(+++) PERSONAL TRIBUTES

Ein Feste Burg—Luther in Music. Soloists and ensembles conducted by Ludwig Güttler. Berlin Classics. $18.99.

Jack Gallagher: Piano Music. Frank Huang, piano. Centaur. $18.99.

Derek Bourgeois: Trombone Concerto; William Goldstein: Colloquy for Solo Trombone; Stephen Lias: River Runner; Jean-Baptiste Arban: Variations on “The Carnival of Venice” (arr. Hunsberger). Deb Scott, trombone; Ron Petti, piano. Navona. $14.99.

     The influence of Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses can scarcely be overestimated: 500 years ago, it led to the first substantial chink in the thousand-plus-year-old armor of the monolithic Catholic Church, ushering in an era of questioning and freethinking that forever ended the Church-focused control of the Dark Ages and that led to the multiplicity of Western religions that the world knows today. That this was not Luther’s intent is clear: Lutheranism, the Protestant religion that most closely follows Luther’s precepts, retains a great deal of the style and substance of Catholicism – indeed, so much that people dissatisfied with more than the Church’s sale of indulgences (Luther’s primary focus and concern) went on to create forms of Protestant worship even further distanced from the control and trappings of Rome. And the different forms of worship used music quite differently, with Lutheran music standing highest in the Baroque era because of the Bach family and other composers who were nearly as notable. Ludwig Güttler’s assemblage of performances of music that draws on Luther’s own words and tunes – notably but not exclusively Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (c. 1529) and Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her (words 1534, music 1539) – is not only a commemoration of the five centuries through which Luther’s thinking has resonated, but also an intriguing compendium of musical styles dating as far back as the time of Johann Walter (1496-1570) and continuing to our own time through music by Daniel Schnyder (born 1961). This Berlin Classics release is a specialty item rather than a CD likely to appeal to listeners at large, as so much of Bach’s music does: it does include, inevitably, several short Bach works (three excerpts from the Weinachtsoratorium, for instance, all inevitably out of context); but other works here are of considerably less interest except in this specific context. For example, Güttler assembled a Partita on Ein feste Burg by pulling together seven brass-and-trumpet versions of the tune by Heinrich Schütz, Melchior Franck, Melchior Vulpius, the aforementioned Walter (two versions), Michael Altenburg, and Johann Crüger; and this is interesting to scholars of Baroque composition and brass-music fanciers, but will simply sound repetitious to many listeners. A similar Partita on Von Himmel hoch incorporates works for brass by Johannes Eccard, Michael Praetorius (two pieces), and Johann Hermann Schein; it has the same strengths and weaknesses as its sibling. Also here is Baroque music by Dietrich Buxtehude, Christian August Jacobi, and Johann Ludwig Krebs – and much newer works by Max Reger (who was Catholic, but whose two short contributions here are notable), Matthias Kleemann (born 1948), Jean Langlais (1907-1991), and the aforementioned Schnyder, who gets more time here than anyone else except Bach: Part I of Schnyder’s Oratorium “Eine Feste Burg” is given in its entirety. Unfortunately, this work drags on and on and spends too much time incorporating the usual contemporary choral and orchestral techniques into a piece that bears little resemblance to the spirit (much less the letter) of Luther’s music and teachings. It, and the other recent works given here, do show that Luther’s influence has persisted for five centuries, but they also show it so transmogrified as to be barely recognizable at times. The performances, by various soloists and groups, are generally quite good; they are selected from a wide variety of recordings dating from 1982 to 2014. The arrangement of pieces on the disc is clearly a personal one: there is no inherent reason for presenting this material in this specific order. The CD thus stands largely as Güttler’s own acknowledgment of and tribute to Luther, rather than being a recording that reaches out to audiences at large to display the tremendous influence, musical and otherwise, that Luther has had for so many people for so many years.

     The new Centaur CD of piano music by Jack Gallagher, performed by Frank Huang, is personal in a different way: most of the nine works are dedicated to Gallagher’s family and friends. This could easily turn the disc into a speak-to-oneself-and-one’s-intimates experience. Happily, Gallagher’s music is better than that, reaching out beyond a core audience more effectively, in some ways, than does Güttler’s project. One reason for this is that Gallagher has rethought six of the nine pieces here and appears, in so doing, to have made them quite accessible – although the easiest-to-enjoy work here, Six Pieces for Kelly (1989), has not been substantially revised. This is a kind of “Kids’ Corner” (distantly related to, but not to be confused with, Children’s Corner by Debussy): intended for young pianists, Gallagher’s work includes a short and cheery March, suitably sweet Lullaby, bright and forthright Piping Song, warm Chant d’Insouciance, wistful Folksong, and dashing final Balkan Dance. Gallagher has considerable skill as a miniaturist, shown also in Six Bagatelles (1979), dedicated to six different people – five movements are heard here, with an explanatory note about the other. The short Pastorale (1978) also shows Gallagher to be effective in miniaturist mode. It is one of four pieces here that are dedicated to Gallagher’s wife, the others being Sonata for Piano (1973/2005), Nocturne (1976/2008), and Happy Birthday, April (1976/2014). The Sonata, which opens the album, is somewhat reminiscent of Hindemith in a lyrical mood, but it is more transparent and less turgid. Nocturne is almost too close to its clear lineage back to Field and Chopin: pleasant enough, it somewhat overstays its welcome after 10½ minutes. Happy Birthday, April concludes the CD pleasantly – another effective Gallagher miniature, this one with distinct pop-music roots – but it has less of an encore flavor than the work placed before it here, Malambo Nouveau (2000/2009), a bouncily rhythmic piece that gives Huang’s fingers a real workout. The other two pieces heard here are Evening Music (1998/2009), a pleasantry that is more effectively evocative than Nocturne, and Sonatina for Piano (1976/1999), whose Berceuse second movement is a sweet little lullaby that Gallagher later orchestrated. Huang’s pianism, although not technically perfect, is involved and enthusiastic, and is a reason that this compilation of works written and rewritten over a period of more than 40 years comes through as much more than a series of pieces united primarily by Gallagher’s affinity for the people to whom he dedicated them.

     A new Navona CD featuring contemporary music by Derek Bourgeois, William Goldstein, Stephen Lias and Jean-Baptiste Arban is highly personal as well – in this case, reflecting the personal taste of trombonist Deb Scott, which may or may not reflect listeners’. Scott clearly has an affinity for jazz as much as for classical forms – it shows in how she plays as well as in what she plays. Arban’s very virtuosic Variations on “The Carnival of Venice,” originally written for trumpet, ought to be more fun than they are here: they do not lie very well on the trombone in this arrangement, and there is a resulting breathiness to Scott’s playing that is continually (if not continuously) distracting, although pianist Ron Petti backs here up here and throughout the disc with considerable aplomb. More interesting than Arban’s work is Lias’ River Runner, which has the most personal background of anything here: it is a reflection of a paddling trip that the composer and Scott took together. The three movements – Lajitas, The Sentinel and Rock Slide – all offer effective tone painting with considerable jazz inflections, to which Scott takes quite readily. The expressiveness of the trombone, which often comes as a surprise to people accustomed to its ceremonial use, comes through especially well in the central movement, while the excitement of the finale is very well communicated. Scott also has a chance to show the emotional expressiveness of her instrument in Goldstein’s Colloquy for Solo Trombone, a kind of “duality” piece that alternates between intensity bordering on anger and calm bordering on stasis. The most conventionally structured work here is Bourgeois’ concerto, and it is also the one in which trombone and piano are most effectively paired rather than having the keyboard primarily in a support role. The conventional three-movement form of this work belies its stylish amalgamation of classical and jazz idioms with periodic hints of soulful (and somewhat overdone) pop music. The songfulness of the trombone comes through to fine effect in the central Adagio, after the multifaceted opening Allegro; and the concluding Presto is a particularly buoyant display piece in which both Scott and Petti get a real workout. The overall feeling left behind after the music concludes is that both Scott and Petti seem to have had a great time recording this work. Trombone fanciers will certainly find this disc a pleasure, and even listeners with a more-casual relationship with the trombone will discover a fair share of intriguing material here.

(++++) REALER THAN REAL

Beguiled by the Wild: The Art of Charley Harper. Pomegranate. $50.

     Maybe it is only because the word “beguiled” appears in this book’s title, but the single adjective that seems most fitting to describe the book itself is “beguiling.” There is nothing else quite like the nature art of Charley Harper (1922-2007). His stylized, simplified, geometric renditions of animals of all types have the remarkable ability to make the creatures seem more clearly themselves, more definitive in some way, than they would if photographed or drawn in the hyper-realistic style of, say, James Audubon. Harper captures what makes a particular animal distinctive to us humans without anthropomorphizing any creature unduly, except to a limited extent for the sake of humor. And Harper’s humor itself is distinctive: fond of written puns and amusing artistic layouts, he uses both verbal and visual techniques to pull the reader/viewer into a piece of art and notice things that he or she only thought were clear before Harper delineated them so skillfully.

     Thus, in this wonderful coffee-table book that should, at all costs, be kept away from coffee and any other potentially staining materials, one page is called Foxsimiles and shows the heads of 11 foxes – two adults and nine kits – stacked atop each other and looking directly out of the page, as if from a dark, perfectly circular den opening. Geometrically perfect too are the foxes’ triangular ears, their circular eyes and noses, their trapezoidal reddish faces. And the whimsical text complements the art perfectly, suggesting that readers “hear the din in the den at dindin, the sibling quibbling of the disputatious duplicates, the irascible replicas.” Elsewhere, Arctic Circle offers a background of stylized square and triangular ice floes and a foreground where musk oxen are lined up exactly like a line of football players, the impression accentuated by horns drawn to look just like helmets, facing off against wolves that are seen from behind, as if the camera is placed behind them – with imagined sports bravado concealing, or rather elucidating, the harsh realities of life in a harsh climate: “‘C’mon, wolf pack! Make yer play! Youse bums rush like glaciers! We’ll oxidize youse guys! We’ll bury ya in the permafrost, we’ll stomp ya unda th’ tundra!’ How’d it end up? Sudden death in overtime.” The puns, the lighthearted treatment of matters of underlying seriousness, the contrast with messy reality of the perfect geometric shapes that Harper uses to create scenes that embody the essentials of wildlife and the wild life, all while presenting animals and their habitats with striking clarity – these are the elements that are so captivating here.

     Every page has its pleasures, and every page repays multiple closer looks. Tall Tail includes a road runner, facing right, that holds a lizard’s tail in its beak – the lizard itself, having shed the tail, is racing away to the left. And the road runner’s tail seems as tall and broad as the cactus right next to it – until, on closer examination, it becomes clear that Harper here plays with perspective, and that the road runner must be in the foreground, the cactus some distance away, making sense of the fact that the lizard seems to be running through the bird but in fact must be fleeing somewhere between it and the cactus. Perspective is also at play in Phancy Pheathers, a wonderful two-page look at a ring-necked pheasant, which requires the book to be turned sideways to accommodate the bird’s extremely long and elegantly patterned tail. And here Harper ruminates, “A rainbow in the snow is a better bromide for the midwinter blahs than buying a new spring outfit around the phirst of Phebruary.” Harper’s musings, however amusingly expressed, often convey matters of considerable seriousness. Green Cuisine, which shows a line of cows munching grass, each cow blending perfectly into the next so the animals look like one extremely elongated bovine, is about “harmless herbivores” that eventually become “protein for the predators,” and asks, “Can a nature lover ever find true happiness at the top of the food chain?” A very difficult question, that – although Harper’s work certainly helps nudge nature lovers toward happiness, as well as in the direction of greater appreciation of the natural world, so he himself is part of the answer to his own rather rhetorical question.

     Many of Harper’s most-intriguing works in Beguiled by the Wild feature birds: owls, painted buntings, cardinals, black skimmers, woodpeckers and more. But certain other animals also make recurring appearances, and it is hard to escape the notion that Harper simply enjoys some creatures to an exceptional degree. Foremost among these would be raccoons, whose faces Harper seems to find quite irresistible: a line of them, all black and grey, peeks into a window at the brightly wrapped Christmas gifts inside; four of them, stacked, are seen through the eaten part of a watermelon slice that they have just been enjoying; eight are standing on hind legs next to and behind each other for a “masked ball in the backyard” whenever food is about; a whole passel of them may be seen peeking from behind a woodpile, scouting out a skunk who is quietly consuming some sort of food that the raccoons are clearly thinking about purloining as soon as they can figure out how to avoid provoking an odor attack; and more. With this last picture, called Raccoonnaissance, Harper makes some of his interest in this particular creature quite clear: “Raccoons have the brain. High in IQ, cutes, cunning, and caution, they move into the suburbs with their upwardly mobile lifestyle. Raccoons will scatter your garbage, trash your property, and charm you right out of your tree.” Clearly they  charmed Harper right out of his. And Beguiled by the Wild will charm you right out of yours. This is truly a feast for the family: beautifully delineated and colored art that is sometimes very easy to figure out, other times inventively designed into visual puzzles, along with writing that is lighthearted, funny, informative and engaging all at once. Beguiling indeed.

(++++) FRIENDSHIPS, STRAINED

Muddle and Mo. By Nikki Slade Robinson. Clarion. $14.99.

Are We Still Friends? By Ruth Horowitz. Illustrated by Blanca Gómez. Scholastic. $16.99.

     Ah, the complexities of friendship! Muddle, a duck, discovers them in Nikki Slade Robinson’s ultra-simple but thoroughly engaging Muddle and Mo. Bright yellow, huge-footed Muddle comes to a realization one day. Several of them, actually. Muddle walks over to his large, white, four-footed best friend, Mo, and announces that Mo “is a funny color for a duck!” In fact, Muddle observes, Mo has a hairy beak, wings on his head, non-waddling feet, and other characteristics that, Muddle is sorry to say, are just plain weird. Even Mo’s quack is wrong – it comes out, “Maa-aaa!” Poor Muddle is so confused – until he sees two more Mo-like creatures standing behind a sign that reads “Goat Farm.” Oh, my goodness! “You’re not a duck! You’re a goat!” exclaims Muddle. Apparently this has never before occurred to him. Mo, too kind to want muddled Muddle to become even more muddled, simply explains, “Yes, Muddle, I’m a goat.” And that is that. Well, not quite – because now Muddle, who has never found a friendship issue that he cannot make more confusing, has to ask Mo, “Am I a goat?” Not at all, Mo assures  him: “You are one hundred percent duck. And you will always be a duck.” Whew! Thank goodness that is out of the way! And so the two buddies cuddle up together and resume their unlikely friendship. How they first got together, what they do together, why Muddle never noticed the differences between them before – there is none of any of that here. Robinson simply makes this a short, sweet little story (with simple, straightforward drawings against plain blue backgrounds) of two friends who are as different as can be and yet, for whatever reason, have all they need in common, and can remain happily together now that they have straightened out questions of who’s who and what’s what.

     The things that Beatrice, a bear, and Abel, a mouse, have in common are far more apparent, and their interdependence is, too. In Ruth Horowitz’s book, the two live in side-by-side houses with just a low stone wall between them. On Beatrice’s side are the beehives she keeps, from which Abel helps her gather honey every summer. On Abel’s side are apple trees, whose fruit Beatrice helps Abel pick in autumn. And the key to all the cooperation is the bees, which tie the two friends together. “Beatrice’s bees needed flower nectar to make their honey. Abel’s trees needed bees to spread their pollen to make their fruit.” So all is fine and happy all around – until, one day, Abel is stung by a bee and, in pain, makes an exclamation that, from a distance, sounds to Beatrice like silly laughter. So Beatrice laughs in her turn – and Abel, who thinks he has been laughed at and insulted, insults Beatrice, and soon there is a war of words that rapidly escalates into a big fence between the houses and a pile of junk atop the wall to keep Abel and Beatrice apart. The bees, of course, pay no attention to any of this, and continue doing what bees always do. Then the junk pile collapses, right on top of Beatrice, and Abel realizes that his friend may be hurt, so he digs her out, both apologize for the misunderstanding, and all goes back to where it was at the start – and ends happily. The flat, cartoonish art by Blanca Gómez fits this friendship fable well, and Horowitz does a good, easy-to-understand job of showing how unintentional misunderstandings can result in genuinely hurt feelings that can put unwanted strains on what would otherwise remain a special friendship. The lesson is soft-pedaled enough so parents may want to reinforce it if reading the book with a child who has had a falling-out with a friend.  If nothing like that has happened, Are We Still Friends? can stand as a cautionary tale, with kids no doubt assuring parents that they would never misunderstand as Abel and Beatrice do. At some point, though, they likely will misunderstand in very much this way, at which time it will be good to have the book around for re-reading and reaffirmation of the importance of friendship and of not letting small slights, real or imagined, grow into big ones.

(++++) KNOT YOUR EVERYDAY KLUTZ

The Klutz Book of Knots. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $14.99.

Sew Mini Animals: More Than 12 Animal Plushies to Stitch & Stuff. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $21.99.

     Even among the always unusual “books-plus” offerings from Klutz, whose productions are crafts projects built around instructional books and including just about everything needed to get the projects done, The Klutz Book of Knots stands out. On the face of it, this is one of the simplest items Klutz has produced, being merely a spiral-bound, lie-flat book packaged with two brightly colored cords. But open the book and start looking at the information on how to tie “23 of the world’s best hitches, ties, wraps & knots,” and the cleverness of the packaging becomes immediately apparent. The instructional pages are thick and are interspersed with cardboard “guide” pages that are extra-thick and specifically contain punched-out or cutout areas through which you fit the cords while following the knot-tying instructions. The cutouts, which are various sizes and various shapes, are perfect places to practice knot-tying, because they hold the cords in the right position so you can twist and mingle them according to the clear, well-illustrated instructions. One practice page, for example, includes two lozenge-shaped holes laid out vertically, for use when tying clove hitches, and two laid out horizontally, for use with half hitches. There are also two simple punched holes on the page – for use when you flip the page over to the next set of instructions, where the punched holes prove to be just the right place to tie a bow tie. The cleverness of the practice pages really comes through as the knots get more complicated. For the complex package knot, for example, the practice page includes one round punched hole and three holes punched on three sides so they become notches at the top, bottom and left. A diagram of the finished package knot shows exactly what part of the cord should end up exactly where when the knot is tied correctly. Of course, the instruction book would not be a Klutz product if it did not include some humor to go with the information. So, for example, the “sheet bend” is described as being “handy for creating a makeshift rope (like from clothes or shoelaces) when you’re in a pinch,” and illustrated with a cartoon of a kid clad as a superhero climbing out the window of a tree house by using clothes tied together with this know. And the timber hitch, used when hauling logs, is shown being used by a busy cartoon beaver that is carrying eight gnawed, tied-together logs on its back. The knots explained and illustrated in The Klutz Book of Knots range from the simple and intuitive to the pretty doggone complicated, and mastering them outside the book will take some doing – parents, as well as the kids ages eight and up for whom this offering is intended, will really appreciate being able to learn the knots using the super-clever practice pages, and will find that this book provides a real-world skill that can be used day after day and year after year.

     A more-typical Klutz offering, also for ages eight and up – one with considerable charm and cuteness rather than a lot of practical real-world applicability – is Sew Mini Animals, which includes pretty much everything needed to make a dozen or more two-to-three-inch-high little plush toys or friends. Like most Klutz offerings, this one has a book bound, with strong tape, to a box containing the projects’ essentials. In this case, that means nine colors of felt, stuffing, eight colors of floss, two embroidery needles, some precut felt eyes and cheeks, and plenty of patterns to use when cutting out felt into animal shapes. There are real-world skills to be learned here – embroidery, and even straightforward sewing – but the primary focus is on specific techniques needed to create these particular projects. Thus, there is information here on how to make a whip stitch and back stitch, but those instructions are purely at the service of creating the little animal fiends. Klutz does its usual excellent job of explaining how to do that. Creating a seal, for example, is an eight-step process that starts after assembly of the right items: cream and grey floss, the grey cut out into two seal body shapes, one seal base and four seal fins, the cream used to cut out a circle that will become the seal’s face. The steps start with “using a back stitch, make a nose and mouth on the face piece,” and continue through assembly and attachment of the various parts – with each stage of the project clearly shown, and each needed stitch designated. The book handles every project with similar care. It sensibly starts with information on making a penguin, a simple project on which young craftspeople can hone their skills. Then there are sections called “Flat and Fuzzy” (including sloth, bat, pig, and whale), “Belly Buddies” (seal and hedgehog), “Four-Legged Friends” (fox, raccoon and alpaca), and “Cute All Around” (bunny, panda, octopus, and owl). The projects proceed roughly in order of difficulty, and in some cases learning one makes the next one much easier – for instance, “the raccoon is made in almost the same way as the fox, with a few changes in felt colors and details.” All the little felt critters created using Sew Mini Animals are adorable, and the package provides enough variety so kids can easily pick and choose which projects they want to do – one child might, for example, prefer to make nothing but penguins, in multiple felt colors, while another might want to follow the book from start to finish and try making one of every animal shown. Sew Mini Animals is a winning combination of careful instruction and enjoyable results – which is exactly the mixture that makes Klutz “books-plus” projects so special.

(++++) ALMOST-HUMAN ANTICS

Third Grade Mermaid. By Peter Raymundo. Scholastic. $12.99.

Bunny vs. Monkey, Book Two. By Jamie Smart. David Fickling Books. $7.99.

     The troubles and travails of everyday life for those in the six-to-10 age group seem somehow easier to handle when kids realize that other creatures have the same kinds of problems, and they find ways to solve them. Mermaids, for example, go to school, have to master spelling tests, want to be “in with the in crowd,” have annoying mer-brothers and well-meaning but overly pushy mermaid moms, and have to cope with bullies and with the responsibility of pets. It just so happens that when mermaids have all this to deal with, the bullies are sharks and the possible pet is a ton-and-a-half mutated shrimp to which the annoying mer-brother is allergic. But hey, not everything can be the same above the sea and under it. Just most things. Peter Raymundo, whose Third Grade Mermaid is the start of a series, makes mermaid Cora fully human in her concerns and worries but sufficiently, well, fishy in her appearance and surroundings so that kids will enjoy what she goes through even though they would not like to go through the same things themselves. Although not quite a graphic novel, Third Grade Mermaid tells its story in pictures as much as in words: it is supposed to be Cora’s diary, which she has to write and draw in because, as her mer-mother explains, “It’s enchanted. And because you willingly put pen to paper, from now on you’ll be compelled to write in it.” This eventually turns out to be a white lie, or the mermaid equivalent of one; young readers will likely realize this quickly but won’t care, since without Cora (who is a bit lazy when it comes to school work, which includes writing) feeling she has to chronicle her adventures, there would be no book. Cora’s problem is that the only thing she really wants to do is perform with the junior version of the Singing Sirens – she is absolutely crazy about the Singing Sirens themselves, because they look so gorgeous all the time and “when you have scales with that much shine, who needs to spell?” Unfortunately, Cora’s poor spelling test results in her being bounced from the team unless she can take the test again and do much, much better – get an A, in fact. That means studying really hard, which is not an appealing prospect; and to make matters worse, if Cora does not bring her grade up and get back on the team, her place will be taken by Vivian Shimmermore, who is the actual younger sister of the grown-up Singing Sirens. Cora has a bad case of jealousy where Vivian is concerned. She also has difficulty focusing and concentrating. And then there is the small matter of the gigantic shrimp. He started as a little shrimp, but after Cora rescued him from the “dumping zone” where “humans dump their toxic barrels of sludge,” he got sludged and started to grow and grow and grow and become anything but shrimpy. He is, however, extremely salty, so Cora names him Salty and figures out how to get rid of him when he starts hanging around all the time. But then she feels bad about that, even though Salty has caused her mer-brother’s face to swell up like crazy, which Cora doesn’t feel too bad about. Eventually, Cora gets Salty back, does her studying, gets a great spelling grade, and realizes that she doesn’t really care about the Singing Sirens anymore and is just fine letting Vivian be on the team instead. There is also a whole sequence involving Vivian’s birthday party and a volcano, which fits the story just about as well as everything else does. In fact, Raymundo throws a lot into this first book about Cora, giving himself plenty of ways to develop stories about her in the future and giving readers lots of possibilities to consider. The whole thing is, as Cora would say (and does), “shellfishalicious,” which translates to “very silly in ways that are different from readers’ everyday lives but close enough to be immediately recognizable.”

     The happenings in Bunny vs. Monkey are less likely to be ones with which readers are personally familiar, since they involve various monsters and absurd mechanical and electronic creations and a genius skunk who invents a lot of the odd stuff and a megalomaniacal monkey who wants to take over the forest and a perfectly reasonable if not-quite-heroic bunny who would prefer that all the animals be left alone to get on with their sylvan lives. The second Bunny vs. Monkey book, like the first one, is essentially a set of silly good-guy-vs.-bad-guy tales. It is not a single extended graphic-novel-style story but something closer to traditional comics: Jamie Smart creates a series of two-pagers, each of them not much longer than a newspaper comic strip. Also, although there is some variation in panel size, most of the panels are square or rectangular instead of being created in the multiple sizes and shapes of cutting-edge graphic novels. The result is a kind of comfortable familiarity surrounding the hijinks of Bunny, Monkey, Skunky, Le Fox, destructive and occasionally dancing robot Metal Steve, the always-cooking-and-baking squirrel Weenie, and the baby-like Pig, and the rest of the forest denizens – such as Action Beaver, who has had a few too many bumps on the head, does not say any words (uttering only grunts and odd exclamations), spends most of his time banging into things, and in one especially amusing story here is temporarily turned into a genius by one of Skunky’s inventions. Actually, there is a kind of meta-story involving Skunky in this second volume, involving the inventor’s creation of a doomsday device that Skunky comes back from the future (via a time-travel device) to tell himself  to keep away from Monkey, who otherwise “enslaves us all, and turns life into a nightmare!!” Skunky has some trouble sorting out what future Skunky wants done or not done: “I must not have done what I told me to do! RRGHH! Why didn’t I listen?” But everything involving the device works out just fine in the end, which is not really the end, since the final portion of this book includes the forest folk stumbling upon something even scarier than crazed robots and monster pants: humans. And in fact, doomsday device aside, everything does not work out just fine after all, since it turns out the “hyooomanz” have some plans that may spell doom of a different sort for everyone readers came to know and love in the first two Bunny vs. Monkey books. Stay tuned for sure – there is clearly a great deal more to come.

(++++) OPERETTA BYWAYS

Romberg: The Student Prince. Dominik Wortig, Anja Petersen, Frank Blees, Arantza Ezenarro, Vincent Schirrmacher, Wieland Satter, Joan Ribalta, Theresa Nelles, Christian Sturm; WDR Rundfunkchor Köln and WDR Funkhausorchester Köln conducted by John Mauceri. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Sousa: Music for Wind Band, Volume 16. Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy conducted by Keith Brion. Naxos. $12.99.

     The eventual metamorphosis of operetta into modern musical theater is more evident in retrospect than it was while it was occurring. But every once in a while, a look back at specific works designed as operettas provides an especially clear hint of the evolution of one form into the other. Take Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince as an example. On the one hand, it falls, from its title onwards, squarely into the operetta genre, alongside other fish-out-of-water works such as Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin, Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent, and – particularly directly in plot, if not in parallelism of title – Lehár’s Der Zarewitsch of 1927, which, however, Romberg’s work anticipates by more than two years. On the other hand, The Student Prince was constructed and performed explicitly as a Broadway show, created at the behest of Broadway’s famed Shubert brothers, and was not only Romberg’s most successful work but also the longest-running Broadway production of the 1920s: Show Boat (1927), sometimes erroneously stated to have attained that honor, ran for 572 performances, but The Student Prince ran for 608. The new CPO recording, nicely sung in English by a mostly German (and operetta-steeped) cast, and conducted with considerable assurance by Yale-trained John Mauceri, shows a work quite clearly straddling the operetta and Broadway-show genres, filled with an unending flow of lovely (if sometimes treacly) melodies, and carrying within itself the seeds of its own forgettability. Again, this is only in retrospect: what made The Student Prince so popular in the years right after World War I was its combination of nostalgia and heartbreak, its portrayal of a forever-shattered, royalty-ruled world whose denizens experience the sort of emotional anguish to which “commoners” could readily relate. Like the later works of Lehár and, in particular, Der Zarewitsch, this Romberg work is one in which the demands of leadership, of aristocratic rule, must overcome the desires of one’s heart; it is a story in which the course of true love never does run smooth – and, indeed, must be reduced in the end only to memories of a time gone by and, like the elegant society in which the work is set, never to come again. Romberg’s librettist, Dorothy Donnelly, handles this bittersweet story – based on and mostly faithful to a 1901 German play called Alt Heidelberg – quite skillfully; and Romberg himself keeps the musical spotlight quite clearly on the prince, Karl-Franz (Dominik Wortig), and the innkeeper’s daughter, Kathie (Anja Petersen), whom he comes to love. They get pretty much all the emotion here, and there is no clearly delineated “second couple” providing a foil for the primary one – with the result that the focus on the soon-to-be-parted lovers is all the stronger.

     Donnelly and Romberg even explore a bit of the reality of the politics and romantic dalliances of Old Europe by having Karl-Franz eventually return to rule his (fictitious) nation and marry Princess Margaret (Theresa Nelles), whom he does not love – while the princess far more easily sheds her own dalliance with Captain Tarnitz (Christian Sturm), because, after all, it is one thing to flirt and have an affair here and there before settling down, but quite another to fall deeply in love with one’s soulmate, as Karl-Franz has the misfortune to do. And it really is misfortune: the operetta’s conclusion, in which Kathie nobly does the right thing for Karl-Franz and his country by falsely claiming to have a beau of her own and to be leaving for Vienna to marry him, leaves both principals thoroughly unsatisfied with the understanding and acceptance that they will, and must, follow their own destinies, but that each is giving up the greatest love he or she will ever know. That is a very late-Lehár conclusion, but Romberg handles it in his own way, and a very effective way it is. Yet The Student Prince is too much of its time to have the staying power of Der Zarewitsch or, for that matter, Friederike or Das Land des Lächelns, which are also bittersweet tales of mismatched and eventually parted lovers – for the specific circumstances of Romberg’s work are an integral part of what made it popular, while the settings of those by Lehár are ultimately incidental to their central human stories. Still, from a strictly musical standpoint, straddling as it does the worlds of operetta and Broadway musicals, The Student Prince is very much worth hearing, its sheer melodic flow carrying listeners along in much the same way it must have enchanted audiences 90-plus years in the past – for all the differences of 21^st- and 20^th-century circumstances. Romberg’s music as a whole is overdue for reconsideration – perhaps this very fine recording will be the harbinger of the re-exploration it deserves.

     John Philip Sousa’s operetta music could use some re-hearing, too – the “March King” wrote a great deal more than marches, including some 15 operettas (not all of which he completed). The 16^th volume in the excellent Sousa wind-music series on Naxos, led by Keith Brion with his usual spirit and attentiveness to detail and balance, in fact has a strong focus on Sousa’s operettas: more than half the music here comes from them. The longest work on the disc by far is an extended set of selections from The Charlatan (1898). It shows Sousa to be much indebted to Sir Arthur Sullivan (he admired and made some arrangements of Gilbert and Sullivan works), but still able to put his own stamp on the tunes, which sound quite effective in band rather than orchestral guise (this is the second volume of this series featuring the very-high-quality Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy). Also here are two pieces from Sousa’s last, unfinished operetta, The Irish Dragoon (1915) – the spirited Overture and a short Circus Galop, neither of which has been recorded before. In addition to those two world première recordings, this CD contains two others: Tyrolienne (1880-82), a set of variations on a French folk song, and Homeward Bound (c. 1885), a recently rediscovered and somewhat patched-together piece that may contain only Sousa tunes or may be one of his medleys of popular music of the time. And then there are works that show how adept Sousa was in multiple musical forms: I’ve Made My Plans for the Summer (1907) is a pleasant waltz featuring a solo cornet; Pushing On (1918) is a wartime march song; On the Tramp (1879) is a very early march, whose title is a phrase that at the time meant “out of work and looking for some”; and The Triumph of Time (1885) is a powerful parade march. The remaining two works here, both from 1918, have some particularly interesting history. Wedding March was written to replace the popular German wedding marches by Mendelssohn and Wagner at a time when anti-German sentiment ran particularly strong. And the version heard here of The Star-Spangled Banner, created by Sousa in collaboration with famed conductor Walter Damrosch, was intended to standardize a highly patriotic song that had been recognized for official use in 1916 but would not become the United States’ national anthem until 1931. This long-running Sousa sequence continues to establish the composer’s considerable abilities in many musical forms, operetta definitely included. It is also true, though, that the series confirms, without necessarily intending to, that calling Sousa the “March King” was apt: although his non-march works are uniformly well-made and show rhythmic vitality and an adept disposition of instruments, they are neither as distinctive as his marches nor as clearly indicative of his considerable talents as a composer.

(++++) BIRDS AND OTTER BEINGS

Otter Loves Easter! By Sam Garton. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $9.99.

Dill & Bizzy: Opposite Day. By Nora Ericson. Illustrated by Lisa Ericson. Harper. $17.99.

Bizarre Birds. By Sandra Horning. Scholastic. $3.99.

     Sam Garton’s charmingly naïve character, Otter, who showed her love of Halloween in an earlier book, now proves just as loving and just as confused where Easter is concerned. This is strictly a child’s version of a secular Easter, where the love is of baskets, eggs, rabbits, chocolate, jelly beans and such. Otter’s Easter haul, displayed across two pages in Garton’s always appropriate illustrations, includes small, medium and large chocolate eggs, additional eggs in a basket, a bag of jelly beans, a gold-wrapped chocolate bunny, and a pair of bunny ears. The fun of all the Otter books lies in how the endearingly anthropomorphic title character interacts with her friends, all of them stuffed animals, treating them as if they are alive. That is indeed what happens in Otter Loves Easter! But here Otter’s behavior leads to a clear lesson learned about selfishness and sharing. Otter Keeper (the human with whom Otter lives) says Otter must share the candy with her friends, but Otter explains, “I couldn’t share my eggs. They were mine!” Otter tries to give up some candy, really she does, but “sharing is very hard” and “eating chocolate is very easy.” So soon enough, Otter, who is always plump, is looking even plumper as she gorges herself on chocolate and is too full for breakfast and feels “a little sick.” After a nap, Otter realizes that she really should have shared with her friends, so she determines to “save Easter,” dons the bunny ears she received, and becomes “the Easter Otter!” The result is a wonderful Easter egg hunt in which, of course, Otter’s stuffed friends cannot really hunt for anything. But Otter makes sure that Pig, Teddy and Giraffe all “find” eggs, and even Otter Keeper gets one, and of course everything ends happily as the stuffed animals “share” their eggs with her – since, after all, they cannot really eat them. Otter’s misadventures always end pleasantly, and the “learn to share” lesson here is delivered amusingly enough so young readers may actually pay attention, even when chocolate is at stake.

     The lesson of Dill & Bizzy: Opposite Day is that sometimes friends can like things that are, well, opposites. This is the second book by sisters Nora and Lisa Ericson to feature Dill, “an odd duck,” and Bizzy, “a strange bird” who seems, based on his distinctively odd appearance, to have escaped from a zoo run by Dr. Seuss. In the first book, the two met and became best friends; but in this one, the friendship is put under strain. What happens is that the birds’ routine goes awry one morning when Bizzy wakes up before Dill instead of afterwards. Bizzy, who is a bit of a ditz, decides that must mean it is Opposite Day, and starts insisting that everything be done backwards: morning dinner instead of breakfast, a fast morning run instead of the birds’ usual slow wake-up waddle, and so on. Dill has soon had more than enough of this and says he does not like Opposite Day and wants things quiet, but Bizzy says that, since this is Opposite Day, that must mean Dill loves Opposite Day and wants a loud dance party. Dill simply  cannot get through to Bizzy, who insists on everything being the opposite of normal, to the point of the birds brushing dust on their faces before bed instead of washing them. It is only when Dill realizes that if it is truly Opposite Day, then the two birds must be the opposite of best friends – that is, worst enemies – that Bizzy agrees it cannot be Opposite Day anymore. So all ends happily, if with a rather large helping of bemusement, until, inevitably, Bizzy wakes up the next morning with his feet where his head usually is and vice versa, and declares it is going to be Backwards Day. What happens next is left up to suitably delighted young readers to figure out for themselves.

     Dill and Bizzy are purely fictional – especially Bizzy – but there are some strange real-world birds out there. And in a new Scholastic Level 2 Reader called Bizarre Birds, Sandra Horning explains about and shows some of them. There is the hoatzin, which smells like cow poop and has chicks born with claws on their wings; the ribbon-tailed bird of paradise, some of which have tail feathers almost as long as a baseball bat; the oxpecker, which lives on top of large grazing animals and eats their parasites – and their earwax; the California condor, whose wings can be up to 10 feet wide; the common tailorbird, which makes a nest by gathering green leaves, poking holes in them, and sewing them together with spider webs or thin plant strips; and others. To keep the book easy to read, the type is large and the amount of information small, but there is enough here – both in words and in photographs – to intrigue budding naturalists and encourage them to seek out more-in-depth information on wonders of the real world of animals in other books. The Level 2 books are designed for developing readers in first and second grade, but any child with an interest in unusual creatures will likely enjoy this one, whose photos will attract younger children and whose text, although simple, gives enough information to get older kids interested in finding out more about the 14 birds shown here – and the many others, including quite a few strange ones, that can be discovered in other books.

(++++) BUNNIES AND BEYOND

How to Be a Bigger Bunny. By Florence Minor. Illustrated by Wendell Minor. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $14.99.

Whose House? By H.A. Rey, adapted by Lay Lee Ong. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $8.99.

Farm Babies. By H.A. Rey, adapted by Lay Lee Ong. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $8.99.

     Bunnies are inevitably endearing in books for pre-readers and the youngest readers; like other animals that may be somewhat less adorable in real life – mice, for example – rabbits are a staple of works intended to use adorableness to help lessons be communicated gently. But the portrayal of bunnies in kids’ books varies widely: some are thoroughly anthropomorphic, while others are shown highly realistically even though their behavior may have distinctly human elements. The latter approach is the one taken by the wife-and-husband team of Florence and Wendell Minor in How to Be a Bigger Bunny. All members of the rabbit family here – Nibbles, Wiggles, Giggles, Jiggles and Tickles – really look like rabbits, and they move like them, too, as they scamper about in the meadow. But Tickles, the smallest of the five, does not get to go along on the bigger bunnies’ adventures: she tends to be overlooked. That is a highly human thing to do, and the fact that Tickles walks around carrying a book makes her even more like a human child. She is absolutely adorable when drawn sitting propped up against a tree (in a distinctly un-rabbit-like posture), reading stories – from which she takes lessons about never giving up, acting like a bold pirate, and “How to Think Your Way out of Tricky Places.” Sure enough, all the stories’ ideas are soon put to the test, as Tickles’ four bigger siblings get trapped in a log in which they are playing when a rock rolls down the hill and plugs the log’s open end. There is not much to the story, really – of course Tickles will figure out how to rescue her family, and of course at the end they will say they will always take her along when they play from now on – but the application of the stories’ lessons is amusing, and the contrast between the human-like approach to the bunnies' predicament and the lovely pastoral setting in which the story takes place makes this an especially endearing book. Tickles does not get to be a bigger bunny physically, of course, but she grows larger in her siblings’ eyes through her determination, and at the end is seen dreaming of being a huge bunny, wearing a cape and zipping about to save her family “from danger everywhere.” Wish fulfillment, for sure, and all in a good – and particularly attractive-looking – cause.

     Bunnies also appear in one of two new lift-the-flap books created by Lay Lee Ong from stories created long ago by H.A. Rey of Curious George fame. These are clever adaptations of books that have timeless elements but also show their age in some ways. Whose House? comes from Anybody at Home? (1939). Farm Babies is derived from Where’s My Baby? (1943). The bunnies appear in the first of these, when kids lift the flap of the page opposite the words, “Look in this hole –/ What can it be/ That lives deep down/ Under this tree?” The three under-flap rabbits are drawn in pleasantly cartoonish fashion and are seen smiling happily, with very human expressions, at the reader. The somewhat dated nature of Whose House? is clearest on pages where humans and their lives are involved. The car that emerges from a garage is recognizable, if old-fashioned, but the gas pump outside the garage is a design that no 21^st-century child is likely ever to have seen. The airplane that comes out of a hanger has two propellers, not jet engines, and passengers are seen boarding it by walking outdoors and climbing steps – a real rarity of a scene nowadays. And when two trains come out onto railroad tracks, both are being pulled by smoke-emitting steam engines – another real rarity. The “house” idea for people, animals and inanimate objects is still a charming one, and Rey’s illustrations are not only attractive but also quite reminiscent of those in his better-known books. But parents may have some explaining to do about the pictures that do not include rabbits, birds, bees and other wildlife.

     Farm Babies requires less explication. Here too the animals are drawn in Rey’s distinctive style and sport expressions that are human-like but not overdone. And some of the pages have little lessons within, such as a chance to practice counting: “Cluck, cluck, cluck!/ Calls Mother Hen./ Help count her chicks/ From one to ten.” Lifting this book’s flaps reveals not only barnyard creatures but also some found indoors: “Mother Cat’s kittens/ Have soft, warm fur./ She licks them clean,/ They meow and purr.” The only page in this book that harks back strongly to the time the original was written is the final one: “Here a mother sits –/ She’s about to read a book./ But where are all her babies?/ Just open up and look!” This mother – holding the original Rey book from which Farm Babies is taken – is dressed in distinctly old-fashioned style, sitting in a chair with knitting beside her, and turns out to have, when the flap is lifted, six kids (three boys and three girls) who all seem to be more or less in the four-to-10 age range. One boy has an old-fashioned slingshot in his pocket, while another is carrying a propeller-driven toy airplane, and the ways in which the boys’ outfits and girls’ outfits all match are attractive but certainly not in contemporary fashion. The book as a whole is fun, though, and so is Whose House? Neither of these works has the timeless quality of the Curious George books (although they too contain many now-archaic elements that are, however, rendered unimportant by the underlying charm of the stories). But both lift-the-flap books are pleasant for a young child to read and interact with – or enjoy while sitting on a parent’s accommodating lap.

(++++) FORM FOLLOWING FUNCTION

Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History. By Walter Dean Myers. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Harper. $17.99.

Muhammad Ali: A Champion Is Born. By Gene Barretta. Illustrated by Frank Morrison. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     Creators of children’s books understand, intuitively or through studying the medium, just how different an impression they can make on impressionable young minds by the way they tell stories and illustrate them. Both Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History and Muhammad Ali: A Champion Is Born are hagiographic; both tell the stories of men who, if they were really as portrayed here, would be several cuts above the human race, never mind the mass of humanity; both assiduously avoid exploring any flaws of their subjects, or even mentioning anything negative in more than a passing way; both are aimed, officially, at ages 4-8; and both are intended for young black readers and their families – there is no reaching out to a wider audience here. But the two books’ different forms, both in narrative and in illustration, stand in stark contrast, and reflect in important ways the men about whom the works are written.

     The differences, abundantly clear from the books’ covers, persist throughout . Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History is all done in sepia tones. On the cover, Douglass, shown front and center, is looking past the reader, as if toward a far horizon where the world will be different and he will have had a major role in shaping it. The book has extensive narrative for a work aimed at a very young age group – in fact, it is probably more appropriate for ages 6-10 than for 4-8. The late Walter Dean Myers packs a lot of information into Douglass’ story, carefully avoiding any significant mention of positive actions by whites in Douglass’ life in order to keep the focus on slavery and Douglass’ escape from and transcendence of it. Thus, for example, Myers writes of the time Douglass’ owner, Hugh Auld, turned Douglass over to the cruel Edward Covey to be harshly disciplined; but only readers who go beyond the entire book’s narrative and past the timeline and bibliography will discover, at the work’s very end, the document with which Auld freed Douglass – in 1846, a year after Douglass wrote his autobiography but long before he had accomplished many of the things for which he is remembered, and even before Douglass was known exclusively by that name (he changed it to Douglass from Bailey; both names appear in Auld’s document). Nor does Auld’s wife, Sophia, get much credit for instilling in Douglass what became his lifelong preoccupation with reading and writing – although she is at least mentioned. In any case, the book proceeds with page after page about Douglass’ thoughts and deeds, with Floyd Cooper’s finely detailed illustrations resolutely keeping Douglass looking ahead to a better time, or askance at his own – there is not a single picture in which Douglass looks directly out at the reader. The hyper-seriousness of Douglass is communicated again and again, both through the text and through the illustrations, and he is repeatedly pictured as wise – the contrast between Cooper’s renderings of Douglass and abolitionist John Brown, who are shown on the same page, is particularly striking. Myers knows his history, and some elements of the book may even surprise adult readers, such as the comment that Southern states began to secede from the union in 1860 rather than 1861 (South Carolina issued its declaration on December 24, 1860). As a study in serious, even studious dedication to change, of a man who understood how to make common cause with others – Douglass was an early advocate of women’s suffrage – Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History is a book of considerable power that tells its story with strength and dedication.

     Muhammad Ali: A Champion Is Born is as different as can be imagined. This is the tale of someone who made his living through strength of a very different sort, with his fists, by beating people up physically (within an established set of rules, to be sure). It is a story with little nuance (at least as Gene Barretta tells it), and one whose bright red-and-yellow cover fits it perfectly. Right there on the cover, the only thing to see besides words is Muhammad Ali staring directly at the reader with intensity bordering on hostility, if not outright hatred, and getting ready to throw a punch (or just having thrown one). The whole book gets right to its topic with fight scenes and comic-book language: “POW!” in 1964; “POW! POW!” in 1965; the famous “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” comment in big, bold type in 1974; and “POW! POW! POW!” in 1978. And then Barretta and illustrator Frank Morrison flash back to 1954, when Ali (then using his birth name, Cassius Clay) was 12 years old and had his bike stolen. This is the linchpin of the story, the moment when, Barretta says, Cassius Clay started on the road that would eventually make him heavyweight champion of the world. The angle is an unusual one for an Ali biography, and is clearly intended to involve young readers in the story – and this book is written at a level that does fit the 4-8 age group quite well. Morrison’s art is interestingly exaggerated: on one page, people’s heads are too large for their bodies, so the reader is drawn to their faces; on another, facial features are barely suggested and the stance of a character is accentuated, so the eye goes to the whole body and its posture and the character becomes a type rather than an individual. Young Cassius Clay, however, is distinct and distinctive throughout, and his facial expressions are highlighted again and again – although at times his face is downplayed so readers focus on specific things he is doing, such as running alongside a school bus or dodging rocks thrown at him by his brother, Rudy. This is a book about Cassius Clay the boy, once it gets past its opening pages about Muhammad Ali the man; but it does contain two back-of-book pages with more information about Ali’s later life. There is very little about the major controversies surrounding him, although some are mentioned in passing; unfortunately, there is also very little about his later years, when he developed Parkinson’s disease and became a role model for others suffering from it – a more-valuable and likely more-lasting contribution to the world than winning boxing matches. Muhammad Ali: A Champion Is Born will be interesting for young readers who already look up to Ali and who may want to become fighters themselves, but it pays little attention to the fight of his life – against the disease that finally took it – in its determination to present a big, bold POW of a story.

(++) PROBLEM SOLVED?

The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer. By Leigh Erin Connealy, M.D. Da Capo. $25.99.

     What should the penalty be for doctors who knowingly withhold cures form patients, dooming them to a long and agonizing struggle with a curable disease – a battle that eventually ends in avoidable death? Proponents of “alternative,” “holistic,” “integrative” and “naturopathic” approaches to deadly diseases such as cancer – which is actually a constellation of diseases, not a single one – cleverly avoid answering this question. But it is highly germane – because if there in fact exist approaches to living that are certain to “reverse and prevent cancer,” as the subtitle of Leigh Erin Connealy’s book says, then surely it is a criminal matter, or at the very least one worthy of loss of medical license, for a doctor not to deliver these “proven” cures and prevention strategies. However, like every other purveyor of non-traditional medical approaches to serious disease, Connealy fails to issue a clarion call for de-licensing, prison or other punishment for doctors who, sworn to care for and cure to the best of their ability, fail to “reverse and prevent cancer” in the “proven” ways that Connealy puts forth.

     The reality, of course, is that none of the methods in The Cancer Revolution or other works of this type is proven to “reverse and prevent cancer,” and authors like Connealy, one and all, are trading in the fear and worry that inevitably accompany a cancer diagnosis, making a nice living for themselves by suggesting that they have solutions that the medical profession as a whole – whether from venality, profit orientation, being in collusion with pharmaceutical firms, or being involved in some other anti-wellness conspiracy – fails to supply. Taking advantage of patients this way makes for good profits from books and “alternative” treatment centers – Connealy’s is called the Cancer Center for Healing. But all this self-proclaimed certainty is, at the very least, as unseemly as advocates of non-traditional approaches to disease claim traditional medicine to be.

     What is so irritating about the anti-traditional-medicine claims is that there is no non-commercial reason for them. In general, doctors treating cancer with chemotherapy, radiation and other standard approaches not only acknowledge the value of supplementary use of nutritional and lifestyle changes, but also encourage them actively. And many professed opponents of traditional approaches to cancer – including Connealy – actually acknowledge the importance of traditional medicine, saying that it is not the whole answer or the only answer but that it is a necessary component of cancer treatment. The two sides are not really two sides after all – except at their fringes, they represent differences in emphasis rather than exclusionary approaches that demonize anyone with whom they disagree.

     Seen in that way, The Cancer Revolution, despite its vastly overhyped title and subtitle, could be viewed as a sensible, useful and potentially very helpful aid in cancer treatment, although it scarcely offers a cure or a guaranteed remission. But Connealy insists it is more than that – it really is a revolution, one known only to her and other cognoscenti. It is extremely hard to accept this. In 2015, a notorious-in-some-quarters scientific meta-analysis of cancer studies discovered that some two-thirds of cancers result from chance – random cellular mutations about which people can do nothing – and that only about one-third are preventable through lifestyle modifications such as avoiding smoking (lung cancers) and being careful about sun exposure (skin cancers). Unsurprisingly, the publication of the carefully peer-reviewed study provoked howls of outrage and numerous hastily assembled counter-studies – there is a huge “cancer industry” out there, and the advocates of non-traditional approaches are a big part of it. A lot of the objections to the scientific analysis proffered notions of known contributory factors to diseases (including cancer) as underlying causes – a good keep-the-money-flowing approach, since so many of these factors are unavoidable and therefore shade into the realm of “bad luck.” Connealy, for example, mentions “excessive exposure to electromagnetic fields” (you will know the exposure is excessive if you get cancer); “geopathic stress” from “energies within the Earth that are created by underground cavitations, streams, and other geological features” (completely unavoidable); “foci infections,” which are “concentrated and localized pockets of infection that don’t show up on routine lab tests” (a recipe for expensive tests, including “alternative” ones, or unending fear); industrial toxins (“ubiquitous in our air, food, and water supply,” and thus unavoidable); and so on. And then there are the equally ubiquitous factors that go with living in a modern First World country, earning a living and raising a family: Connealy warns that “to prevent or fight cancer, you must also resolve the stress and emotional conflicts in your life.”

     Despite all this, “preventing cancer doesn’t need to be complicated,” asserts Connealy. You need specific tests that she recommends to find propensity for cancer, not actual cancer. You need the specific approach to whole-body health that Connealy advocates. You need “groundbreaking cancer treatments” such as “autohemotherapy” (taking blood, exposing it to ultraviolet light and ozone, and putting it back) and “intravenous curcumin therapy” (getting this component of turmeric not as a spice but intravenously). You need nutritional guidance and unending adherence to a diet filled with “anticancer vegetables,” “‘clean’ animal protein” (free-range and free of hormones of antibiotics and, as Connealy does not say, the most expensive available), “green vegetable drinks made from such foods as wheatgrass and nonstarchy vegetables,” and so forth. You also need detoxifying treatments such as coffee enemas, “liver flush cleanses” and “EDTA chelation therapy” using a specific synthetic amino acid. And of course you need exercise, an end to stress (never mind the possibility that these treatments may themselves send your stress levels through the roof), meditation, Qigong and Tai Chi and aromatherapy and laughter and a specific “transpersonal coaching and beneficial strategy that I would highly recommend.” Throw in a hot bath every night while you’re at it. Get lots of sleep and make sure it is restful – practice “proper sleep hygiene” (but don’t let the requirements raise your stress level), assemble a “successful support system” to guide you to wellness, and on and on and on and on.

     Connealy omits any mention of the financial cost and amount of time needed to do everything she recommends – and her recommendations are so enormously time-consuming and so different from most people’s everyday lives (and so far outside many people’s budgets) that she can always claim, if her approach fails, that the patient did not do enough of what she says or did not do it with sufficient exactitude. Unsurprisingly, Connealy’s practice is in alternative-medicine-loving California – she neglects to explain how people who live in, say, Kansas or Alabama might implement her extensive recommendations. Indeed, the time commitment that Connealy insists is necessary is really extraordinary: her step-by-step, day-by-day outline of what to do to be part of her “Cancer Revolution” is off-putting in the extreme. One single day, for example, includes five to 20 minutes of “oil pulling,” plus tongue scraping, plus drinking eight to 16 ounces of lemon or vinegar water, plus doing a coffee enema, plus “30 minutes of yoga, Qigong, stretching, walking, or another exercise,” plus “30 minutes of meditation, journaling, or prayer,” plus taking two specific capsules – all before breakfast. The rest of that single day is planned just as precisely.

     Add the extensiveness, precision, and time requirements of Connealy’s ideas to the enormous stressors these gigantic lifestyle requirements will likely produce – coupled with the insistence on stress reduction – and throw in the substantial cost associated with many of her recommendations, and what you have in The Cancer Revolution is a recipe for failure. Not in every case – Connealy cites anecdotal examples of the success of her approach with specific patients – but in a large, large number of cases. And this does not even get into the issue of the highly specific food-purchase and food-preparation requirements that are integral to Connealy’s ideas. People diagnosed with serious cancers (not all cancers are serious or at serious stages) will understandably grasp at any straw that holds out hope, no matter how strange, off-putting, costly, hard to comprehend, or scientifically shaky – hence, for example, the great excitement over using peach and apricot pits to produce laetrile and “cure” cancer, especially in the 1970s. Laetrile sometimes worked, which is no surprise: the placebo effect produces improvement, or even cure, in up to 30% of people given completely inactive substances. The Cancer Revolution includes some sounder-than-laetrile science, all jumbled together with standard elements advocated by non-traditional health practitioners (specified dietary regimes, specified forms of stress reduction, specified daily life regimens). Some desperate people will benefit from what Connealy offers. Whether that makes her approach “groundbreaking,” or a solution of any sort to people’s desire “to reverse and prevent cancer,” is another matter altogether. But the book is carefully written to insulate Connealy from any potential action against her if people try to incorporate her ideas into their lives and nevertheless find her prescription ineffective.

(++++) HANDLING THE ORCHESTRA

Smetana: Má Vlast. Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Jakob Hrůša. Tudor. $19.99 (SACD).

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4; Tragic Overture. Philharmoniker Hamburg conducted by Simone Young. Oehms. $19.99 (3 CDs).

Barbara Harbach: Orchestral Music III—Symphonies Nos. 7-10. London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Angus. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     Although he is only 35, Jakob Hrůša has spent the better part of a decade honing his interpretation of Smetana’s Má Vlast, which he has conducted with various orchestras of varying size, from the full-Romantic-scale to 50-or-so-member almost-chamber groups. Hrůša’s interpretation will surely evolve further over time, but at this point its outlines are already clear. It is a robust and stately reading of this massive score, with tempos on the distinctly slow side but without any feeling that the music drags. And it is a rendition in which the concluding, paired tone poems, Tábor and Blaník, get more than the usual amount of attention and emerge, as a result, as the true climax of the sprawling cycle, a capstone rather than the afterthought that the duo can become when conductors focus more strongly on the grandeur of Vyšehrad, the elegant tone painting and flow of Vltava, the drama of Šarka, and the simplicity and mellifluousness of Z českých luhů a hájů. Hrůša’s fully formed reading (at least in its current state) is impressively communicated on a new Tudor SACD on which he leads the Bamberger Symphoniker. Hrůša has conducted ensembles all over the world in this music, from Prague to Seoul, and seems unfailingly to bring forth the tone poems’ smooth flow, melodic beauty and rhythmic propulsiveness. That is certainly what he does here, and the warm strings and fine winds and brass of the orchestra give the performance an overall warmth that stands the work as a whole – and its individual component parts – in good stead. The flow of the river Vltava past the ruined castle of Vyšehrad is suitably dramatic here, and the central lyricism of Šarka is particularly well contrasted with the dynamism of the conclusion. The loveliness of the fields and meadows in Z českých luhů a hájů provides just the right respite before the intensity and strength of the concluding Tábor and Blaník, whose mythic qualities are bound up in expressive strength that the orchestra brings forth to very fine effect. There are a few conductors who, over many years, made Má Vlast a centerpiece of their careers, notably Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996) – who, like Hrůša, was Czech and seemed to have a natural affinity for Smetana’s music. It remains to be seen whether Hrůša will have a lifelong involvement with this cycle’s combination of high art and intense nationalism. At this stage, that certainly seems likely; and even if later performances contain refinements beyond those in this one, Hrůša’s reading with the Bamberger Symphoniker will stand as a very worthy and often compelling version of the music.

     Far more conductors make their way through Brahms’ symphonies than Smetana’s masterpiece, but there is always room for new interpretation in a Brahms cycle – and almost always something worth discovering. In the case of Simone Young’s cycle with the Philharmoniker Hamburg on Oehms, the occasional pleasures and glimmers of insight do not quite overcome a rather ordinary overview of the music, and a rather old-fashioned one as well, paying little heed to recent discoveries regarding appropriate “period” approaches to these works. As a result, this set of performances from 2007 (No. 1), 2008 (No. 2), 2009 (Nos. 3 and 4), and 2010 (Tragic Overture) gets a (+++) rating. There are quite a few pleasures here, but they are scattered rather than consistent, and some elements of Young’s interpretations will be effective only for limited audiences. The first movement of No. 1, for example, is quite slow; whether it works will depend on whether a listener finds the overall pace plodding or lyrically evocative. The best single word for the overall feeling of this movement, whether it brings a positive reaction or a negative one, is “sober,” and that, indeed, is reflective of Young’s approach to the symphony as a whole. Sometimes the solemnity fits – the finale is well-handled – but at other times, it mixes uneasily with the music, as in the third movement, which is marked grazioso but scarcely feels graceful here. The other symphonies are also mixtures of the more and less effectual. In No. 2, the first two movements are quite expansive – all the more so because Young wisely includes the exposition repeat in the first movement – while the third does lighten up a bit; but the finale here is so rushed that the orchestra seems to struggle to keep up, and clarity is lost as a result. The Tragic Overture appears as a filler on this disc, nicely played but not especially compelling. The performance of No. 3, like that of No. 1, contains nuances whose success is a matter of opinion. For instance, the first movement strides forth boldly and with more potency than in the hands of conductors who proclaim the opening chord and then immediately slow down for emphasis – but in the transition to the second subject, Young pulls back on the tempo for no apparent reason and with no justification in the score. The best movement here is the finale, which moves ahead smartly until eventually subsiding in a convincing way. As for No. 4, it is the blandest reading here, with nothing outlandish but little that listeners will find surprising or controversial. The final variations are well contrasted, and the very end does have a kind of tragic majesty, but the rest of the interpretation, while perfectly fine, is nothing very special. Listeners with only one or a very few recordings of the Brahms cycle may nevertheless appreciate this one for some of Young’s interesting and unusual approaches – and the three-CD set’s reasonable price.

     The symphony as a form continues to attract composers of all sorts, and Barbara Harbach (born 1946) seems especially interested in it, having composed 10 symphonies to date. The four most recent (2014-2015) are heard in world première recordings on a new MSR Classics CD featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra under David Angus, and all four are well-constructed and show considerable ability in handling large orchestral forces. Harbach appears frequently on this label – this is the 11^th CD devoted to her music and the third focused on her orchestral works – and inevitably shows a sure sense of style, and comfort with modern compositional techniques without slavish devotion to them. The four symphonies here are four cases in point: each is in the traditional (indeed, rather old-fashioned) three movements, each lasts 15 to 20 minutes, each is programmatic, and each sounds different from the others but recognizable as Harbach’s for those familiar with her style. The title of No. 7 (“O Pioneers!”) inevitably recalls Copland, but the music does not: the work includes material from Harbach’s 2009 opera based on Willa Cather’s novel, and manages to evoke an earlier time and place in America without sounding particularly derivative. No. 8 (“The Scarlet Letter”) is a three-movement portrait of characters in Hawthorne’s novel, with “Hester” seen in rather formulaic fashion, “Chillingworth” rendered with suitable emotional turmoil, and “Dimmesdale” given what sounds like a rather too-heroic portrayal. No. 9 (“Celestial Symphony”) is drawn from Harbach’s music for the silent film, The Birth, Life, and Death of Christ, and is the most interesting symphony here: dramatic and heartfelt as appropriate, with a strong sense of form that comes through even if a listener does not know the titles of the movements (“The Annunciation,” “Celestial Vaults” and “Temptations”). No. 10 is a strictly political work (“Symphony for Ferguson”), commissioned after riots that occurred after a petty criminal was shot and killed, possibly without sufficient justification, by a police officer. Clearly intended as a work of healing, the symphony is overdone and obvious in its inclusion of everything from Battle Hymn of the Republic to St. Louis Blues. Harbach is a skilled composer, but certainly no Charles Ives. Yet in this case it would not have hurt for her to have considered and perhaps used as a model the Ives movement From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again Arose, in which the hymn In the Sweet Bye and Bye gradually emerges while train passengers absorb the news of the sinking of the Lusitania. There is both subtlety and directness in Ives that never quite emerges in Harbach’s symphony. This is a (+++) CD with numerous interesting elements, but in the long run will mostly be attractive to listeners already familiar with Harbach’s music and perhaps involved in collecting as much of it as possible.