(++++) KLUTZ KLEVERNESS KONTINUES

Make Your Own Soap. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $21.99.

Circuit Clay: The Easiest Way to Learn about Electricity. By the editors of Klutz. Klutz. $21.99.

     Klutz, now the “books-plus” crafts-project division of Scholastic, has specialized in good, clean fun for many years, ever since it was a scrappy little independent West Coast company. So it was probably inevitable that there would eventually be a crafts-project offering such as Make Your Own Soap. After all, what could be better and cleaner fun than this? Intended for kids as young as six – but fun, really, for all ages, and that includes adult ages – this kit contains, as always with Klutz, both the instructions for doing the projects and essentially all the items needed to complete them. In this case, that means there is a box bound to the back of the instruction book and containing soap base, a soap mold with six shapes, a pleasant coconut-papaya scent, color tablets, cosmetic-grade glitter, even stickers to dress up the soap bars – and a gift box and ribbon to use in giving them away. But why would you do that? After all the work, kids and parents alike will probably want to keep and use the soaps themselves. Well, all right, not “all the work” – as usual with Klutz offerings, the projects are not especially difficult. But doing them is really satisfying. Parents should know that the soap projects are best done by child and adult together, or at least with the adult hovering nearby, since soap making requires heat (microwave or stovetop heat in this case), rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle (not included), and a cutting board and knife. In fact, the instructions specifically tell kids to find “a responsible adult assistant” for soap-making. Klutz provides its usual bit of science along with its how-to-do-it narrative – noting, for example: “Bubbles are just pockets of air wrapped in layers of water and soap. The soap makes a kind of water sandwich (water is the filling and the soap is the bread).” And while kids, ahem, digest that, they can proceed to learn how to make seven slightly larger soaps or 10 smaller ones, in multiple colors and with great shapes such as a star, an emoji cat, and a cupcake. Along the way, the instruction book explains how soap works and why you need it rather than plain water to get clean (soap “is like the chemistry cool kid who hangs out with everyone, to mingle and wash away the dirt”). There are a few surprising and delightful extras here, too, such as “soap-powered experiments” using two included paper boats in a race, with whatever liquid soap you may have at home as fuel. An unusually involving project, this soap-making one has only one flaw: kids are likely to enjoy it so much that they will want to make even more Klutz-style soaps after they use up the ingredients here. Hmm. Could that be a Klutzian sales strategy?

     Of course, parents can always distract their soap-loving kids, at least those ages eight and up, with a different Klutz offering – for instance, Circuit Clay. This is, in its way, every bit as clever as the soap-making kit. Electricity and water do not mix, of course; and interestingly, the packaging of this “books-plus” offering is opposite that of the soap project, with the electricity instruction book bound to the back of the box of needed items rather than the front. What is inside the Circuit Clay box is some really amazing stuff that makes this one of the cleverest Klutz offering of recent times. Instead of wires, this electricity-use creation uses conductive clay, which is pretty much what it sounds like: clay that conducts electricity. Four colors of this special clay are provided, along with white insulating clay and, as a source of electricity, a battery pack powered by four AA batteries (which Klutz does not include). With what is included, plus some household items – dental floss to cut the clay, toothpick and pencil to shape it, plastic bags or containers to store it, and so on – kids can make clay sculptures that they can decorate with paper punch-outs (included) and illuminate with LEDs (20 included, in five colors). As always, there is science as well as fun here, and in fact Circuit Clay is pretty much all science, packaged enjoyably so learning becomes fun: “A circuit is a loop that allows an electric current to flow through it. …So what is electricity? When a bunch of electrons start moving in the same direction, they create an electric current.” There is a wonderful hands-on demonstration here of what a short circuit is and how it works, and there is a well-written troubleshooting checklist to go through if the suggested projects do not go as planned. The projects themselves include a few spacey ones (rocket, UFO, shooting star, astronaut) and some down-to-earth ideas (flower, jack-o’-lantern). Kids can even make a cupcake with flashing light on top or a snowman with illuminated eyes. As in many Klutz crafts-project offerings, there are somewhat-more-complex things to make later in the instruction book, including a window showing a nighttime scene with twinkling stars; a police car topped with red and blue lights; and, at the very end, a dragon with glowing eyes and tongue. Unlike the elements of the Klutz soap projects, which will be used up by the time kids finish the instruction book, the ones in Circuit Clay will have some remnants that can be stored – and the clay can be reworked to do new things, allowing kids to have their own flights of fancy after completing the specific ideas suggested in the instruction guide. In both soap-making and circuit design, though, what is klear is the kontinuing kleverness of Klutz.

(++++) DEATH, DOOM, AND OTHER DELIGHTS

The Wrong Dead Guy. By Richard Kadrey. Harper Voyager. $24.99.

     There is only one Richard Kadrey, and all things considered, that is probably a good thing. It could destabilize the universe if there were more than one creator of absurdly outré, laugh-out-loud magical ridiculousness that is decidedly not for kids and probably not for most adults who would pass as normal if the light is right. Actually, Kadrey is doing a pretty good job of destabilizing it on his own. It’s not exactly our universe, but it’s close enough so we should be grateful that…well, grateful that it’s not exactly our universe.

     Kadrey writes picaresque “caper” novels with noir overflowing, a scriptwriter’s sense of pacing through dialogue, and perfectly poised descriptive passages that alone are worth the price of admission: “If money wanted to take a few weeks off, kick back, and catch some rays, it would do it in Carrwood, a pretty little private community in the verdant hills north of Los Angeles. Carrwood had more security than the Kremlin. Invading rats and squirrels found inside the gates weren’t poisoned, but trapped, packaged, and shipped to a small, but well-staffed rodent retirement community outside Palms [sic] Springs. To say that Carrwood was affluent was like saying the sinking of the Titanic was a bit of a whoopsie.” Occasional typos aside, Kadrey parades a full panoply of carefully crafted whoopsies in his magic-infused thriller-plus-cops-and-robbers adventures that are sufficiently indescribable so that it would help to have a few new adjectives available. In their absence, “Kadreyish” probably covers them all.

     Consider: The Wrong Dead Guy is Kadrey’s second book about a magic thief called Coop. No, he is not magic – in fact, he is immune to magic, which is kind of a superpower, since what he does is steal magic, or magical objects. This is good, except when his immunity does not quite work or except when he has to use it in the service of the government Department of Peculiar Science, where he is employed because if he refuses to be employed there, he will be sent back to prison, which he was sent to in the first place because of the machinations of Morty, with whom he is now working. Oh, Coop also has a girlfriend, Giselle, who broke up with him, broke his heart, and now works with him at DOPS, and they are back together, and everything is sweetness and light, which in a Kadrey book means you just know everything is going to hop a handbasket and head straight to you-know-where.

     Where it all goes in The Wrong Dead Guy is to a rundown museum that happens to possess the mummy of an Egyptian wizard named Harkhuf; DOPS wants the mummy for its own purposes. Coop and team head off to steal it in “a police van courtesy of the DOPS. Not that it was a real LAPD vehicle. It was Coop’s understanding that the DOPS had 3-D printed it. It was also his understanding that they could also print human organs, five-lens spider-friendly glasses, robot parts, and – for office picnics – geometrically perfect s’mores.” The heist goes fine, but unfortunately Harkhuf is not quite dead and has interests of his own, chief among them the revival of his girlfriend, Shemetet, so the two of them can take over the world and all like that there. Coop, like Kadrey’s better-known protagonist Sandman Slim, has a tendency to be tasked with world-saving and a tendency to object to being so tasked. In order to accomplish the task this time, he also has to deal with a dead but revived professor who is now half cat and half octopus and who is on his side, and a dead but revived nasty piece of work named Nelson who works at DOPS as a mook (essentially a zombie with a day job) and has plans of his own, which, when they go awry, do so in rather sinister ways: “It wasn’t so much having to spend the rest of the night cleaning bits of Albertson out of the shredder and light fixtures that bothered him; it was that now he couldn’t murder anyone himself. The manual was very clear on that point. No department below field operations was allowed more than one shredding, decapitation, immolation, or consumption of an employee by a hostile entity – human, animal, or cyborg – per quarter.”

     Throw in some wealthy wacko wannabe environmentalists, some DOPS Auditors who have a tendency to get inside the brains of people they examine, settings such as the used-car dealership to end all used-car dealerships and the Hollywood Golden Bungalows (“a hangout for the endless waves of starry-eyed musicians that washed up on L.A.’s shores like so many dead whales”), a “Hang in there, baby” motivational Post-it featuring a drawing of “a dragon in an evening gown eating what appeared to be a washing machine full of bowling shoes,” and a hyper-conservative TV news operation that “seems to have been created by Lex Luthor for Mad Max villains and Vlad the Impalers who want to return to the gold standard, replace preschool with toddler coal mining, and balance the budget through Bigfoot hunts and free-market organ harvesting,” and you have a small idea of what Kadrey is getting at.

     Oh, and don’t forget the transformed elephant, or rather what is transformed into the elephant.  “Why can’t I do business with normal thieves who want to steal things and not have everybody know who did it?” laments Coop at one point, then adding, “Of course, normal thieves don’t rush across town so they can stake out a trust-fund hit squad with their stolen elephant.” And this is what passes for introspection in The Wrong Dead Guy. But really, none of this is Coop’s fault – he just happened to wander into a Richard Kadrey novel, or rather two of them if you include The Everything Box, in which Coop first appeared and first saved the world. You will be happy to hear that he saves it again this time. Apparently. And apparently this is a good thing, although it is a touch sad to realize that with Harkhuf apparently being really dead and gone this time, there will be no one else available to say, “I promise you eternal torment if you do not deliver to me a chocolate brownie.” At least until Kadrey’s next book.

(+++) CHOOSE YOUR SUBTITLE

The Toddler Brain. By Laura A. Jana, M.D. Da Capo. $27.

     Parents who bemoan the fact that children do not come with instruction manuals have not spent enough time at bookstores or book-selling Web sites. There are tons of instruction manuals out there, and while it is true that a baby does not come prepackaged with any particular one, there are so many choices that parents can easily spend all their nonexistent spare time while raising an infant reading about all the ways they should be raising an infant but probably aren’t. The objective appears to be to make parents, who likely feel inadequate in many ways already, feel even worse.

     Well, to be fair, maybe that is not the objective, but it can certainly be the result. There is just so much out there purporting to know exactly what should be done to raise the best, smartest, happiest, most well-adjusted, best-prepared-for-the-future child that parents may be forgiven for wondering how their own parents – much less grandparents – managed to get through their child-rearing years without all the perfectly reasonable and undoubtedly accurate guidebooks available today.

     While wondering, they can read a book such as The Toddler Brain – as soon as they get past a title that seems determined to make them feel even more deficient than usual. Laura Jana’s work appears to have both a subtitle and a surtitle, or subtitle and sub-subtitle, or just an attempt to cram as much information onto the title page as possible so parents can be overwhelmed even before starting the text. One subtitle reads, “Nurture the Skills Today That Will Shape Your Child’s Tomorrow,” thereby warning parents that whatever they are currently doing is probably not nurturing the right skills or not nurturing them in the proper way. The other subtitle reads, “The Surprising Science Behind Your Child’s Development from Birth to Age 5,” thereby noting that everything in The Toddler Brain is based on science and therefore to be implicitly trusted, and if you don’t get with the program right now, you risk having a child who is woefully unprepared for the world by his or her fifth birthday.

     At the foundation of Jana’s book is in fact the notion of what sort of world our children need to prepare for, and in this respect the book is both insightful and timely. Jana, a pediatrician, believes that old-fashioned linear thinking, while appropriate to the now-ending Industrial Age, is inadequate for the increasingly interconnected Information Age and for whatever age will follow it. Perhaps two-thirds of today’s toddlers, she asserts, will grow up to do jobs that do not even exist today – an intriguing statistic if by no means an unexceptionable one. Preparing today’s young ones for the latest iteration of the coming brave new world requires parents to look at and practice parenting in a completely different way from the way their parents and their parents’ parents looked at and practiced child-rearing – as if today’s parents did not feel time-pressed and hamstrung enough.

     Jana has a somewhat overly cute way of presenting her recommendations. Instead of focusing on IQ, she argues, parents need to focus on QI, which is not only IQ backwards but also, as qi, means “life force” or “energy flow” in Chinese. Jana pronounces the letters as “key” to indicate that they refer to key elements of raising a child today, but qi is actually pronounced “chee,” although it is indeed a key element in traditional Chinese medicine. In Jana’s methodology, parents seeking to give their children QI skills need to focus on seven areas: Me, We, Why, Will, Wiggle, Wobble, and What If. There is no acronym for these, but there is plenty of description. In simplest form, Me involves self-awareness and self-control; We is people skills for an increasingly team-oriented world; Why refers to questioning and curiosity; Will is self-motivation; Wiggle has to do with a kind of physical and intellectual restlessness that makes action possible; Wobble is a form of resilience that makes it easier to learn from failure; and What If involves imagining ways in which the world could change and how an individual can be part of that change. Even in this very compressed form, these QI skills seem like a tall order, and indeed they are – with today’s parents having no readily available place to turn to learn and implement them except, ahem, The Toddler Brain.

     Jana’s focus on getting infants ready for eventual entry into the business world, and specifically into a fast-changing one that may make demands of them that it never made of earlier generations, is an unusual and welcome one in parenting books. She is clearly smart and thoughtful, and her ideas are by and large intriguing ones, if somewhat curiously or even tortuously expressed. However, her expectation that time-pressed, financially insecure, sleep-deprived new parents will be able to absorb an entirely new way of thinking about raising infants and then take steps to implement the method is wholly unreasonable. The Toddler Brain is actually a good book for pre-parenting: people considering having a child in the next several years and looking for a guide to what to do after the child is born will find many fascinating concepts here – although even they may be hard-pressed to implement Jana’s ideas after they actually become parents. “Reading books to young children can be a way to promote just about all the QI Skills,” notes Jana at one point. Reading her book is the way to learn about those skills and get basic guidance on how to help your children or children-to-come gain them. But any way you look at it, reading and absorbing and adjusting and simply coping with everyday life will take a great deal of time that parents – especially those with children under age five – are very unlikely to possess in abundance. The unfortunate result is that people who already may feel overwhelmed by the unending demands of child-rearing may feel even more so as they absorb Jana’s views on the best way to shape a toddler’s future life.

(++++) SYMPHONIC EXPANSIONS

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9. Klara Ek, soprano; Elisabeth Jansson, alto; Thomas Cooley, tenor; Liao Changyong, baritone; Ars Nova Copenhagen, Latvian Radio Choir and Copenhagen Phil conducted by Lan Shui. Orchid Classics. $13.99.

Liszt: Faust Symphony. Steve Davislim, tenor; men of Chorus Sine Nomine and Orchester Wiener Akademie conducted by Martin Haselböck. Alpha. $18.99.

     There is always a rationale for yet another of the umpteen-plus recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the reasoning behind the new release on Orchid Classics (of a performance from 2013) is unusually intriguing. This completes the three-volume Beethoven cycle featuring the oddly named but very adeptly performing Copenhagen Phil under Lan Shui. Shui’s approach to the whole set of symphonies is an intriguing mixture of the contemporary and the historically informed: the orchestra uses modern string instruments with historically accurate reproductions of brass and timpani, resulting in a sonic blend that is different from that heard on any other recording. And Shui’s approach to the music combines modern and older elements as well: contemporary scholarship suggests that Beethoven’s tempo indications, contrary to what was thought a few years back, are likely to be what he really wanted, and that the old canard suggesting that he had a defective metronome is not accurate. So Shui uses the tempos that Beethoven’s score suggests, even when they result in performances that require listeners to make some adjustments in their expectations. Actually, the chance to hear familiar music differently is one of the big pluses of Shui’s cycle. And Shui’s thoughtfulness about the music comes through clearly. He considers the Ninth to be less symphony and more oratorio, for example, and conducts it that way, with the first three movements assuming a decidedly lower profile than the finale. This is an arguable approach and one that other conductors have tried with greater or lesser success. It perhaps overstates the case for the finale to some extent – a true oratorio would make the first three movements more of a prologue to the finale than a strong set of declamations, as for instance in the case in Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 (Lobgesang), a work from 1840 that is directly based on Beethoven’s Ninth and one clearly designed to blur the boundary between symphony and oratorio (although, just to confuse matters further, Mendelssohn actually called it a “Symphony-Cantata”). Beethoven certainly laid the groundwork for works such as Mendelssohn’s, but whether he planned the Ninth itself as a symphony expanded into an oratorio is certainly debatable. Shui makes a strong case for the approach, though, and his chosen instrumentation helps him do so: the strings are brighter than those of Beethoven’s time, while the brass sounds more subdued and the overall orchestra seems more balanced than in performances using all-modern instruments. The first three movements are full of fine highlighting, again made possible much of the time by the instruments chosen, and Beethoven’s tempos work quite well – the Scherzo, notably, is fleet rather than heavy and portentous. As for the finale, the solo quartet blends very well together and stands out effectively against the chorus, and Shui makes intelligent choices about the interrelationship of the individual voices, this being a matter of perpetual debate in Beethoven’s Ninth and one without any absolutely clear “right” approach. This performance does make the finale a grand capstone to the symphony, and if it perhaps underplays the importance of the first three movements slightly even though they collectively account for two-thirds of the symphony’s length (in contrast to the first three movements in Mendelssohn’s later work), it does so in the service of a vision that is well-thought-out and one regarding which Shui, the singers and the orchestra seem to be in complete agreement --  resulting in a thoughtful, interesting and highly involving performance.

     By the time Liszt wrote his Faust Symphony, 25 years after Beethoven’s death, the symphonic landscape had changed and in some ways enlarged dramatically – thanks in large part to Beethoven and, in particular, to Beethoven’s Ninth. Like Berlioz, Liszt felt that the symphony after Beethoven had to develop in entirely new directions; and the Faust Symphony, which lasts even longer than Beethoven’s Ninth, shows just how far Liszt stretched the medium. This three-movement work is really a series of three intimately connected tone poems rather than a symphony in any structurally recognizable form. Liszt referred to the three parts as character sketches, and he developed them in some highly innovative ways. It is scarcely a surprise that the forward motion and constant striving of the music representing Faust stand in strong contrast to the quiet, gently graceful and drifting music representing Gretchen. But what is surprising are the methods Liszt uses to limn the characters. Faust’s music at one point includes an extremely early example of something approaching atonality and twelvetone, then harks directly back to Beethoven through use of the key of C minor, associated with Fate ever since Beethoven’s Fifth. The Faust movement is complex, long and frequently difficult for the ear to grasp, while the one representing Gretchen is simple, graceful and structurally straightforward. And the third movement, representing Mephistopheles, is a wonderful and groundbreaking concept, denying Mephistopheles any theme of his own while portraying him through a series of distortions of Faust’s themes, musically showing this tempter as one who twists and distorts scholarship, striving, love, and all the other characteristics that Liszt assigns to Faust in the first part of the symphony. This is a simply brilliant stroke of characterization and one that expands the Faust Symphony into a work as genuinely philosophical in its medium as Goethe’s Faust is in the medium of poetry and drama. Liszt caps his work, which is primarily drawn from the first part of Goethe’s, with a vocal conclusion that uses the last lines of the second part of Goethe’s Faust – the same lines, mystically celebrating the “eternal feminine,” that would later conclude and exalt Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Martin Haselböck conducts the Faust Symphony with intensity, understanding and an excellent sense of pacing on a new Alpha release. And the concluding vocal section – which returns, in a transformative way, to some of the Gretchen music, showing it to be less naïve and one-dimensional than it seems at first – is especially impressive. Indeed, it actually sounds like an anticipation of Mahler, who would expand the form of the symphony even beyond anything by Beethoven or Liszt, while managing to anchor his own works in the very different ones of both earlier composers.

(+++) BEYOND BRASSY

Perspectives. American Brass Quintet (John D. Rojak, bass trombone; Michael Powell, trombone; Eric Reed, horn; Louis Hanzlik and Kevin Cobb, trumpets). Summit Records. $14.99.

The Lightning Fields: New Music for Trumpet and Piano. Jason Bergman, trumpet and flugelhorn; Steven Harlos, piano and celeste. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Flamethrower: New Music for Trumpet, Flugelhorn & Interactive Electroacoustics. Stephen Ruppenthal, trumpet, crotales and flugelhorn. Ravello. $14.99.

Alan Beeler: Sonatas and Soli. Navona. $14.99.

     It is commonplace in contemporary music to release CDs with “theme” titles rather than ones naming the composers represented, who may be unknown or at best little-known to potential audiences. This results in a focus on performers rather than works performed, and tends to limit the releases to listeners who are either fans of the specific performers or who are fond of the players’ instruments. This is certainly the case with a new Summit Records release featuring the American Brass Quintet – although listeners who do delve into the CD may well be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the compositions here, whether or not they have heard music by these composers before. The opening suite, Shine, by Robert Paterson (born 1970), offers four movements that can be thought of as the classical version of heavy metal, at least in their titles: “Ringing Brass Bells,” “Quicksilver,” “Veins of Gold” and “Bright Blue Steel.” The titles do not necessarily reflect the music perfectly – for example, “Quicksilver” is not exceptionally fast, although it is quick enough to serve as a kind of scherzo – but all four movements show strength in writing for the instruments, and collectively they present the form of a fairly traditional sonata (opening, scherzo, slow movement, finale). The American Brass Quintet is an exceptionally well-balanced group that handles both the individual parts and the ensembles with real style, keeping the music moving smartly ahead without ever rushing it, and giving its essentially surface-level communication a fine polish. Quintet for Brass by Jay Greenberg (born 1991) brings out a warmer sound from the ensemble but is a less-impressive work, prone to stops and starts that make its single movement seem frequently to drag. Cadence, Fugue, Fade by Sebastian Currier (born 1959) is more interesting, with an impressive chorale opening that leads to an unexpectedly lively fugue – which is impressively constructed and gives the performers quite a workout. The conclusion of the piece is a bit of a letdown, but it does give the players a chance to show just how quietly and gently brass can be played. The final piece on the disc is Canticum Honoris Amicorum by Eric Ewazen (born 1954), and it makes a fine (if rather extended) encore, bright and rhythmic, with themes and accompaniment that lie well on the instruments and have a pleasantly old-fashioned celebratory feel. The CD showcases highly impressive playing in the service of music that mostly repays the obvious care that the American Brass Quintet lavishes on it.

     At least one composer represented on a new MSR Classics release may be familiar to listeners who enjoy contemporary music: Michael Daugherty (born 1954) has written in many forms, and his works are heard more frequently than are those of many other modern composers. Here he offers The Lightning Fields, a suite of four movements portraying four locations associated in one way or another with lightning: “Griffith Observatory (Los Angeles, California),” “The Lightning Field (Catron County, New Mexico),” “Marfa Lights (U.S. Route 67, Marfa, Texas),” and “Times Square (New York City).” Daugherty does a good job of using the trumpet to indicate different ways in which lightning (and other lights) may strike or appear, although some repetitiveness both within each piece and in the suite as a whole is inevitable. Jason Bergman has a formidable technique and handles the whole work with apparent ease. This is the piece’s world première recording, and the CD contains three other world premières as well: Catalonia (2003) by Richard Peaslee (1930-2016); Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (1994/2013) by Daniel Schnyder (born 1961); and The Adventures of… (2016), for unaccompanied trumpet, by Kevin McKee (born 1980). This last is a work for solo trumpet that makes a very fine encore, putting the instrument and its player through all sorts of demands and contortions, all of which Bergman handles with aplomb. The other pieces here include another by McKee, Song for a Friend (2015), and Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (2009) by Anthony Plog (born 1947) – who, although not as well-known as Daugherty, may be familiar to some listeners, and whose work here shows a strong command of four-movement sonata construction and a good understanding of the capabilities of the trumpet. Bergman switches to flugelhorn – which he also plays very adeptly – for two movements of Daugherty’s work and one of Peaslee’s, the different sound of the instrument helping keep the material interesting. Steven Harlos provides fine piano backup throughout, switching to celeste and creating a particularly unusual sound combination in the third movement of Plog’s sonata. More than anything, this is a recording for fans of fine trumpet playing, which Bergman offers throughout.

     Stephen Ruppenthal handles trumpet and flugelhorn very well, too, but Flamethrower, a new Ravello release, is not really about the instruments’ sound. Nor is it really about Ruppenthal’s virtuosity, even though the works here were written for him. Instead, this is by and large a “sonic exploration” disc, for listeners interested in hearing how acoustic brass instruments come across when stretched to the limit and juxtaposed with a wide variety of electronically generated sounds. There is always a certain dated quality to electronic music, despite the much greater sophistication used nowadays to produce it, because there is a hard-to-disguise sameness to electronic sounds no matter how creatively they are made and manipulated. The five pieces on this CD, all of them world première recordings, include one without accompanying electronics: Velocity Studies V: NGate (2007) by Allen Strange. This work certainly shows Ruppenthal’s ability and the strong jazz influences on his playing. The other pieces here are A Sphere of Air Is Bound (2010) by Bruno Liberda, in which Ruppenthal uses his voice as well as his trumpet and the composer contributes Kyma digital audio processing; November Twilight (2011) by Elainie Lillios, with the composer providing interactive electroacoustics and Ruppenthal again performing with his voice and trumpet – plus, in this case, on crotales (small tuned discs); Misty Magic Land (2004) by Allen Strange, with the composer on digital media and Brian Belet proffering Kyma digital audio processing; and Belet’s own System of Shadows (2007), with Ruppenthal on both trumpet and flugelhorn and Belet again with a Kyma contribution. There is always a certain otherworldliness to electronic and electroacoustic music, long recognized and used to excellent effect by György Ligeti and other giants of the field. Among the composers here, Belet embraces this element most strongly, with his suite’s three movements called “Aurora Borealis,” “Andromeda’s Dream,” and “Zephyr Apparition.” But all the works partake of this sensibility to some degree, and the result is a kind of sameness of sound despite the differences in the manner in which that sound is produced. This is really a CD for electronic-music fanciers to a greater extent than it is one for lovers of fine brass playing.

     Brass figures to a considerable extent in the music of Alan Beeler (1939-2016), as heard on a new Navona CD that is essentially a tribute to the late composer – and something of a hodgepodge of works for one or two instruments. Because every movement of every piece here is quite short, it is possible to fit no fewer than 14 works by Beeler comfortably on the disc. Two of the pieces feature brass instruments: Sonata for Bass Trombone and Piano, with Dalibor Procházka and Lucie Kaucká, and The Octatonic Tuba—Sonata for Tuba and Piano, with Jiří Král and Kaucká. Actually, to the extent that this CD has a theme or focus, it is the piano, works for which dominate the recording: Kaucká performs 3 Early Pieces for Solo Piano, while Karolina Rojahn is pianist in My Identity Suite, Multi-Tonal Suite, Beeler’s Fit ’06, Piano Sonata, and 12-Tone Quartal Etude. And then there are works including but not focused on piano: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with Aleš Janeček and Kaucká; Flute & Piano Sonata, with Petr Hladík and Kaucká; English Horn Sonata and Oboe Sonata, both with Jennifer Slowick and Rojahn; and Sonata da Camera, with bassoonist Jan Dvořák and Kaucká. There is also a rather delicious piece for solo vibraphone (Ladislav Bilan) called Something More Cheerful Suite—Variations on a Well-known Tune. The formal variety is striking here, as is the use of so many different instruments and instrumental combinations – all of which Beeler handles with skill, if not always inspiration. The music fits his chosen means of conveying it well in all cases, and if some pieces are less than enthralling, everything is so short that a listener dissatisfied with one movement or even an entire work has only to wait a minute or two for the next, hopefully more engaging one. This is quite clearly a CD for people already familiar with Beeler and wanting a “memory” recording showcasing, in one place, the extent of his involvement and inventiveness in chamber music. The works show Beeler’s comfort in a variety of styles: some have clear roots in 19^th-century and even earlier music, while others partake directly of the musical esthetics of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Nothing here will likely capture the interest of someone unfamiliar with Beeler and turn the person into a fan, but those who are fans already will enjoy what will likely be, for many of them, a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar, and a pleasant survey highlighting many of the composer’s interests.

(++++) VISUAL EMOTIONS

Fish Girl. By Donna Jo Napoli & David Wiesner. Pictures by David Wiesner. Clarion. $25.

Big Nate: What’s a Little Noogie Between Friends? By Lincoln Peirce. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     A beautiful, moving, mysterious and mystical story told artfully in graphic-novel form, Fish Girl never reveals exactly who or what the title character is – and that is part of the book’s charm. It starts with an old-fashioned seaside sideshow, in which a man dressed as sea-god Neptune pretends to control the waters in a huge tank where the title character, a protective octopus, and a variety of other sea creatures live. The story is one of gradual self-discovery, as Fish Girl, who cannot speak, hears stories from “Neptune” about her origin, but gradually comes to learn that they are false and he is an exploiter, not her protector. The man’s carefully arranged business setup starts to come apart when an inquisitive 12-year-old named Livia spots Fish Girl, whose job is to let people get glimpses of her but never to be fully seen, so as to preserve the “mystery” on which “Neptune” relies. Gradually Livia makes friends with Fish Girl, even giving her a name – Mira, short for “miracle.” And indeed Fish Girl is a miracle of some kind: she is not exactly a mermaid, because while she looks like one, it turns out as the book goes on that she can shed her tail and scales and have fully formed legs, then regain her part-fish appearance afterwards, all quite unintentionally. Very loosely related to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, although not directly correlated with that bittersweet tale of hope and religious faith, Fish Girl is all about Mira’s growing awareness that she was captured – with the octopus who now shares her tank – when she was tiny, and needs to get herself and her captive friends away from the fisherman who caught them so she can live her own life. That, it turns out, is a life on land, and Mira’s eventual parting from the octopus – a creature of great magic, it turns out, since he can expand to enormous size and power as needed, then return to his usual appearance – is but one of many emotional high points of the story. The writing is well-paced and sensitive, revealing matters in due course and functioning through the words and thoughts of the characters rather than through third-person narrative. That is an effective approach that brings readers strongly into Fish Girl’s world. As for the illustrations, they are beautiful and evocative, and at the same time rather old-fashioned, since David Wiesner does not take advantage of all the intricacies of graphic-novel format: he makes his panels different sizes but keeps them square or rectangular, rather than changing their shape to suit elements of the story; and he keeps his characters within panel borders, in comic-book style, instead of having them burst the panels’ confines and overlap the edges that constrict them. When he needs something huge and intense, Wiesner simply spreads it over two pages and has it bleed to the pages’ edges, as when the octopus destroys the building that has been his and Mira’s prison for so many years. Both Wiesner and Donna Jo Napoli possess a sure storytelling sense and excellent feel for pacing and emotional exploration, with the result that Fish Girl transcends its rather ordinary voyage-of-self-discovery theme to become a beautiful, strange and compelling story in which not all the questions about Fish Girl are ever answered and not all the loose ends are ever tied up – but in which the concluding message of hopefulness and warmth comes through loudly and clearly.

     The emotions are much more surface-level in Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate comic strip and the books that collect it, including the latest, What’s a Little Noogie Between Friends? The central attraction in all the books, and in the strip, is Nate himself, the 11-or-12-year-old self-proclaimed genius who succeeds at absolutely everything, except when he doesn’t, which is most of the time, which is why Nate spends so much effort reinterpreting life’s ups and downs (especially the downs). Nate’s foibles are always good for laughs: convinced that his soccer team is jinxed, goalie Nate suffers through a defeat by a team that has lost 60 games in a row; his longtime crush, Jenny, finds out she is moving 3,000 miles away; he babysits genius first-grader Peter and is determined to force him into hockey instead of figure skating, a plan that goes about as well as might be expected; he goes to the movies and finds himself sitting next to arch-enemy Gina, because there is only one seat left, and that leads to suspicions that the two are on a date, which of course Gina exploits to Nate’s detriment; and then there are Nate’s usual encounters and misadventures with nemesis Mrs. Godfrey, Spitsy the ridiculous dog, loud and over-dramatic Coach John, and Nate’s own father (who in one sequence is himself a coach of Nate’s team, and whose name we actually find out: Marty). Interestingly, it is not Nate but one of his best friends, Teddy, who in this collection utters one of Nate’s own innermost thoughts: “Why does school always have to be about learning stuff?” Nate spends a great deal of his time trying hard not to learn in school, but the fact is that he does have a good mind when he is properly motivated: the very last strip here has Francis tutoring him and warning him that if he fails an upcoming test, he will be doing summer school with Mrs. Godfrey – at which point Nate not only gives the year of a battle but also the month and day. Nate is not as cool as he wants to be, not as independent, not as successful, and not as lovable – at least to those in his world. But to the many fans of the Big Nate strip, he is every bit as enjoyable and involving a character as can be. It is ironic that he is a comic-strip star even though he is never quite able to be the star of his own life. It is because of Nate’s emotional reaction to all the things that do not go his way – and his resilience in the face of so many reversals – that Nate’s life is so much fun to explore, for readers if not necessarily for Nate himself.

(++++) SMALL AMUSEMENTS

I Don’t Know What to Call My Cat. By Simon Philip. Illustrated by Ella Bailey. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99.

Laugh-Out-Loud Awesome Jokes for Kids. By Rob Elliott. Harper. $4.99.

     No profundity required. Sometimes little things are all that is necessary to create a book that kids will find a lot of fun. Take, for example, the matter of naming a pet. It is a mundane occurrence, no big deal, nothing to get worked up about. But Simon Philip blows it entirely out of proportion in I Don’t Know What to Call My Cat, and the result is delightful. Ella Bailey sets the tone for the book with wonderful front and back covers that show the faces of cats of all types, colors and dispositions (from sleepy to devilish to eyepatched to human-mustached to Egyptian to hat-wearing to bow-tied and many more) – each given its own appropriate name. But what is the name of the cat that turns up on a little girl’s doorstep one day, complete with umbrella, violin case and small travel bag, and decides to stay? The cat settles into life with the little girl without difficulty, taking over pretty much everything in the house, as cats will. But the girl cannot figure out what to call the cat. She tries the simple “Kitty,” but when she calls out that name, she ends up surrounded by felines from all over. She tries “Princess High-and-Mighty” and dresses the cat accordingly (and hilariously), which leads to the cat climbing a high lamp to get away from the accouterments of royalty. She tries a whole batch of more-straightforward names, but none of them fits – and besides, they are all girl names, and it turns out that the cat is a boy, which only makes the little girl’s life harder. “Mr. Maestro” almost works – it does well with the violin that the cat plays – but when the girl adds her own very different version of music to what the cat is playing, the cat throws off his fancy dress and runs away. Now this “name” book becomes a “search” book, and the quest includes a trip to the zoo, which takes the book in an entirely new direction: a gorilla follows the little girl home and becomes her new pet. And he is easy to name: he paints pictures and signs them “by Steve.” The girl’s outings with Steve are tremendously funny, being filled with cats and catlike figures of all types, with one particular cat (which readers will notice when they look carefully) giving the girl “the feeling we were being watched.” Sure enough, the cat came back – disguised with a mustache and bowler hat – and arranged for Steve to be returned to the zoo. And this time he is sporting a collar with his name, and that name, unsurprisingly, turns out to be Tricky. Misunderstanding to the end, the little girl says the name fits because “he was very tricky to name,” but the cat, winking as he plays his fiddle, knows that the name fits because he is a real trickster – an entirely suitable ending to a book that has one additional bit of cleverness in store: the inside front covers show fish and fishbones (cat food), while the inside back covers show whole and partly peeled bananas (gorilla food). I Don’t Know What to Call My Cat turns out to be silly and exceedingly clever at the same time.

     Much more straightforward and surface-level, Rob Elliott’s latest (+++) collection of groaners and knock-knocks, Laugh-Out-Loud Awesome Jokes for Kids, follows in the well-worn path of Elliott’s other joke collections. It is a small, light book, easy to carry around, containing an occasional picture of a child or children playing in a way unrelated to the text. The text itself is simply a series of jokes that kids in kindergarten through first or second grade may find amusing and may enjoy telling their friends, although hopefully not too many times. “Why did the boy stop carving the stick? He was a whittle tired.” “Where does a sick sailor go? To the dock-tor.” “What can you break without touching it? A promise.” “Where do cows go for lunch? The calf-eteria.” “Why was the oak tree so proud of his heritage? Because his roots ran deep.” “How does an artist cross the river? He uses a drawbridge.” Pretty much everything here is on the same level, and there is little to distinguish these “awesome” jokes from ones in other Elliott collections with other titles. The books seem mainly designed for kids who aspire to be the class clown, or provide a comedy routine for a school play. Certainly they are not the sort of material that family members would sit still for, at least for very long. And it is hard to see kids using them “spontaneously” (from memory, that is) with many of their peers, although a child who does like these jokes is likely to have friends who will enjoy them as well. These Elliott collections are quite popular, so clearly they have hit a nerve, or tickled one, or something along those lines. Whether “you’ve never laughed so hard in your life,” as the back cover puts it, is an accurate statement, seems questionable. But again, it may depend on who is laughing and under what circumstances. Some adults and older kids, for example, may be laughing at the occasional mistake that crops up in the jokes. For instance, “Why did the egg get kicked out of the comedy club? He was telling bad yokes.” Well, maybe, but for this to be a joke rather than a misspelling, it should be “bad yolks.” If you find that a laugh-out-loud, awesome error, then you may be a candidate for enjoying Laugh-Out-Loud Awesome Jokes for Kids.

(++++) TALES FOR OUR TIME

Shakespeare Retold. By E. Nesbit. Illustrated by Antonio Javier Caparo. Harper. $19.99.

Ronit & Jamil. By Pamela L. Laskin. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     Back in 1897, there appeared, from one of the great children’s writers of the past 150 years, a collection called The Children’s Shakespeare, which was reprinted 10 years later as Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. The author was E. (Edith) Nesbit, best known nowadays for wonderful fantasy adventures such as Five Children and It, The Railway Children, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, and many more. Nesbit wanted to retell Shakespeare’s plays in language that modern children would find accessible, preserving the tales’ drama and some of their intricacy while reducing the barriers to understanding caused by Elizabethan English and the deliberately convoluted way in which Shakespeare often structured his plots. Nesbit gave 20 of the plays her streamlined treatment, including some that are infrequently studied even at the college level nowadays: Timon of Athens, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale. Nesbit provided a Shakespeare biography, pronunciation guide, and list of famous quotations, too. Now there is a new, slimmer, much abridged edition of Nesbit’s distillation of Shakespeare, called Shakespeare Retold and including illustrations by Antonio Javier Caparo and a biography and timeline by Mariah Fredericks. Only seven of Nesbit’s play summaries are offered: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest, and Much Ado about Nothing. Parents familiar with Shakespeare will have a number of understandable quibbles with Nesbit’s presentation. For example, Macbeth becomes “chieftain” rather than “thane,” and Nesbit changes “Macbeth hath murdered sleep” to “Macbeth destroys the sleeping.” And near the end of the tale of Hamlet, Nesbit writes that Hamlet finally kills Claudius, adding parenthetically, “(Which, if he had steeled his heart to do long before, all these lives would have been spared and none would have suffered but the wicked king, who well deserved to die.)” Nevertheless, even if one admits weaknesses in these retellings, with (for instance) the Capulets and Montagues being described merely as “deeply sad” after Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths, the fact is that Nesbit largely accomplished her purpose: these prose distillations of the seven plays included here are accurate as to plot, explanatory as to motive, and turn the enormous complexities of Shakespeare’s thinking and writing into something approachable and genuinely interesting. The book, after all, is not a Shakespeare book so much as a book about Shakespeare and the plays he wrote: Nesbit’s aim was to introduce young children – Shakespeare Retold is for ages 6-10 – to some of the greatest literature of all time by making it intriguing, even at the expense of much of the style and form that make the plays great. Given the sad reality that it is now possible to go through an entire college education without taking a single course in Shakespeare – a consequence of the increased focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and of the contemporary view of college as little more than a path to a well-paying job – a book like this may go some small distance to redress the balance that has relegated Shakespeare and other great writers and humanists to little more than an educational afterthought. Caparo’s illustrations are overly romantic, but they are appealing in their own way, and Fredericks’ biography and timeline are nicely done and useful for children who, captivated by the stories that Nesbit retells, find themselves wanting to know a bit more about the man who wrote them and the time in which he lived. Hopefully Shakespeare Retold will be a door opener, and a mind opener, for quite a number of young readers.

     The continuing fascination of Shakespeare’s tales shows itself again and again in works that recast the stories for later ages and place them in different locations. One such is Ronit & Jamil, a (+++) novel in verse – not Shakespearean verse, though, by any means – that takes the Romeo-and-Juliet theme (note the letters that begin the two central characters’ names) and plops it down in modern Israel and Gaza. The idea here is that Ronit, an Israeli girl, and Jamil, a Palestinian boy, are brought together because their fathers work with each other in one of those uneasy but necessary business relationships that pervade everyday life in and near Israel. The two teenagers – older than Shakespeare’s Juliet, who is 13 (Romeo’s age is never specified) – fall desperately in love, and Pamela L. Laskin goes out of her way to balance everything they say, think and feel. This leads sometimes to considerable awkwardness: at one point, Ronit thinks about the fear of being blown up while traveling by bus, by someone who could be a member of Jamil’s family; then Jamil thinks of the possibility of people who would “chop down trees to build settlements,” which is scarcely comparable. But the whole point of Ronit & Jamil is equivalence, to indicate that Israelis and Palestinians are perfectly equal in desires, hopes, fears and motivations. The book will surely appeal to people who believe that; but it is a stance without nuance, one that undermines the very humanity of the young lovers, to write as if each is no more than a mirror image of the other. Laskin also shies away from the tragic ending of Shakespeare’s play, having Ronit and Jamil make the decision to flee the Middle East altogether and perhaps even end up in America, even though “America has problems, too. Every place has problems.” The book insists on ending in uplift and hope – which, in fact, is also how Shakespeare’s play ends, but in that case, to do so requires a double sacrifice beyond anything in Laskin’s novel. Of course, adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – itself an adaptation of earlier works – need not be faithful to their source, and some superb modernizings play considerable havoc with Shakespeare: West Side Story, for example. But Ronit & Jamil reduces too many complexities to simplicity for this slim book to be wholly satisfying. It does not suggest that love conquers all, but it does say something along the lines of Sir Joseph Porter’s remark in HMS Pinafore: “Love levels all ranks.” Yet even Sir Joseph eventually comes to realize, “It does not level them as much as that.” So it is in Ronit & Jamil. Love may overcome a great deal, but not everything. Reconciliation of Ronit’s and Jamil’s families, and Israelis and Palestinians in general, is not even a flicker of a possibility here: if there is any escape, it is for two people only, leaving society at large no better off than before. That is the exact opposite of Shakespeare’s message, for all that Laskin tries so hard to build her work on his vastly superior one.

(++++) COLLEGE AS COMMODITY

Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Schools That Give You the Best Bang for Your Tuition Buck, 2017 Edition. By Robert Franek, David Soto, Kristen O’Toole, and the Staff of the Princeton Review. Princeton Review/Random House. $21.99.

     Gone are the days in which colleges were supposed to provide a strong general education, the ingredients of a well-rounded person who could live a well-rounded life. No one has time for that anymore, and few have the inclination, anyway. ROI, return on investment, is now what college is all about, and the return needs to be quantifiable, not some evanescent concept such as “learning to be a better person.” There will be plenty of time for that after retirement, assuming one can afford to retire and is inclined at that point to the contemplative life – and not hampered by health issues. But to be able to afford retirement in the far-distant future, one must attain significant financial security for many decades, and that brings us right back to college as training ground for high-paying professions. Or at least ones that quickly pay back the cost of getting the education that is a prerequisite for doing that particular type of work.

     This scenario leads directly to Colleges That Pay You Back, a no-nonsense analysis of what it costs to attend each of hundreds of schools (including a calculation of how much financial aid those schools provide, since that figures into the cost of attendance), and how high students’ salaries are likely to be immediately after graduation and some years down the road. There isn’t a better book out there for students and families looking to maximize the financial and career impact of choosing a school. To be sure, the book presents the usual disclaimers about not regarding college as purely a way to have more income in adult life: “Your choice of major should not depend solely on your expected starting salary, but also on your academic interests, the subjects you are passionate about, and the type of career you’re interested in.” Even if this is sincerely written, it is worth about as much as most disclaimers, which is to say, not very much, since it is part of the introduction to a section called “Great Schools for the Highest Paying Majors” that neatly quantifies not only the median starting salary for fresh-out-of-college employees but also the mid-career expectation in each field. There are excellent lists of colleges to consider if you are interested in aerospace engineering, architectural engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, petroleum engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, as well as four types of engineering technologies. So many choices! But this is not to say the social sciences are entirely absent: there are lists for economics and international relations.

     Colleges That Pay You Back does not intend to be hard-hearted, only hard-headed. Parents who attended college at a time when majors such as psychology, English, philosophy, theater and music were deemed as worthy as those in hard science and business may be startled and may even feel wistful as they peruse this data-heavy, very well-organized look at each school’s student profile, selectivity, financial facts, and career information – the last of which specifically includes an “ROI rating.” Today’s college attendees need to know how to make it in a very difficult, fast-changing workplace, and the book quantifies advantages as much as it can, while also including more-subjective elements such as the quality of each college’s career placement and alumni network – a key element to getting ahead in the contemporary version of “it’s not what you know, it’s whom you know” (non-sticklers for accurate English may say “it’s who you know,” and no one will care). What is interesting is that many of the top 50 places in Colleges That Pay You Back are exceptionally good all-around schools, so even if you do not take one of the currently favored majors and go into one of the currently hot professions, there is a good chance – thanks largely to strong alumni networks – that you will still do well in life, financially speaking, if you attend one of these schools. That, of course, assumes you can get in and can afford to attend – but given these schools’ outreach to “under-represented” groups and their extensive endowments, that is certainly a possibility for more students now than it would have been a few decades ago.

     Nevertheless, the top-listed schools do lean largely in the direction of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Princeton University comes in at No. 1, followed by Stanford, MIT, Harvey Mudd College, and California Institute of Technology. Other schools with a longstanding reputation for overall excellence dot the top-50 list: Harvard (No. 6), Duke (No. 11), Columbia (No. 24), Tufts (No. 31), Johns Hopkins (No. 39). Students may want to search the top-50 list for excellent pay-you-back schools that are somewhat less-known in this context, such as Brigham Young University (No. 18), Hamilton College (No. 21), Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (No. 29), or Wabash College (No. 38). But before doing that search, and indeed before using Colleges That Pay You Back in any way, students need to spend some time looking within themselves and deciding what they, not their friends and not some amorphous notion of “society as a whole,” want to get out of attending college. Colleges That Pay You Back is an excellent resource for those with a straightforwardly economic view of a college education, and there is enough variety in the schools profiled here – not just the top 50 – so students with that viewpoint will find many different ways of accommodating it. But students who see the possibility of something in college beyond the notion of trading college-education dollars for a greater number of employment dollars in the future should not deem this book the ultimate guide. There are other reasons to attend college, decreasingly common though they may be, and a student who subscribes to a non-economic model (or not a solely economic one) will find other college guides (including others from the Princeton Review) more congenial than this one.

(++++) NEW EXPLORATIONS

Sibelius: Kullervo; Finlandia; Olli Kortekangas: Migrations. Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano; Tommi Hakala, baritone; YL Male Voice Choir and Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä. BIS. $39.99 (2 SACDs).

Johan Halvorsen: Violin Concerto; Nielsen: Violin Concerto; Johan Svendsen: Romance. Henning Kraggerud, violin; Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bjarte Engeset. Naxos. $12.99.

Bach: Organ Music—Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542; Italian Concerto, BWV 971; Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544; Trio Sonata in G, BWV 530; Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C, BWV 564; Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582. Christopher Houlihan, organ. Azica. $16.99.

     Sibelius’ Kullervo dates to 1891-92 and Olli Kortekangas’ Migrations to 2014, but the works have more in common than their 120-plus years of separation would suggest. Sibelius thought of Kullervo as a symphony “in the Finnish spirit,” although it is really more of a gigantic tone poem (over 70 minutes long) based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, to which Sibelius would return time and again during his career. A tale of heroism and large-scale mythic events, the Kalevala was understandably attractive to a composer who, although always more comfortable in the Swedish language than in Finnish, had a strong affinity for grand gestures and opulent orchestration in the service of Finnish nationalism. In five movements marked Introduction, Kullervo’s Youth, Kullervo and His Sister, Kullervo Goes to War, and Kullervo’s Death, Sibelius not only traces the life of the hero but also produces a work on the grandest of scales – and using the unusual vocal forces of a male choir, solo baritone and solo mezzo-soprano. It was a striking idea of Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra – an ensemble deeply imbued with the Scandinavian heritage of so many residents of its home area – to commission Kortekangas (born 1955) to create a work for much the same forces (excluding only the solo baritone) to acknowledge and celebrate a journey different from but allied to Kullervo’s: that of many Finns to the United States. Wisely, Kortekangas made no attempt here to emulate Sibelius’ style despite the overlap of performers. He chose poetic texts from two collections by Sheila Packa, Echo and Lightning and Cloud Birds, and used them to produce a work far more modest in scale than Kullervo but hinting at the grand, if mundane, adventures that brought ordinary rather than mythic figures across the ocean and into a new and often very harsh land, where they set down roots anew. Using four vocal sections and three instrumental interludes, Kortekangas manages to convey much of the emotion, from the human-scale heroic to the uncertain, with which the Finnish migration was imbued. Less grand and less compelling then Kullervo, Kortekangas’ work is nevertheless a fine companion piece that stands well beside Sibelius’ huge tone poem. The strong, committed, thoroughly idiomatic readings on a new two-SACD release from BIS, recorded in splendid sound at three live performances, are just about everything that a listener could desire in these works. And the rousing version of Finlandia that concludes the release – and uses the male choir for the famed “hymn” section – both sums up and broadens a tribute to Finland and the Finnish people that, although quite specific in design, effectively reaches out to any and all people who have looked for inspiration to their mythic tales and the bravery and pluck of their ancestors.

     What is new on a new Naxos CD is not new at all in one sense – but is quite contemporary in another. The Violin Concerto by Carl Nielsen’s near-contemporary, Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935), dates to 1907-08. But it disappeared shortly after its first performance in 1909. It was rediscovered as recently as 2015 – the year after Kortekangas wrote Migrations, making this a very recent occurrence indeed. Halvorsen’s concerto bears a striking resemblance in some ways to Nielsen’s of 1911, but in other ways these two notably Nordic works are quite different. Juxtaposing them in performances as fine as those of Henning Kraggerud with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under Bjarte Engeset provides an opportunity to hear and enjoy both the similarities and the distinctions between the two works. Halvorsen’s concerto is more thoroughly lyrical, more imbued with Romantic spirit, and more clearly influenced by Norwegian folk music, featuring definite effects drawn from the Hardanger fiddle. Nielsen’s concerto is broader, significantly larger in scale (running about 50% longer), cast in an unusual two-movement form, and for much of its length almost anti-virtuosic in its determination to highlight the violin’s warmer and more expressive qualities. Kraggerud has clearly studied both works carefully and manages to imbue each with its own individual character while, at the same time, showing the rhythmic and harmonic similarities, along with the roughly comparable overall treatment of tonality, that make a comparison and contrast of the works attractive. The CD includes, as an encore, the lovely 1881 Romance by Johan Svendsen (1840-1911), a gently lulling piece more thoroughly of the Romantic era than either concerto, and more straightforward than the longer pieces in its simplicity and expressiveness. This is an unusual CD primarily because it offers Halvorsen’s concerto in its world première commercial recording, but it is also unusual for its particularly well-chosen repertoire and for the way in which violinist and conductor alike show their affinity for music of this era and this geographical region.

     Organist Christopher Houlihan clearly has great affinity for Bach – it is hard to imagine an organist who does not – but Houlihan’s (+++) handling of half a dozen Bach pieces on a new Azica CD is an example of an exploration that goes astray all too often. Houlihan sees Bach’s music as a template upon which to impose his own notions of how the music should or could go. There is no historic performance practice or understanding here – indeed, Houlihan rather defiantly proclaims through these readings that the “historic” way is not his way and not really Bach’s way, either. Just as some pianists offer Bach with Romantic-era sound and flourishes on an instrument that the composer never knew, so Houlihan takes full advantage of the capabilities of a modern organ to produce swells, registration changes, and impressive crescendos and decrescendos that make the music sound very little like Bach and a great deal like what pop music performers call a “cover” of Bach. This is not Bach with, for example, a jazz overlay, or indeed with any overlay at all: the notes are Bach’s and the works proceed as Bach intended them to in terms of movement sequences and, more or less, tempos. One work, the Italian Concerto, is specifically labeled as being arranged by Houlihan, and listeners familiar with Bach’s original will certainly notice some differences. But where Houlihan’s approach really strikes out on its own is in the four fugues on the CD. Clarity of line is the sine qua non of this musical form, and that is one of the big reasons for preferring the keyboard instruments of Bach’s own time – harpsichord, clavichord, organ – to those of later eras, which are designed for very different purposes. Houlihan looks for sumptuousness of sound and expressiveness of emotion in these fugues, employing all the resources of his organ (which was built in 1971 and remodeled in 2013) to produce sound that is full, intense and distinctly modern. There is no question that Houlihan shines a different light on this music than do performers more concerned with what Bach wrote and what instruments he wrote for. For that reason, listeners already thoroughly familiar with these works may find the Houlihan interpretations salutary and intriguing. But they are decidedly not the first choice in this music for anyone who wants to hear what Bach planned to communicate, performed in the way that he intended and in which he – a famously skilled organist – surely performed the music himself.

(+++) VOCAL VARIETIES

Patrick Hawes: Revelation; Beatitudes; The Word; Peace Beyond Thought; Let Us Love; The Lord’s Prayer; Be Still; Quanta Qualia. Leslie De’Ath, piano; John Johnson, alto saxophone; The Elora Singers conducted by Noel Edison. Naxos. $12.99.

Juliana Hall: O Mistress Mine; Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush; Propriety. Darryl Taylor, countertenor; Susan Narucki, soprano; Juliana Hall and Donald Berman, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Edie Hill: From the Wingbone of a Swan; The Fenix; Cancion de el Alma—En una Noche Escura; Clay Jug; We Bloomed in Spring; Alma Beata et Bella. The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally. Navona. $14.99.

Jonathan Santore: Choral Music. New Hampshire Master Chorale and Manchester Choral Society and Orchestra conducted by Dan Perkins. Navona. $14.99.

     Patrick Hawes (born 1958) is an example of a contemporary composer who continues to draw inspiration from the Bible and to find ways to produce Bible-based choral works that appeal both to performers (amateur and professional) and to religiously inclined audiences. A new Naxos CD featuring the elegant, well-balanced sound of the Elora Singers under Noel Edison includes seven world première recordings of pieces composed as recently as 2016 – plus a non-première recording of a very effective 2014 piece, Quanta Qualia. The words that Hawes chooses for these works are so well-known, at least to those with a conventional religious inclination, that the pieces almost invite a kind of sing-along approach, especially since Hawes is inclined to build substantial works by assembling a collection of very short elements. Revelation, for example, runs 26 minutes but contains nine sections, while Beatitudes (using words from the gospel of Matthew) runs 22 minutes and is made up of eight pieces. Hawes’ mixed-choir writing is skillful, and indeed the a cappella pieces on this disc are more involving than the ones with piano accompaniment, which are Beatitudes, Let Us Love and Be Still. The piano parts seem more tacked-on than integral to the music. On the other hand, Quanta Qualia includes an alto saxophone with the chorus, and that sound mixture proves both unusual and pleasing. Many of the works lie high in the performers’ vocal ranges – the sopranos occasionally seem to strain to reach the top notes – but the basic musical structure here is as straightforward as the texts, and the disc will please listeners who enjoy contemporary choral music as well as ones seeking religious uplift through traditional means.

     Juliana Hall was also born in 1958, but her vocal approaches are quite different from those of Hawes, as a new MSR Classics release makes clear. The piano is more integral to the three song cycles here than it is to anything on the Hawes CD, and the texts that Hall sets are more varied. The most interesting songs are in O Mistress Mine, which includes a dozen pieces to words by Shakespeare, whose gorgeous language is woven through a piano line that ranges from the piquant to the smooth. The choice of countertenor to voice these songs is an inspired one, and Darryl Taylor delivers the words with sensitivity and emotional involvement, while the composer herself provides first-rate accompaniment. However, Hall’s forays into dissonance do not always fit the words’ meaning and sometimes seem more mannered than necessary to the material, as if it would be unseemly to treat these Elizabethan-era texts in any old-fashioned way when setting them in 2016. Still, O Mistress Mine is by and large a pleasant, involving and attractively structured cycle. The other two song sets here, for soprano (the very accomplished Susan Narucki) and piano (Donald Berman), are older and somewhat more conventional. Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush (1989) is based on the letters of Emily Dickinson rather than her poetry, while Propriety (1992) uses poems by Marianne Moore. The Dickinson material is as much historical curiosity as worthwhile fodder for songs, although the chance to hear something beyond the many Dickinson poems that have been set by other composers is a welcome one. The Moore poems are well-chosen: they include Mercifully, Carnegie Hall: Rescued, Dream, Propriety and Melchior Vulpius. The settings themselves, however, do not shed any particular light on the words, although they fit the texts well and give Narucki and Berman ample opportunity to emote and express. All these works are world première recordings, and all will be of interest to fans of modern music for vocal recitals – with the Shakespeare settings most likely to intrigue listeners and occasionally amuse them, as with This is a very scurvy tune to sing from The Tempest.

     The music of Edie Hill (born 1962) on a new Navona CD includes some of the attention to choral writing found in the Hawes disc and some of the instrumental sensitivity shown in Hall’s works. Hill’s music is eclectic: sometimes straightforward in approach, as in setting a soloist against a larger group, sometimes multi-layered either through divisi voices or by setting the vocal elements against instrumental ones that here include percussion (Ted Babcock), cello (Arlen Hlusko), and flute (Mimi Stillman). Like Hall, Hill chooses texts carefully and from varied sources, in Hill’s case both secular and sacred: The Fenix comes from The Exeter Book, while Cancion de el Alma—En una Noche Escura is from San Juan de la Cruz, Clay Jug is from 15^th-century Indian mystic Kabir, We Bloomed in Spring comes from St. Teresa of Avila, Alma Beata et Bella is by Jacopo Sannazaro, and Hill herself – along with Timothy O’Brien – provides the words for From the Wingbone of a Swan. The settings are as disparate as the textual variety would suggest, but they all showcase frequent use of dissonance set against sections of lyrical beauty. The music sounds woven as much as composed, the words often unintelligible but functioning as threads within an overall sound picture that uses the voices of The Crossing in a wide variety of ways (only From the Wingbone of a Swan adds instruments to the vocal elements). We Bloomed in Spring, the shortest work here (under three minutes), is the most immediately affecting and reaches out most attractively; Alma Beata et Bella also has much to recommend it, despite some over-reaching in the higher registers (although Donald Nally always keeps the voices well under control). The remaining pieces are all at least intermittently effective, although they tend to expand rather too far to remain convincing and involving. Hill, like Hall and Hawes, certainly shows skill in handling a vocal ensemble, and these works are pleasant if not especially engaging: Hill’s music will likely reach out with more impact to singers looking for something new to perform than to an audience hoping for a fully engaging listening experience.

     Unlike many other contemporary composers of vocal music, Jonathan Santore (born 1963) roots his works firmly in the past, as is abundantly clear on a new Navona CD featuring eight pieces. The largest-scale of these by far is Requiem: Learning to Fall, for chorus, orchestra and solo mezzo-soprano (Emily Jaworski). In two parts and 12 short movements, this piece is essentially a meditation on the word alleluia and the well-known Dies irae, both of which elements pervade the music and recur again and again. They essentially represent a simplistic juxtaposition of light against dark, but the words of this Requiem, which are not at all the traditional ones of the Requiem Mass, are used to provide a variety of paeans to life despite the work’s overall title. The effect is an intriguing one, and Santore’s striving for clarity of the vocal line makes the intent of this piece and its individual sections clear. The use of an orchestra broadens the texts, and the instrumentation is well handled. The same is true in a short piece called Forgetting that also uses chorus with orchestra: Santore’s writing for voices, like that of Hawes, emphasizes ease of communication with the audience and is largely tonal. Four of the remaining six pieces here are for chorus plus one or a few instruments: Walden Recessional includes a cello (Linda Galvan), The Return (Armistice Poems) uses a piano (Dan Perkins), and there is a soprano saxophone (Rik Pfenninger) in Love Always! In addition, O Sweet Spontaneous Earth includes a string trio: Eva Gruesser on violin, Daniel Doña on viola, and Leo Eguchi on cello. The remaining two works are for chorus alone: Kalevala Fragments, its title inviting thoughts of Sibelius, and Eight Gypsy Songs after Brahms, whose reference to earlier compositions is obvious. Because Santore goes out of his way to make the clarity of the words central to his vocal writing, listeners’ reaction to these pieces will depend in large part on how they feel about the topics, whether the sylvan setting of Walden Recessional or the bittersweet World War I environment of the three poems in The Return. Santore has a clear style of his own despite his indebtedness to earlier composers: Kalevala Fragments actually sounds much like layered Gregorian chant, and despite its title, Eight Gypsy Songs after Brahms has very little that is Brahmsian about it either thematically or musically. Much of the music here is intriguing and surprising, taking an audience’s ears in some unexpected directions and even, as in The bronzed boy (the second in the not-quite-Brahms cycle), in some genuinely unexpected ones. Listeners, even ones not especially enamored of modern vocal writing, will find a great deal of interest in these Santore works.