to befuddle and engage humanity and deny so many people an ultimate assurance of contentment and peace.

     The peace sought by soprano Constance Hauman in a CD of a very different kind is that of purely human relationships: what is spiritual on the Isotopia Records disc called Falling into Now is human love, understanding and acceptance. Bernstein was a pioneer in mixing theatrical, classical and popular musical genres, a crossover melding that has become quite common among contemporary composers; and it is this approach that Hauman, as composer as well as performer, cultivates. Her objective appears to be to bring greater seriousness of both words and performance to the popular-music genre: all 14 of these songs (she wrote 12 of them and co-wrote the other two) are about emotional pain and inner turmoil, the desire for love and peace and acceptance and the difficulty of finding any of the three. What Hauman tries to do here is to reach beyond the formulaic nature of relationships as they are generally portrayed both in opera and in pop music: she strives to elicit empathy, not just sympathy, through stories of love and loss, betrayal and emotional turmoil, anger and much-desired equanimity. Indeed, she tries rather too hard to pull all these strands together: her voice is a fine one, which makes the music more effective but denies it the raw power and emotional connection that the audience so often receives from lesser singers, whose vocal imperfections make it seem they are trying to hold themselves together even though, in reality, they simply cannot hit many of the notes properly. Hauman is expressive in music, lyrics and delivery, but it is a controlled expressiveness, which indeed has more in common with opera than with popular music. The arc of the songs, from desperation and depression to eventual hopefulness and learned, hard-earned strength, is a familiar one in music of all sorts, most definitely including the theatrical type. There is real pain communicated in some of these songs, but it is pain filtered not only through the organization of words and music but also through the vocal quality that Hauman brings to the material. Somewhat oddly, the effectiveness of her delivery undermines the intensity of her material. The music, which has significant jazz influences, is well-written and well-performed, but Falling into Now ultimately falls a little short in its earnest desire to use a voice of better-than-usual quality to communicate experiences that are, at bottom, comparatively mundane.