(++++) MUSICAL CHANCE-TAKERS

Schubert: Piano Sonatas Nos. 20, D. 959, and 21, D. 960; Brahms: Seven Fantasies, Op. 116; Three Intermezzos, Op. 117; Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118; Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119. Jorge Federico Osorio, piano. Cedille. $16 (2 CDs).

François-André Philidor: Sinfonias 1 and 5 from “L’Art de la Modulation”; Michel Blavet: Sonata Seconda, Op. 2; Rameau: Excerpts from “Les Boréades,” “Les Fêtes de l’Hymen” and “Dardanus”; Jean-Pierre Guignon: Les Sauvages; Jacques Duphly: Pièces de Clavecin. Les Délices (Debra Nagy, baroque oboe; Julie Andrijeski and Karina Schmitz, baroque violins; Emily Walhout, viola da gamba; Michael Sponseller, harpsichord). Navona. $14.99.

     The willingness to take chances is a distinguishing feature of artists who want to continue to grow beyond their existing accomplishments. And when chance-taking succeeds, the results can be remarkable, as they are in Jorge Federico Osorio’s new two-CD recording of Schubert and Brahms piano works for Cedille. Osorio has recorded two of the four sets of late Brahms piano miniatures before, and has established a strong reputation as a sensitive, elegant Brahms interpreter. But he has never recorded anything by Schubert, and the formidable last sonatas are a very challenging place to start. Schubert’s three final sonatas, D. 958, D. 959, and D. 960, respectively in C minor, A major and B-flat major, are towering works in their own right, lengthy and complex and structurally challenging; they are also reflective of Schubert’s fascination with Beethoven and apparently of his own emotional state, on the basis of their inclusion of references to some of his earlier works, such as Winterreise. The fluidity of key changes, the complexity of themes and their development, and the sheer scale of these works – D. 959 and D. 960 run some 40 minutes apiece – show Schubert scaling new structural and emotional heights that build on a great deal of his earlier material. And the sonatas are a huge challenge to pianists, not only in their virtuosity, which is really of secondary importance, but also in their size and temperament and the need to maintain a forward flow over long periods while still carefully expressing the intricacies of individual movements and portions of movements. Osorio turns the final two sonatas into the bookends of a two-CD set offered at the price of a single disc, which would make this a bargain even if the performances were less impressive than they are. But they are so good that the major disappointment of this release is that D. 958 is omitted – Osorio clearly has understanding and affinity for these works that would surely be just as clear at the start of the trilogy as they are in its latter two-thirds. Osorio builds to climaxes carefully, choose tempos wisely, and handles the very large first movements of both these sonatas with care and attentiveness throughout. And he paints a highly expressive and convincing canvas for both works, even though neither offers the usual pacing for a slow movement: D. 959 has an Andantino and D. 960 an Andante sostenuto (it is D. 958 that includes an Adagio). Osorio’s accomplishments in the Schubert are wonderfully contrasted with and complemented by his handling of the four sets of complex, emotionally charged “miniatures” by Brahms – works that are short but in no way small. The vast majority of these pieces were labeled Intermezzo by Brahms – 14 of the 20 works in the four sets – and Osorio’s intriguing performances set up the curious, imaginative question of the sort of work within which each “intermezzo” might appear. The other six works – three marked Capriccio and one each called Ballade, Romanze, and Rhapsody – receive the sort of sensitively variegated treatment that makes the distinctive features of each piece stand out while also fitting each work neatly within the particular set into which Brahms placed it. This release bears the overall title “Final Thoughts,” referring to the fact that the pieces on it are the last ones for piano by these two composers. But surely these are not and will not be Osorio’s final thoughts on these works or on others by these composers (including, perhaps in a future recording, Schubert’s D. 958). Osorio is a pianist of sensitivity and nuance, and here shows himself capable of handling self-contained miniatures and large, even sprawling multi-movement sonatas with equal skill and involvement. To the extent that he takes chances in this recording, he succeeds with them admirably.

     Speaking of titles, that of the new Navona release featuring the ensemble called Les Délices is “Age of Indulgence,” and it is in being indulgent of their interest in late-Baroque French composers that these performers take their chances in this recording. Only two of the composers here are at all well-known: Rameau and, to a lesser extent, Philidor. Offering their music along with works by three very infrequently heard composers is part of the chance-taking. Also, like Osorio’s CD, this one uses musical bookends, here in the performance of two four-movement, fugue-focused sinfonias from Philidor’s L’Art de la Modulation to open and close the disc. These prove to be very intriguing works, filled with chromaticism, unexpected harmonies and unusual modulations. This is very late Baroque music, dating to 1755 – just a year before Mozart’s birth. So some of its harmonic daring is not entirely surprising. But as heard here on excellently played original instruments, it is revelatory of the ways in which late-Baroque thinking shaded into that of the Classical era. Blavet’s Sonata Seconda features virtuoso playing reminiscent of that required for Vivaldi’s music, but there is fluidity to the complex oboe part that is certainly more French than Italian in spirit. The five excerpts from operas by Rameau include two from an opera that was really post-Baroque: Les Boréades dates to 1763, and although it sensibilities are similar to those of other Rameau works, some of its musical techniques are more forward-looking than those of the excerpt from Les Fêtes de l’Hymen (1747) and the two from Dardanus (1744). A particular gem on this release is Guignon’s Les Sauvages, which is for two violins: it interweaves the instruments very skillfully while providing considerable drama and truly impressive use of the violins’ virtuoso capabilities. Duphly’s two pieces for solo harpsichord make an excellent contrast to Guignon’s music: they are perhaps the most traditionally Baroque works here in terms of harmony and their overall sound, skillfully made and with some attractive flourishes but without the sense of boundaries breaking, or about to break, that comes to the fore in several of the other pieces on the disc. The musicians of Les Délices, a group founded as recently as 2009, are not only skilled performers – individually and together – but also strong advocates for the special pleasures of this set of works. Few if any of these pieces will be familiar to most listeners, but all of them, in addition to being delightful to hear, shed clear light on an important transitional time in classical music.

(++++) WELCOME A BOARD (OR TWO)

Bob and Flo and the Missing Bucket. By Rebecca Ashdown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.

Bob and Flo Play Hide-and-Seek. By Rebecca Ashdown. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.

     It is not unusual for books for young children to be transformed into books for the youngest children – that is, into board books. But some transitions seem easier and more natural than others, and the “Penguin Friends at Preschool” books by Rebecca Ashdown are particularly well-suited for board-book transformation. Really, the original hardcover versions of Bob and Flo and Bob and Flo Play Hide-and-Seek will appeal (and do appeal) to pre-readers and very young readers already. The penguin preschool and the readily understandable, mundane adventures that Bob, Flo and the other penguins have there are fun not only for preschoolers but also for children too young to be going to preschool – call them pre-preschoolers.

     However, in their new board-book format, these little penguin adventures are even easier to hold, and follow, and enjoy, for children too young to read the stories on their own, or perhaps just learning to recognize a few words here and there. Bob and Flo and the Missing Bucket introduces the title characters, as Flo starts preschool by bringing her lunch of raw fish in a red bucket. Flo meets several other penguins, including Bob, who admires her bucket – which soon turns up missing. For the rest of the book, Bob has the bucket (wearing it on his head, using it to climb on, filling it with sand to make sand castles, and so forth); and Flo, diligently searching for the bucket, does not notice that Bob took it and is playing with it. Or perhaps she does know what is going on: she eventually finds it at the bottom of the slide, with Bob stuck at the slide’s top. “Flo knew what to do,” Ashdown explains, and so Flo fills the bucket with water and uses it to “whoosh” Bob off the top of the slide’s ladder and down the slide itself, after which Flo and Bob play for the rest of the preschool day – until, on the way home, Flo reminds Bob not to forget “our” bucket the next day. The adorable penguin drawings and the gentle formation of friendship – in a situation that could have caused anger and hurt feelings – make Bob and Flo and the Missing Bucket a charmer of a story, and one with a lesson that is quite suitable for pre-preschoolers.

     Bob and Flo Play Hide-and-Seek has the two titular penguins more used to preschool and each other. The hide-and-seek game starts because it is a rainy day, and the other penguins at first do not recognize Bob when he walks in underneath an umbrella. There is some lovely age-appropriate writing here as the hide-and-seek game – involving Bob hiding and Flo and a penguin named Sam searching for him – begins: “Counting to twenty is hard. So Flo and Sam counted to ten. Twice!” The small problem in this book is that Bob does not quite understand what it means to hide. He stands in plain sight and covers his eyes, as if that will prevent others from seeing him; then, told to hide behind something, he holds up a pot from the play stove in front of his face – but again leaves his body fully visible. Bob is puzzled at being found so easily, but promises to try once more. And this time he concocts an elaborate plan to build a sort-of-penguin-shaped-and-colored stack of blocks and hide behind it. Now Flo and Sam cannot find Bob at all, until he choose to burst out and reveal himself – again, a small and simple lesson learned enjoyably and at just the right level for kids who will be attracted to these prettily illustrated, nicely paced and well-plotted books. The board-book changeover here is complete and completely successful.

(++++) SOME OF EVERYTHING

Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos. By Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw. Da Capo. $35.

     If you are wondering not only how the universe works but also why it works the way it does and not some other way, Universal: A Guide to the Cosmos is your kind of book. It is also physics professors’ kind of book: Brian Cox is a professor of particle physics and Jeff Forshaw is a professor of theoretical physics, both at the University of Manchester in England. Clearly, Cox and Forshaw spend their academic time with their heads way up in the clouds – more accurately, way up above the clouds. But they obviously come down to Earth periodically, if only to provide mere non-mathematically-inclined mortals with lucid and fascinating explanations of how things are and why they are that way. The “why that way?” notion is central to the book, with Cox and Forshaw explaining that an important element of cosmic science involves determining the same measurement by different means. Thus, an estimate of the sun’s age on the basis of how nuclear fusion works and how much heat reaches Earth gives about the same result for the age of the solar system (4.6 billion years) as an estimate of Earth’s age based on radioactive decay in planetary rocks. Casting doubt on any single measurement is relatively easy, Cox and Forshaw explain, but “it is usually extremely difficult to argue for a radical change in one area without making large parts of the whole interlinked edifice inconsistent.”

     The “edifice” here is science itself, and scientific inquiry. Universal is as much about the scientific method and the way scientists explore the cosmos as it is about intriguing specifics such as the Big Bang, supernovas, and dark matter. One thing Cox and Forshaw do exceptionally well here is to start by applying the scientific method to matters close to home and then gradually (and without too much higher mathematics) extend inquiry farther and farther out, into more and more complex and outré regions. Thus, the how-old-is-Earth question appears early in the book and leads Cox and Forshaw into well-paced, understandable discussions of plate tectonics and radioisotope dating, with everything they present involving observation, collection of evidence, and the application of logic to reach conclusions that can then be further tested using, ideally, different  methodologies. The authors’ quotation of Richard Feynman at one point is a wonderful kernel of explanation. Feynman said that the search for a new law of nature starts with a guess, then a computation of the consequences of the guess to see what would happen if the guess is correct – and then a comparison of the computation with nature “to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.”

     This is a marvelous encapsulation that Cox and Forshaw have clearly taken to heart. Readers will be amazed at how easy it can be for anyone to test some important scientific hypotheses – for instance, an experiment to show the largest size an atom can be requires only cooking oil, a paper clip, a ruler and a bowl of water. Furthermore, entirely mundane matters are shown in Universal to be the foundation of extremely complex forms of observation and calculation. Take parallax, which is crucial to determining astronomical distances. Cox and Forshaw start by showing how it can be used to calculate the length of your own arm by holding a finger in front of you: the left and right eye see things differently, so by closing one and then the other, you can figure out the arm’s length based on how the apparent position of the finger changes. One of the many simple but elegant illustrations here shows how exactly the same procedure can be used to find the distance from Earth to Neptune, with your eyes being replaced for diagram purposes by the Earth in two different orbital positions and with Neptune representing the finger. It is this sort of clarity-through-extension that makes Universal so eminently readable and so marvelously informative. Colorful photos help enliven the book and enhance the explanations as well.

     What permeates this book is not only knowledge but also enthusiasm, and that is a source of much of the strength of Universal. Cox and Forshaw manage to deal with questions as huge as how much the universe weighs and what happened before the Big Bang (if that question even has any meaning) – without resorting to extreme complexities of calculation (the stuff that they surely use in their own everyday professorial lives) and without distorting the science they are explaining. They end up being near-perfect advocates both for the scientific method and for training top scientific minds to communicate with mere nonscientific mortals with tremendous insight and clarity – and without ever making non-scientists feel they are being talked down to, or that the tremendous difficulties of cutting-edge experimentation and analysis are being “dumbed down” to such a point that they no longer reflect how scientists think and how they test their thoughts for real-world (and real-universe) accuracy.

(++++) PLENTY OF TIME

Time Shifters. By Chris Grine. Graphix/Scholastic. $12.99.

Fart Squad #6: Blast from the Past. By Seamus Pilger. Illustrated by Stephen Gilpin. Harper. $15.99.

     A long space ago in a universe far, far away, yet close, close at hand, Luke Timewalker encountered a bumbling scientist, cooperative dinosaur, snarky ghost and robotic Abraham Lincoln, and things started to get strange. Or perhaps they got strange a bit earlier in time in Earth 02725CT, Luke’s universe, when the vampire Napoleon, prone-to-unwrapping mummy, and “a skeleton held together with a pressurized space suit” showed up and offered dialogue such as, “‘If he gets away we’re as good as dead!’ ‘We’re ALREADY dead! ‘ ‘MORE dead!’” Good thing Chris Grine is there to record and report all of this, or it might have gotten confusing. Well, OK, it is confusing anyway, especially when Luke – whose name is not really Timewalker, or even Timeshifter, despite the book’s title – has an extended adventure on Earth 03017RT, where the human-shaped beings are in fact human-sized spiders and insects, even when they are cowboys. The scientist tries to explain all this to Luke: “We are a group of time-traveling, dimension-hopping fugitives on the run from some very unsavory characters,” and that is basically all you need to know to enjoy this ridiculously entertaining romp of a graphic novel. Well, that plus a few other things: Luke is deeply depressed because his older brother died recently when trying to rescue Luke after an attack by a gang of bullies, and the evil henchman trio (Napoleon, mummy, skeleton) has mistaken Luke’s flashlight for a super-powerful device they are trying to bring to their evil boss – a device that wraps itself around Luke’s arm and will not come off after he inadvertently punches in a code at random and then cannot remember it, making it impossible to remove the thing unless, well, unless Luke’s arm goes with it. Luckily, that does not happen – although really, it is not luck but the enormous ineptness of the henchmen that prevents anything too serious from happening to Luke or anyone else (including the henchmen themselves). Unless you count the scene in which Luke, a preteen, almost has to marry a giant bug. Among other elements of Grine’s multiverse: the dinosaur, whose name is Zinc, is beaked, dinosaurs having developed differently where he originated from the way they did on our (and Luke’s) Earth; Zinc also has a large red button on his head, and spends some of the book looking like a really creepy baker-and-clown hybrid (holographically transformed by the scientist); the ghost, a girl named Artemis, was joined to the group by accident and isn’t happy about it; and when the henchmen do not wish to take a cell-phone call from their irascible evil leader, the skeleton lets it go to voice mail, where his message says, “Hey, you reached astronaut skeleton. I’m not available right now because I’m doing amazing things! Leave a message and I’ll call back. Peace!” None of this makes a lick of sense, or even half a lick, and all of it features Grine’s tongue so firmly in his cheek that it’s a wonder he (or any of his characters) can talk at all. Indeed, the single word “buffoonery,” uttered by the scientist in front of “Stinkin’ Stan’s” in the town of Spiderpinch Gulch, while two hombres fight over who has a bigger hat and Luke’s would-be bug bride goes “kissy-slurp” all over his head, nicely encapsulates Time Shifters, which is quite obviously the first of a series that can go on as long as Grine can keep up the ridiculousness. There is a modicum (a small one) of seriousness here, used to set up future adventures: the time-and-universe travelers bring Luke back to his home world and time, where he is able to alter the events of the immediate past so his brother does not die – but that causes an irreversible split in the universe, leaving Luke-with-brother-alive separate from the Luke-with-brother-dead who has had a book-length adventure. So Luke-with-brother-dead has little choice but to become another of the band of intrepid good guys zipping about with no very clear purpose beyond giving readers an exceptionally good roller-coaster of a time. Oh – there is quite a roller-coaster scene in Time Shifters, too. After all, why not?

     And why not send the Fart Squad back to the past? That seems to be what Seamus Pilger was wondering when he created the sixth and possibly (hopefully) final installment of a series of (++) and (+++) books in which Pilger and illustrator Stephen Gilpin started with the premise, “Lots of books for ages 6-10 make bodily-noises and odor jokes, so let’s build a whole series of books around bodily noises and odors!” This means the characters live in Buttzville, the bad-guy kid is named Harry Buttz II (or “Number Two”), the good guys have names such as Stonkadopolis and Heiney, and the Fart Squad’s powers involve emitting gas in various unpleasant ways after ingesting tacos – or, in the case of Blast from the Past, a Turbo Taco that leads to emissions to powerful that they create a time-spanning whirlwind. This brings the odoriferous squad directly to Tusheeburgh, Scotland, where they must overcome the dreaded Knights of Tushée (“pronounced Tu-shay,” the heroes are told) and destroy a Royal Butt Scratcher that is responsible for an epidemic of itching afflicting modern-day Buttzville. If you think the plot, umm, stinks, and you think that is a bad thing, you are outside the target audience for this book, whose best lines are given to Walter Turnip, the overweight, well-spoken team member whose emissions allow him to fly: “I do not believe that any amount of superpowered flatulence can actually disrupt the space-time continuum.” A lot he knows: back in time the four smelly squad members go, accompanied – as it turns out – by Number Two and his two hulking and smelly-in-a-different-way henchpeople (who disdain bathing). Lines such as “I believe I have just run out of gas” appear in abundance here, and narration such as, “Darren had to bear down and push like he was giving birth to fart-uplets just to get a laser-thin butt torch going.” Gilpin’s illustrations fit the story as well here as in the previous five books, and Pilger’s narration is also perfectly apt for a story in which the four protagonists are distinguished entirely by the nature of their bodily emissions. Missing here is the Fart Squad’s trainer, Janitor Stan, the squad’s “scent-sei,” who may finally have had enough of the whole stinky enterprise – perhaps he decided to sit this one out on the nearest available commode. Kids who found the earlier Fart Squad books hilarious will enjoy this one, too: there are plenty more smell-and-sound jokes here to go with those from earlier in the series. And perhaps now Pilger and Gilpin will admit that the entire sequence has finally run out of gas.

(+++) BAD GIRLS

Electric Empire #3: The Dastardly Miss Lizzie. By Viola Carr. Harper Voyager. $15.99.

The Summer of Bad Ideas. By Kiera Stewart. Harper. $16.99.

     The finale of The Electric Empire trilogy wraps things up pretty neatly even though it never quite fulfills the promise of the first book, The Diabolical Miss Hyde. That book set forth the series’ intriguing premise, in which Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll had a daughter with the same deeply split personality – and she lived in an alternative universe within the steampunk genre. Feminism plus steampunk made for a heady start to the series that was not fully carried through in the second book, The Devious Dr. Jekyll. Nor is the rather lumbering (at first) third novel at quite as high a level as the series starter. The Dastardly Miss Lizzie is a 450-page book with about 200 really exciting pages at the end – the problem is wading through the earlier material to get there. Most of the book is told from the viewpoint of Eliza Jekyll, who has become a less-interesting character as the series has gone on. Hypocritical and repressive of the increasingly powerful, capricious and ever-more-interesting Lizzie Hyde, Eliza here operates in a world filled with whiffs of H.G. Wells. Eliza is a crime-scene physician, and in this book she is trying to figure out links among several inventors who have been gruesomely murdered. So far, so good. But Viola Carr goes considerably farther. There is a Soho Slasher here, an obvious echo of Jack the Ripper, who is killing prostitutes and who may, just may, turn out to be Eliza’s father, Edward Hyde. There is also royal intrigue and a threat of French terrorists, elements that lead to extended and exceptionally dull dialogue about politics between Eliza and her fiancé, lycanthrope and Royal Society agent Remy Lafayette – the names and events in these scenes have little to no bearing on the primary plot line. The Dastardly Miss Lizzie is the most complicated book of this trilogy and the most unwieldy, offering multiple twists as it casts its net widely before eventually tying things up very neatly (although very bloodily) in those final fast-paced and well-written pages. Carr again does a nice job with the atmospheric scene-setting, and the increasing tension between Eliza and Lizzie is handled well. But there is just too much packed into The Dastardly Miss Lizzie for the book to hold together well. For example, there are some important revelations about Remy – but they occur while he is away. Indeed, Remy remains something of a cardboard character, which is scarcely surprising in a novel of this type but is disappointing because Carr has shown in this trilogy that she can give characters depth when she so chooses. Ultimately, The Dastardly Miss Lizzie provides a satisfying series conclusion for readers who enjoyed the first two books and can push themselves through the sluggish pace of the early part of this one. The eventual wrapup does not disappoint, but the journey to it is less involving than it could be.

     In a sense, The Electric Empire trilogy is a version for adults of the “who am I really?” stories that pervade books for preteens and young teenagers. Building on Stevenson and Wells gives Carr’s work a less formulaic feeling than books for younger readers that come across as if they were constructed primarily on other books for the same age group. A typical example is Kiera Stewart’s The Summer of Bad Ideas. It is an unexceptional story of friendship and of finding oneself during an adventurous summer. The protagonist, Edith (who prefers to be called Edie), has heard herself described as boring at a recent social event. She has an overprotective mother and a father who thinks he is so cool – in other words, the usual feckless and unaware parents. And she has precocious twin younger siblings who are geniuses – in other words, the usual “better-than-me” characters to whom the protagonist gets to compare herself. On top of that, Edie has a cousin named Rae who is genuinely cool, whom she meets at their recently deceased grandmother’s home in Florida, which the families need to clean up and clean out. The grandmother, Petunia, turns out to have been eccentric and a bit of a local legend – in other words, another character cooler than Edie. Obviously Edie has to do something to assert herself, and she finds a route to that through a list of “good ideas for summertime” that Petunia wrote when she was Edie’s and Rae’s age. Really, these are bad ideas by Edie’s standards, since all are adventurous, and some are stunts that may even be dangerous or at least scary (“catch a snake bare-handed”). So the question is: will Edie use these “bad ideas” to find out more about who she really is and to create a place for herself in the family and away from the description of “boring”? The answer, completely unsurprisingly, is yes. But if there is nothing the slightest bit unusual in this come-of-age-and-out-of-your-shell story (which even includes a touch of age-appropriate romance), it at least has engaging elements: both Edie and Rae are likable, in different ways, and there is a slight touch of reality in having the Florida trip result from the death of a grandparent – for some reason, books for preteens tend unrealistically to feature dead parents and siblings rather than deceased grandparents. Stewart writes nicely for her intended audience, if not especially stylishly, and the book is well-paced and will likely appeal to girls in the 8-12 age group (it is clearly aimed at girls, not boys). Although ultimately forgettable, The Summer of Bad Ideas has enough interesting elements as it runs its course to make it a pleasant read – one that may be especially appropriate as a summertime “escape” book.

(+++) STRIVING TO BE NEW

Alfred Janson: Variations over Variations over a Norwegian Folk Tune; Jan Erik Mikalsen: Songr for Orchestra; Knut Vaage: Mylder; Maja S.K. Ratkje: Paragraf 12. Tine Thing Helseth, trumpet; Norwegian Radio Orchestra conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Aurora. $18.99.

Andrew Schultz: Falling Man/Dancing Man; John A. Carollo: Let Freedom Ring; The Transformation of Giovanni Baudino; R. Barry Ulrich: Russian Winter; J.A. Kawarsky: Episodes. Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Petr Vronský and St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Lande. Navona. $14.99.

Splitting Adams. Alarm Will Sound conducted by Alan Pierson. Cantaloupe Music. $15.

     A characteristic of a great deal of contemporary sort-of-classical music is that it is determined not to be classical music. Composers want the gravitas associated with longstanding classical forms and methods, but do not want to be seen as old-fashioned through slavish adherence to anything that has stood the test of time but now seems stilted and out-of-date to – well, to whom, exactly? Much contemporary sort-of-classical music seems to be in a search of an audience – not sticking to the clichés of dull pop music made from the same set of repetitive chords, but not seeking or wanting comparison with the larger-scale and grander works for which classical music has been known for centuries. This creates a neither-here-nor-there idiom in which composers’ borrowings from earlier composers and from types of music acknowledged as non-classical (jazz, folk, “world,” electronic) become as much the point as anything within any individual piece. “The medium is the massage” may seem as hopelessly naïve now as it seemed revolutionary when Marshall McLuhan was alive, but in many pieces we are closer to the common misquotation of McLuhan’s formulation: “The medium is the message.”

     This approach, and the music that results from it, can be polarizing, but they do not have to be. It is entirely possible to understand what is going on in music assembled this way without getting into a love-it-or-hate-it dichotomy. The music may simply be interesting – as is all the music on these determined-to-be-“with-it” releases – without necessarily moving a listener to any sort of emotional extreme, or even any significant degree of emotional involvement. Thus, Variations over Variations by Alfred Janson, written for trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and performed by him on a new Aurora CD, is easy to admire: it takes Grieg’s Ballade in G minor, already a set of variations, and creates variations upon it (hence Janson’s work’s title) – using jazz techniques and others from outside the essentially classical idiom that Grieg employed even when utilizing folk music as a basic element of his work. Grieg’s ballade is on the melancholic side, and is worked with considerable subtlety; Janson’s variations on it are more forthright, warmer and more readily comprehensible – and thus perhaps more suitable for a musical age not particularly renowned for subtlety of expression. Helseth and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Miguel Harth-Bedoya handle the music quite well, allowing listeners drawn into it to experience Helseth’s considerable technical virtuosity in the context that Janson chooses to give it within a kind of “meta-Grieg” work. The other new Norwegian works on this release are for orchestra only. Songr by Jan Erik Mikalsen is a substantial piece – even longer than Janson’s concerto – that draws on folk music directly, not through the filter of an earlier composer. Its methods are fairly straightforward in contrasting big, full-orchestra sounds with delicate sonic pictures painted by individual instruments or small groups. It feels overextended but is often aurally interesting. Mylder by Knut Vaage also uses unsurprising techniques – here, speedy and slower sections – and some quicksilver quotations of other works to spin a multicolored piece that is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. And Paragraf 112 by Maja S.K. Ratkje refers in its title to a part of Norway’s constitution giving citizens rights to a carefully managed environment – a prescient item from 1814 or a hopelessly naïve one, depending on one’s viewpoint. In standard contemporary fashion, the music tries to make the orchestra sound different from the way it usually does in classical music, the apparent aim being to show the danger of ignoring environmental attentiveness. There is nothing especially compelling in any of these works, but listeners who would like to hear how Norwegian music has built on and moved beyond that of Grieg will find much of interest here.

     There is no unifying theme of nationality on a new Navona release featuring music by Andrew Schultz, John A. Carollo, R. Barry Ulrich and J.A. Kawarsky. Indeed, there is no unifying musical theme at all. To the extent to which this anthology has anything that unites it, it is a kind of philosophical underpinning in which composers try to represent, in music, elements of the difficulties of the human experience and methods of coping with such troubles. Thus, Falling Man/Dancing Man, for solo organ (Karel Martinek) and orchestra, is a work of musical contrasts reflecting the visual ones that inspired it: a photo of a man leaping from the burning World Trade Center in 2001 and one of a joyous celebration in Sydney, Australia, at the end of World War II. Let Freedom Ring by John A. Carollo is a celebration of American patriotism – one sounding quite different from Ratkje’s homage to Norway’s environmental concerns – but is written in a minor key, setting up an unsettling question as to just what is being celebrated and why. Carollo’s other work here, The Transformation of Giovanni Baudino, offers a series of quick mood changes reflecting the ups and downs, successes and failures inherent in everyday life. Russian Winter, an excerpt from R. Barry Ulrich’s G minor suite for strings, is directly evocative of Russia’s tundra and sounds a bit like a work of homage to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 (“Winter Dreams”), which is in the same key. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra under Petr Vronský handles all the works sensitively, and the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Lande does a fine job with the last offering on the CD, Episodes by J.A. Kawarsky. Here a central role is given to the piano (Peter Laul) in a work that, like The Transformation of Giovanni Baudino, draws on the overall theme of change and life’s unpredictability – in this case with a series of calls-and-responses between soloist and orchestra that collectively are intended to showcase life’s inevitable ups and downs, and the ways of coping with them. There is nothing really new in any of these works, but all use contemporary understanding of musical communicativeness to try to pull listeners experientially into a world of constant change and the necessity of ongoing adaptability.

     Lest there be any question about what John Adams was trying to do in his Chamber Symphony (1992) and Son of Chamber Symphony (2007), Cantaloupe Music offers extended commentary on the works as part of a new release called Splitting Adams and featuring the instrumental group Alarm Will Sound. Nadia Sirota, who hosts a podcast called Meet the Composer, supplies commentary on the works, as do Alarm Will Sound’s artistic director, Alan Pierson, and Adams himself. This recording is an especially clear example of the way sort-of-classical material is packaged and presented by many organizations today. The release has elements of a podcast, elements of a traditional concert (the chamber symphonies themselves), elements of a tribute to the composer, elements of sound display for its own sake – it is less about the music than about the way the particular creator of this music feels and thinks and thus (the argument goes) inevitably produced these specific works. Although no one involved in the production says so, this release thus becomes a new example of a very old form, in which interpreters try to integrate a creative person’s biographical reality with his or her artistic productions – the extent to which Shakespeare “appears” in his plays, for instance, or Edgar Allan Poe in his stories. There are longstanding and ultimately futile arguments, both literary and psychoanalytic, as to whether it “makes sense” to interpret artistic works with constant reference to biography. Certainly there are things in an individual’s life and intellectual/psychological/emotional makeup that lead the person to create certain things in a certain way – but whether the creations can in essence be mapped to the creator is by no means certain and by no means particularly useful. Those who find the premise intriguing will enjoy the discussion/podcast elements of this release. Those who simply want to hear well-performed versions of the two Adams works can skip the talk and just listen to the music. The aim of the whole production, however, is not strictly musical – that would smack of old-style approaches to classical works. The idea here is to use a well-known, influential modern composer (who himself has numerous supporters and detractors) as the centerpiece of an offering that tries, through both music and words, to explore the artistic experience itself. Those looking for such an exploration are those to whom this recording will be most attractive.

(++++) SMALL CHARACTERS, BIG PERSONALITIES

Teddy the Dog: (Almost) Best in Show. By Keri Claiborne Boyle. Pictures by Jonathan Sneider. Harper. $17.99.

Raisin, the Littlest Cow. By Miriam Busch. Illustrated by Larry Day. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     The kids who will read and love these books know all too well what it is like to have a personality that is bigger than one’s physical size. Super-self-confident Teddy the dog has an outsize view of himself and his abilities, and that is just great when he zips through the park on roller blades (wearing a helmet along with his trademark celebrity-style sunglasses), or takes a bubble bath with two rubber ducks and four soothing candles. When it comes to a formal dog show, though – well, Teddy is going to learn a little something about himself. But only a little! Keri Claiborne Boyle keeps this particular voyage of sort-of-self-discovery light throughout, as Teddy is forced to get to the show in an all-cats bus called the “ChauFUR Express” and then immediately starts showing the other contestants all the wrong things to do. Teddy himself – as the pictures by Jonathan Sneider make abundantly clear – is blissfully unaware that there is anything wrong with raiding the judges’ refrigerator and chewing up a fellow contestant’s books. Teddy doesn’t really “get” the dog show, being unwilling to jump “when there’s no food to steal off a counter,” and asking “who would want to sit and stay when you can jump and run?” Good questions, those – but the wrong ones to ask during a competition. “I have standards!” Teddy insists. But so do dog shows, and Teddy eventually realizes that he “just wasn’t cut out for the show life after all.” A trip home, again on the “ChauFUR Express,” gives Teddy time to realize that “we’re all best in our own show,” and that is an apt message for perhaps over-enthusiastic young humans as well.

     Of course, not all young people – or the book characters representing them – have personalities bigger than their bodies. Some are just fine being small, such as Raisin, the Littlest Cow. Raisin is “perfectly content” to be tiny, to be doted on by the larger cows, and to make lists of things she likes (movies, the color brown, sprinklers) and ones she does not like (cauliflower, tomato juice, thunder). One thing Raisin does not like is change: “But change came, as change does,” writes Miriam Busch, and Larry Day shows the big brown cows (remember that Raisin likes that color) rushing away from Raisin (who is black and white) to see Raisin’s mother’s new baby, “who was even smaller than Raisin.” Uh-oh. This happens on a Thursday, and Raisin stomps off and adds Thursdays to the list of things she does not like. And she makes a new list, this one of “places to run away to.” Raisin looks adorable even when she scowls, which is a good thing, since her new baby brother makes her scowl all the time. Invited to name the baby, Raisin – who has already said he looks like a cauliflower – suggests “Thursday,” and then comments, “Thursday smells funny.” Clearly a first-class snit is in progress, driven by sibling rivalry. And as Raisin gets ready to run off (to Jupiter, no less), things get worse: she tries to climb onto buckets to be able to see over a fence and watch a movie at a nearby drive-in theater, but it starts to rain, and then there is thunder, and soon Raisin is running to her mother, all muddy and upset, only to find that the new baby is crying loudly at all the noise – and has eyes that are Raisin’s favorite color, brown. Sure enough, Raisin and the baby bond over their mutual dislike of the noise of the storm, and soon the baby is cooing at Raisin, and Raisin comes up with the perfect baby name: Raindrop. And all ends happily and amusingly, the lesson in this case being that even if it’s great to be small, it’s also great to be a big sibling. And to plan to visit Jupiter with the baby instead of running away there on one’s own.

(++++) SECOND HELPINGS

Stick Cat #2: Cats in the City. By Tom Watson. Harper. $12.99.

Flashback Four #2: The Titanic Mission. By Dan Gutman. Harper. $16.99.

     Tom Watson’s Stick Cat saga, followup and companion to his Stick Dog books, moves into its second volume with what is essentially a repeat of the first. In A Tail of Two Kitties, Watson introduced Stick Cat and gave him a sometime companion named Edith – a rather unpleasant character, thoroughly unaware of pretty much everything about herself, unobservant and selfish to such a degree that she actually put Stick Dog’s life in danger during their first adventure, which involved rescuing a piano tuner working in a building across the street after his arms became trapped in a grand piano whose top fell onto them. Now, in Cats in the City, Stick Cat again has the very dubious help of Edith in a rescue – this time of a woman who runs a bagel shop across the street and who falls into a huge vat of sticky bagel dough and cannot get out. Edith initially refuses to help in this rescue, saying she did this before and other cats should have a turn – and some readers may feel the same way. But others will enjoy the way the two cats play off each other, with Stick Cat clear-thinking and intelligent and Edith a complete birdbrain who is easily offended by almost everything and so egotistical that she only helps Stick Cat when he pretends that all the good ideas are hers and he is duly appreciative of them. Like the rescue of Mr. Music in the first book, the rescue of Hazel the bagel maker in this one involves a dangerous across-the-street trip from the 23^rd floor of the building where Stick Cat and Edith live in adjacent apartments – and an even more dangerous return to that building after Hazel is safe. There is plenty about food here, too, although not quite as much as in Watson’s Stick Dog books: here, Edith is preoccupied with lox, which Tiffany, the human with whom Edith lives, brings home and shares with Edith once a week, but which Stick Cat has never tasted. (“Lox” is a plural word here, as in “locks.” This provides a very small touch of humor.) The stick drawings of the two cats, and the super-silly ones of Hazel as Edith imagines all the things she might be doing in that bagel-dough vat (swimming, scuba diving), are light and funny enough to rescue what is essentially the same book that Watson wrote to start this series last year. Barely rescue it. Obviously, if Stick Cat develops a fan base that enjoys Edith’s dangerous arrogance and her mistreatment of Stick Cat, and welcomes the way Stick Cat constantly conceals his own cleverness so Edith can take credit for Stick Cat’s ideas, then Watson will continue the series in this same vein. Of course, as with Stick Dog, Watson is creating these books as if he is a middle-schooler – specifically making the Stick Cat ones for a girl he sorta kinda likes. So the books come by their juvenilia and repetitiveness naturally. And Cats in the City does have its funny moments, even if they are mostly the same funny moments that A Tale of Two Kitties had. The question, then, is whether all the Stick Cat books are simply going to be minor variations on the same rescue-the-human-against-all-odds theme. That worked for Watson once and works again, although certainly not as well, in this second book. What will the third bring?

     This is not to say that Watson is alone in recycling plots and characters from book to book. It is Dan Gutman’s stock-in-trade to do the very same thing, sometimes with greater success and sometimes with less. The (+++) series, Flashback Four, falls into the “less” column. The idea here is that four modern kids, of the now-required gender and racial mixture, become time travelers under the auspices of a mysterious billionaire named Miss Z who has spent more than a billion dollars to invent a device called the TTT, for Text Through Time. TTT lets people in one time period text people in other time periods, and yes, that is even more ridiculous than the underlying premises of other fantasy-adventures for preteens. In fact, it is even more ridiculous than plot points in other supposed-to-be-funny fantasy-adventures for preteens. Flashback Four does try to be amusing, but it mostly comes up lame and seems to be trying too hard. In the first book, The Lincoln Project, Miss Z sent the four preteens back to get a photograph of President Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address – Miss Z has a thing about getting photos of events of which, in the real world, no photos exist, and Gutman uses this tenuous real-world connection to throw in a touch of history that is probably supposed to make the books socially responsible or educationally useful or generally uplifting or something. Well, since there is no photo of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, something had to go wrong, which it did when Miss Z accidentally sent the foursome back one day too early, causing all sorts of complications. In the second book, The Titanic Mission, she blames the kids for messing up the first mission, but ends up sending them back to 1912 anyway, to travel aboard the Titanic and take a photo as it is sinking – another thing that events will, of course, conspire to prevent them from doing. But before events do exactly that (as they must, since no such pictures exist), the kids have the usual complications inherent in a pile of total unbelievability like this one, and the full horror of the Titanic disaster is largely downplayed, just as the full horror of the Civil War was in the first book. This book ends differently from the first one, though, because at its conclusion, the kids – rescued from the sinking ship, of course – are left stranded in the year 1912 and trying to figure out if they can make money to keep themselves going by inventing the zipper five years earlier than it was actually created. That little fact is but one of many scattered about here, and Gutman takes pains after the story ends to explain all the facts about the Titanic that he packed into the book. That is admirable, but the four kids here are so dull and interchangeable despite their differing genders and skin color that it is hard to care much about them – they have less personality than Stick Cat and Edith. Add that to the fact that the story itself is thin and repetitive, and The Titanic Mission becomes a book that will really only interest young readers who were so captivated by the mixture of fantasy and fact in the series’ first novel that they cannot wait to read the same thing all over again.

(+++) CREATIVE CRUNCH

What’s Your Creative Type? Harness the Power of Your Artistic Personality. By Meta Wagner. Seal Press. $15.99.

     There are, it turns out, only five possible ways to be a creative person. At least, so says Meta Wagner, who never tells readers which of the five she considers herself to be. Figuring it out may be a small pleasure of What’s Your Creative Type? A few small pleasures would be welcome, because this is just another who-are-you-really self-help book designed to pigeonhole readers, or have them pigeonhole themselves, for the purpose of – well, what, exactly? Wagner is a bit circumspect about this. Her chapters on the five (and only five) creative types tell each reader how to “nurture your tendencies” in some ways but also “tame your tendencies” in others, and how to name and conquer fears, boost creativity, and so on. In other words, she suggests that there are formulas to follow to be more creative – just pick whatever creative type you are and follow the right formula, and there you go!

     It may be argued that creative people are precisely those most likely to resist being typecast, but the point of Wagner’s book is that such niceties do not matter: there are specific ways of being creative, she argues, and knowing yours will allow you to maximize creativity in a way that will remain true to your particular approach to personal expression. This is a rather unusual notion for a self-help book; readers may find it interesting even if they deem it wrongheaded.

     Wagner takes pains not to suggest that any type of creative person is better or worse than any other, and uses real-world examples of people of each type to explain her approach. Nevertheless, some opinions may be gleaned by readers from the descriptions of the “types” and the individuals chosen to represent them. “The A-lister” is an ego-driven, vain, look-at-me kind of person, someone who creates to be admired and celebrated and rich and famous. Wagner chooses Pablo Picasso as an example (Salvador Dali, who did not even create a lot of what he “created,” might have been an even clearer choice among artists); but she also mentions George Orwell as an A-lister because he names “sheer egoism” as the first of four reasons he writes. Could there possibly be irony there? Could the other three reasons perhaps be more important, singly or collectively, than “sheer egoism”? Not in this book – subtlety of thought and argument is as absent here as it appears to be in the minds of many A-listers.

     Then there is “the Artisan,” who creates because creativity is its own reward. This is probably closest to what most readers will regard as a “creative type,” immersed in creating things for the sake of creativity itself. But does Wagner think of, say, Mozart as an I-must-create Artisan, or Saint-Saëns, who once said he produced music as an apple tree produces apples? No – what constitutes musical artisanship for Wagner is U2’s The Edge. And those to whom she gives profile focuses are photographer Vivian Maier and painter Chuck Close.

     The remaining three “creative types” are treated with the same level of insight (or not), explanation (or not), and empathy (well, yes, since all are created creatively equal). “The Game Changer” wants to use the creative process to develop something avant-garde, seeing boundary-breaking as a primary reason for creativity; “the Sensitive Soul” uses creativity as an emotional and spiritual outlet, but not for its own sake (that would be the Artisan) – the purpose here is to help others; and “the Activist” wants to use creativity to change the world – not in the highly personal, connected way of the Sensitive Soul, but with grand purposes and grand gestures. The problem is that even the exemplars of Wagner’s creative types are much harder to encapsulate than Wagner suggests: they are blends, not clear examples. Sometimes Wagner herself is aware of this. In her chapter on the Activist, for instance, she mentions three Activist authors – V.S. Naipaul, Don DeLillo and Jonathan Franzen – and points out that all three explicitly stated that authorial activism had become passé, before all three went on to write more novels. Creative types are both more complex and more self-aware (except perhaps for A-listers) than Wagner gives them credit for being.

     Wagner carefully says “you just might be” each of these types if you behave certain ways and want certain things; and she then suggests ways to maximize your tendencies in a particular direction while minimizing your risks of failing to fulfill your creative potential (“fulfill” of course meaning something different to each creative type). Eventually, near the end of the book, Wagner acknowledges that “creativity is a mystery, one not meant to be fully solved,” and this is a welcome touch of humility late in a book that has sliced and diced creativity and provided recipes for enhancing it according to which aspect of it each reader may follow.

     There is really nothing wrong with reading this book to see whether any of it seems insightful or helpful to you on the basis of your personal experiences and creative impulses. A good place to start is “The Takeaway,” an end-of-chapter set of bullet points relating to each creative “type” and making suggestions. If these lists seem apt and helpful to you, the rest of the book may also be useful. If the lists seem obvious, trivial, or even demeaning (a suggestion for the self-directed Artisan is to “promote yourself – your work deserves to be seen by multitudes”), then the remainder of the book will divulge nothing of significant creative value.

(++++) CONCERTOS AND MORE

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 11-13. Marie Kuijken and Veronica Kuijken, fortepiano; La Petite Bande. Challenge Classics. $18.99 (SACD).

Mozart: Trio for Oboe, Viola and Piano (“Kegelstatt”), K. 498; Oboe Quartet, K. 370; Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat, K. 493. Ensemble Schumann (Thomas Gallant, oboe; Steve Larson, viola; Sally Pinkas, piano) and Adaskin String Trio (Emily Ngai, violin; Steve Larson, viola; Mark Fraser, cello). MSR Classics. $12.95.

Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. Rudolf Koelman, violin; Musikkollegium Winterthur conducted by Douglas Boyd. Challenge Classics. $18.99.

Federico Moreno Torroba: Guitar Concertos, Volume 2—Homenaje a la seguidilla; Tonada concertante; Concierto de Castilla. Pepe Romero and Vicente Coves, guitar; Extremadura Symphony Orchestra conducted by Manuel Coves. Naxos. $12.99.

Lou Harrison: Concerto for Violin and Percussion; Grand Duo; Double Music. Tim Fain, violin; Michael Boriskin, piano; Post-Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Naxos. $12.99.

Jeffrey Jacob: Awakening for Piano and Orchestra; The Loch before Sunrise; A Mirror upon the Waters; Music for Haiti; Remembrance of Things Past; Sonata for Cello and Piano; Reawakening. Navona. $14.99.

     Modest in instrumentation and, by and large, in emotional effect, Mozart’s first three concertos written for his own subscription concerts in Vienna (1782-83) receive buoyant, historically informed and altogether pleasant performances on a new Challenge Classics SACD that features Marie Kuijken in No. 11 and Veronica Kuijken in Nos. 12 and 13. Despite the numbering of the concertos, the first written was actually No. 12 (K. 414 in A), and it is in some ways the most forward-looking of the three. Its central Andante, although lacking the emotional heft of later Mozart piano concertos’ slow movements, is notable for quoting a work by Johann Christian Bach, Mozart’s onetime mentor. J.C. Bach had died shortly before Mozart wrote this concerto, and the slow movement comes across as a tribute to him – not a deeply elegiac one, to be sure, but one of poise and elegance. Indeed, poise and elegance are hallmarks of all three of these works, which are small-scale enough to be played a quattro, using only piano and string quartet. La Petite Bande is in effect a somewhat expanded chamber group, and reducing it to quartet size, as for this recording, makes perfect sense. First violinist Sigiswald Kuijken takes one significant liberty with Mozart’s scoring, replacing the cello with a double bass (played by Elise Christiaens; Sara Kuijken plays second violin and Marleen Thiers is the violist). This alteration is done on a well-argued basis from a musical standpoint that nevertheless changes the texture of the concertos in some unexpected ways. They are also interesting ways that listeners familiar with the concertos in their more-usual orchestral form will find intriguing. In some ways the piano-quartet versions of these concertos throw an unexpected light on some formal features that stand out despite the works’ comparative conventionality. This is particularly true in No. 11 (K. 413 in F), which features a first movement in three-quarter time (a rarity in Mozart piano concertos) and a final Tempo di minuetto – also a rarity. No. 13 (K. 415 in C) is perhaps the least successful of the concertos from an analytical standpoint – its opening, prior to the piano’s entry, is engaging and involving and more impressive than anything that happens after the piano part appears. But here the concerto sings with warmth and gentle beauty, and the performance – like those of the other two concertos – is historically informed, and elegant enough to keep listeners involved no matter how well they know these works.

     Sigiswald Kuijken’s alteration of Mozart’s instrumentation is well and intelligently argued – for one thing, Kuijken points out that the chamber versions of the concertos were intended for amateur performance, and most households would have a cello available far more readily than a double bass. Kuijken might also have noted that other changes in Mozart’s performance recommendations are by no means uncommon. For example, the “Kegelstatt” trio was originally written for clarinet, viola and keyboard – the first work ever composed for that particular combination, the clarinet at the time being quite new. Apparently as a result, when the work was published in 1788, it was designated as being for violin, viola and piano, with the clarinet part listed as an alternative; and Mozart himself seems to have approved of this change. Novelty is all very well, after all, but music was meant to be sold and performed, and the work was more likely to find buyers in the violin-viola-piano arrangement. And it is also worth noting that the piece was apparently conceived not for piano but for harpsichord: Mozart started writing “ce” (for cembalo, harpsichord) in the first movement before changing it to piano forte, but left cembalo as the designation for the second and third movements. So it is hard to be sure just what can be considered “changed” when this trio is performed today. And that in turn opens up what Ensemble Schumann has done for the work in a recording for MSR Classics: here the trio is performed on oboe, viola and piano. There is no historical justification for this at all, but the instrumental mixture makes for subtle changes in what is already a subtle piece of music, whose three movements (Andante, Menuetto, Allegretto) are less strongly contrasted than are those in many other Mozart works. The performance, a world première recording of this version, is a pleasant one that flows lyrically, and the use of oboe rather than clarinet (or violin!) gives the work a different flavor that seems not “wrong” but simply an enjoyable alternative. The other two pieces on the CD complement this version of the “Kegelstatt” nicely. The Oboe Quartet is an earlier work (1781) that at times requires the oboe to play higher in its range than did other music of this time: the quartet has, in fact, some of the flavor of a concerto! Thomas Gallant handles it with plenty of skill and flexibility – the same characteristics he brings to the oboe version of the “Kegelstatt” trio. The third work here, the Piano Quartet K. 493 (1785), is more commonly heard on recordings with its G minor predecessor, K. 478 – but it nicely complements the major-key, oboe-focused works on the disc, and is played with warmth and insight.

     Insight and performance skill also abound on a Challenge Classics release featuring much later music: the two concertos for violin by Prokofiev. If Mozart’s three early piano concertos ones for Vienna are as striking for their similarities as for their differences, something similar may be said of these Prokofiev concertos. These live recordings of readings by Rudolf Koelman and Musikkollegium Winterthur under Douglas Boyd show performers clearly concerned with showcasing both the similarities between the works and their differences. No. 1 (1923) is largely a Romantic or neo-Romantic work, following an emotional arc that begins with considerable lyricism (Prokofiev marked the violin melody sognando, “dreamily”) and, after a far-more-angular and modern-sounding Scherzo, returns in the third movement to calmer feelings in which the violin is accompanist as much as soloist. The piece ends by fading away – a conclusion handled with particular skill by Koelman and Boyd. Concerto No. 2 (1935) is also pervaded by grace and simplicity, with a greater folk-music feeling than in the earlier concerto – and a distinct Spanish flavor in the finale, where castanets are prominent. But the work’s overall sensibility, like that of its predecessor, is far less bold and forward-looking than some earlier Prokofiev works – less overtly Romantic than the first concerto, perhaps, but scarcely possessed of a more-than-a-decade-later set of rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities. Koelman is a sensitive, highly involved performer: Prokofiev himself said he wanted the second concerto to be completely different from the first in content and form, but Koelman is as attuned to the works’ similarities as to their differences, which often seem to be matters more of emphasis than of overarching sensibility. And Koelman’s understanding of how to make the solo violin stand out from or blend with the orchestra, depending on what is needed, is excellent – perhaps being traceable to his years as concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The one possible disappointment for listeners is that the CD includes only the concertos, which together last not even 50 minutes. Other fine performances are available that offer additional, complementary music.

     Prokofiev’s second violin concerto may have traces of Spain in it, but in that respect it does not come close to the guitar concertos of Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982), which are much less frequently performed and recorded. Torroba wrote about a hundred works for guitar, and Naxos is in the middle of releasing a three-volume set of Torroba guitar concertos featuring Pepe Romero; his onetime student, Vicente Coves, who is an absolutely first-rate guitarist in his own right; and Coves’ conductor brother, Manuel, as orchestra leader. The second volume of this music includes Homenaje a la seguidilla (1962), a tribute to a song and dance form that is intimately associated with Spain – Torroba’s music is redolent of the nation’s musical heritage. Also here is Tonada concertante (1975-80), an alternately inward-focused and extroverted-and-playful work with which Romero (who also performs Homenaje a la seguidilla) seems intimately acquainted, and in which he appears to take great joy. Coves is the soloist for Concierto de Castilla (1960), whose pervasive lyricism clearly evokes Castile – a region with which Torroba strongly identified. In all three works, the Extremadura Symphony Orchestra plays with real panache, reveling in the concertos’ rhythms and responding quickly and with apparent ease to Manuel Coves’ direction. Torroba himself was a conductor of some skill, notably in his own music, and would likely have appreciated Manuel Coves’ attentiveness to the contrasts between these works’ soft and gentle sections and their bold and flamboyant ones. Listeners with any interest in 20^th-century guitar compositions – of which Torroba was an acknowledged master – will likely want not only this CD but also the preceding one and the third volume that is yet to come.

     Another Naxos release, featuring the music of Lou Harrison (1917-2003), is a bit more of a (+++) niche recording and a matter of individual taste. Indeed, like many productions featuring the venturesome Post-Classical Ensemble, the disc is defiantly different, exploring music that remains outside the mainstream even though some of it dates to the 1940s. Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion (1940/1959) is as much a display piece for percussion, of which Harrison was extremely fond throughout his career, as it is a showcase for violin. It is one example among many of Harrison’s use of interval control as a compositional device: it employs only a small number of melodic intervals, resulting in a rather dry texture that is characteristic of much of Harrison’s music. Tim Fain plays the work skillfully, and Angel Gil-Ordóñez leads it with his usual flair and sure understanding of music that does not necessarily lend itself to ready comprehension. Harrison, like his friend John Cage, was preoccupied with the Balinese gamelan and the fusion of elements from Eastern and Western music – the two men were innovators in that mixed form, which has since become so common as to be something of a cliché. How well Harrison and Cage worked together may be heard in the jointly composed Double Music (1941), which was created for a series of Harrison-Cage percussion concerts in San Francisco and which exemplifies, in the short span of seven minutes, many of the composers’ interests in sound and in music that in significant ways moves beyond traditional notions of what is musical. Again, Gil-Ordóñez brings both knowledge and a sure hand in sound shaping to the performance. Even more gamelan-infused than Double Music is the latest work on this CD, Grand Duo (1988), featuring Fain and Michael Boriskin. An extended five-movement chamber suite, lasting well over half an hour, it is filled with percussive techniques that often make the piano approximate the untuned percussion instruments that Harrison so favored elsewhere; and at the same time it offers some intriguing, if highly unconventional, sound contrasts between the violin and the piano. Harrison’s music, scarcely to all tastes or intended for everyone, provides listeners who are disposed to pay attention to boundary-breaking works ample opportunities to stretch their ears in new and often-unexpected directions.

     Although the works by Jeffrey Jacob on a new Navona CD are more recent than those by Harrison, their sound world is less exotic. Jacob, who plays piano in all the pieces here that require one, uses the instrument more conventionally than Harrison does and with greater lyricism and attention to harmony. There are several concertos or concerto-like works on the disc, most of them evocative rather than abstract. Awakening features Jacob with the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba under Enrique Perez Mesa. It is a fairly straightforward spring-and-rebirth piece, inspired by a Thomas Hardy poem. The Loch before Sunrise and A Mirror upon the Waters, both featuring Jacob with the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey under Daniel Spalding, are impressions of Alpine lakes. Music for Haiti and Remembrance of Things Past, both with Spalding directing the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, have a wind-instrument focus. The former uses a piccolo to try to reflect earthquake devastation in Haiti, the music following a wholly predictable path from sorrow to hope to rebirth. The latter focuses on the oboe and combines virtuoso passages with inward-looking, meditative ones. All five of these works have concerto elements; the remaining two on the CD do not. One is Sonata for Cello and Piano, played by Jacob and Lara Turner, in which two equal-length movements are nicely contrasted – the first gentle and the second considerably more acerbic. The final piece here is Reawakening, for solo piano, in which Jacob recalls and to some extent rethinks Awakening as a solo work. This (+++) CD will be of considerable interest to listeners familiar with and strongly involved in Jacobs’ music: it provides a great deal of insight not only into how he thinks musically but also into how he brings those thoughts through with his own performances. However, more than an hour of Jacobs’ music will be a bit much for listeners not already enamored of it: the expressions and gestures tend to become familiar, and the repeated attempts to move impressionism into a more-modern idiom start to sound much the same after a while. The CD nevertheless shows Jacob to be a fine craftsman of concerto-style material as well as other forms.

(++++) DANCE AND OTHER LYRICISM

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 7. Beethoven Orchester Bonn conducted by Stefan Blunier. MDG Gold. $18.99 (SACD).

Vítězslav Novák: In the Tatra Mountains—Symphonic Poem; Lady Godiva—Overture; Eternal Longings. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $12.99.

Ástor Piazzolla: Tangazo; La Muerte del Angel; Adiós Nonino; Oblivion; Libertango; Lalo Schifrin: Concerto No. 2 for Guitar and Orchestra (“Concierto de la Amistad”); Alberto Ginastera: Four Dances from “Estancia.” Ángel Romero, guitar; Seth Asarnow, bandoneon; Tango Buenos Aires and Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. C Major DVD. $24.99.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet. San Francisco Ballet. C Major DVD. $24.99.

     The flowing lyricism of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 is the work’s most salient characteristic in a beautifully played and recorded new version by the Beethoven Orchester Bonn conducted by Stefan Blunier. Still comparatively neglected among Beethoven’s symphonies, the Fourth is filled with charm and beauty, and the subtleties of its orchestration are quite wonderful. Indeed, “subtle” is a good word for this unusually upbeat work, which many conductors seem to forget was written after the heaven-storming “Eroica” and which is thus not a step backward but one forward into new territory. The mysterious where-is-this-going opening of the first movement, the constant contrasts of the second, the expansion of minuet-style material in the third movement, the scurrying of the finale – all these and more are the pleasures of the work, and are clearly ones that Blunier delights in bringing out. The pacing here is just right, with a sufficiently expansive first movement to give the whole symphony the gravitas it deserves, followed by polished second, third and fourth movements that flow naturally from one to the next and culminate in a final Allegro ma non troppo that is Haydnesque in a very different way from the earlier First and still-to-come Eighth Symphony. The loving warmth of the orchestra permeates a performance that is well-balanced and well-proportioned throughout, and that sounds truly excellent thanks to the engineering for the MDG Gold label. The Seventh is equally intriguing and differently lyrical. Here the first movement is solid and broadly paced, although it never drags, and the second has more weight than usual, true to its origin as a funeral march. The third and fourth manage to be both quick and substantial, with Blunier highlighting the dancelike elements of the finale without in any way trivializing the music or making the themes seem insubstantial. There are many other fine performances of these symphonies available, of course, each with its own pleasures. This disc is distinguished, first, by attentiveness to detail, made even clearer by the exceptional sound; and, second, by the easy flow of the music in the hands of a conductor and orchestra that clearly know the works’ intricacies in depth and are expert at showcasing them.

     The music of Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949) is as little known, at least outside his native Bohemia, as the music of Beethoven is familiar. But on the basis of a new Naxos CD featuring three substantial Novák symphonic poems played by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta, whose programming is consistently interesting and innovative, Novák surely deserves at least an occasional place in the concert hall. It is true that his music is reminiscent of that of many other composers, but it has folklike touches and a sense of spreading warmth that mark it as produced by a composer who was a substantial craftsman, if not perhaps a highly talented tunesmith. In the Tatra Mountains (1902) sounds somewhat like Richard Strauss’s later, much longer and much-more-involved Alpine Symphony (1915), with similar broad expressiveness and scene-painting involving a storm in the mountains. If Novák’s music is less vivid than that of Strauss, it is also less monumental – and does not feel stretched-out or padded, as Strauss’s sometimes does. And Novák’s themes here are impressively representational of the grandeur of the scenes he depicts. Novák wrote this work, and the others heard here, when movies were in their infancy, but there is a cinematic quality to his music, with its grand, sweeping themes, strongly Romantic harmonies, and intense contrasts between sections. This is especially true in the concert overture Lady Godiva (1907), in which Godiva’s theme and that of her hard-hearted husband are very strongly contrasted and delineated. There is something rather superficial about the handling of the material – somehow the ringing bells at the end come as no surprise – but the work is undeniably effective, even if it does not immediately invite repeated hearings. Eternal Longing (1905), based on material by Hans Christian Andersen, has similar strengths and weaknesses. It is the longest work here, running more than 20 minutes, but also the most episodic, moving in and out of emotional contrasts effectively and with a fine sense of orchestration. The orchestra, which always plays exceptionally well for Falletta, outdoes itself on this disc: Novák demands dynamic as well as emotional extremes, and the Buffalo Philharmonic delivers them so well that the start of In the Tatra Mountains is nearly inaudible, while the climaxes of all three works are sonically overwhelming. The Novák works heard here have some of the sensibility of Dvořák, Smetana and even Debussy, as well as that of Richard Strauss; but they also possess enough individuality to make this CD a fascinating foray into music that is well-known in one specific region but not elsewhere.

     Regionalism was long a defining factor for the tango, but the dance form has now become an international rather than purely Argentinian one, in large part thanks to Ástor Piazzolla (1921-1992). A modern master of the form, Piazzolla brought the tango out of the dance hall and into the concert hall, writing music more melodic and rhythmic than traditional tangos and with greater attention to 20^th-century harmonic developments. It is the combination of elements of traditional tango with jazz and classical music that makes Piazzolla’s works in the form so interesting, and Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic do several of them to a fine turn on a new C Major DVD. There is enough actual dancing shown on the video to make it somewhat more appealing than traditional DVDs of classical music, although it is still a (+++) release because much of it consists of the usual visuals of the conductor conducting and the orchestra members playing orchestral instruments – all without the visceral excitement experienced by attendees at an actual outdoor concert, like the one at the Hollywood Bowl recorded here. At 83 minutes, this is not a particularly long concert, and at 19 minutes, the bonus material –interviews with Dudamel, composer Lalo Schifrin and guitarist Ángel Romero – is not substantial, either. But those who like visuals with some lighter classical music will enjoy this offering. The Piazzolla material is fairly substantial in its way, but the major work here is the world première of Schifrin’s second guitar concerto, which he calls Concierto de la Amistad. The piece was written for Romero, who performs it with gusto, and it is a nicely made work that gives Romero plenty of opportunities to show off his virtuosity and does not require much depth of perception or involvement on the part of the audience. Therefore, it fits rather well with the overt dance elements both of Piazzolla and of Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), whose Estancia was written to show off Argentine country life in somewhat the way that Copland at the same time (1941) was writing ballets redolent of American folk tunes and frontier events. The four dances heard here are those of field hands, a wheat field, cattlemen and gauchos – Argentinian frontier types not all that different from American Western ones, although the music itself certainly has a different form and flair. Essentially the souvenir of a light-music concert, this DVD mixes appealing if not terribly significant music with some pleasant visuals (especially in the tangos, in which Tango Buenos Aires does a fine job) and an overall feeling of relaxation and enjoyment.

     The enjoyment is of a different sort on another C Major DVD, this one of the San Francisco Ballet’s 2015 staging of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. The focus here is largely on the troupe’s founder, artistic director and principal choreographer, Helgi Tomasson: listeners and viewers must appreciate her handling of the story and the dancing in order to enjoy the recording – the fine conducting by Martin West and good (if not exceptional) orchestral playing are not enough. Classical ballet always has something of spectacle about it, which means the production and costume design of Jens-Jacob Worsaae and the lighting design of Thomas R. Skelton are as important in their way as the music and choreography. And of course the quality of the dancing is crucial. Here the primary roles are danced by Maria Kochetkova (Juliet), Davit Karapetyan (Romeo), Pascal Molet (Mercutio), Joseph Walsh (Benvolio), and Luke Ingham (Tybalt). The production is actually a modification of one that Tomasson created 20 years earlier, and it is improved in several ways – for instance, Tybalt is still intense and a rabble-rouser, but no longer comes across as a sadist. Prokofiev’s music is as wonderful as always, but it is somewhat beside the point in a production that is constantly moving and changing, as if in deference to an audience whose attention span is perhaps limited (or thought by Tomasson to be limited). Kochetkova and Karapetyan dance well together, although they act together less well – this is, after all, Shakespeare’s story of young and doomed love, and body language and facial expressiveness count for a great deal, beyond the requirements of ballet movements (which, however, are often wonderful, especially when Kochetkova is reveling in the exuberance of love). As in any DVD, the at-home audience must look at the scenes and angles selected by the video director – a distinct disadvantage when a production has as many elements as this one does. In some cases, of course, the place to look is obvious, as in a fight scene wonderfully choreographed by Martino Pistone in collaboration with Tomasson. But at other times, the in-theater audience has the option to examine the settings and the minor characters as well as the central ones, ending up with a fuller sense of scene-setting and drama than ever comes through on the DVD. This limitation, and the somewhat rarefied nature of the material, make this a (+++) release. But those who are enamored of the San Francisco Ballet (America’s oldest professional ballet company, even though it was founded as recently as 1994), and those who know Prokofiev’s marvelous score only as a concert piece and would like to see it interpreted as a stage work, will find a great deal here to enjoy and appreciate.