(++++) OUT OF THE ORDINARY

Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1-3 for Violin and Piano; Auf dem Kirchhofe, Op. 105, No. 4; Wie Melodien zieht es mir, Op. 105, No. 1; Regenlied, Op. 59, No. 3. Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch, violin; Tuija Hakkila, piano. Ondine. $16.99.

Nielsen: Clarinet Concerto; Six Humorous Bagatelles; Fantasy for Clarinet and Piano; Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano; Serenata in Vano. David Shifrin, clarinet; Ryan Reynolds, bassoon; William Purvis, horn; Jon Greeney, snare drum; Benjamin Hoffman and Theodore Arm, violins; Jennifer Frautschi, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; Curtis Daily, double bass; Yevgeny Yontov, piano. Delos. $16.99.

     Unusual presentations of well-known or moderately-well-known pieces always run the risk of seeming like gimmicks – but when well done, atypical ways of handling music can bring new insight into the works, along with pleasures of their own. Certainly that is the case with the excellent presentation of Brahms’ violin-and-piano (in this case often called piano-and-violin) sonatas by Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch and Tuija Hakkila. This Ondine CD is special in two ways and odd in a third. One unusual element is the inclusion of three songs whose material Brahms incorporated, in altered form, into the sonatas. The CD opens with Auf dem Kirchhofe and uses the other two songs as interludes between the sonatas. This makes for a very attractive package that can be heard straight through, for listeners so inclined, without any sense that the sonatas, which are quite different from each other, are “bumping up” against one another. The second unusual aspect of the CD is that Kaakinen-Pilch and Hakkila play instruments of Brahms’ own time – it is worth remembering that period-instrument performance is not confined to Baroque music but can be equally effective in works of the Romantic era, a time of gut strings, less use of vibrato, and pianos with less key travel and keys often set closer together (making some hand spans easier and affecting the sound of chords). Kaakinen-Pilch plays an anonymous violin of Brahms’ time; Hakkila uses an 1864 Streicher piano – a type much favored by Brahms himself – for Sonata No. 1 and Regenlied, an 1892 Bösendorfer for the rest of the music. The instruments are very well-balanced against each other, and the performances, which are presented at pacing that fits the music just about perfectly, offer exactly the sort of give-and-take between the musicians that Brahms surely intended. There are many fine recordings of these sonatas available, and this is one of the finest, getting an extra edge from the period-instrument approach and the inclusion of the song material. As for the disc’s oddity, that lies in the sequence in which the sonatas are presented: No. 2, then No. 3, and finally No. 1. There is no demonstrable reason for this, and its effect is, if anything, to undercut, to an extent, the cleverness of sprinkling the songs amid the longer works. Still, this is a relatively minor quibble, and of course listeners need not listen to the CD straight through and can arrange to hear the tracks in any order at all. Still, this particular disc invites a straight-through hearing, and it would have been better to arrange it so listeners could readily absorb not only the songs’ influence on the sonatas but also the changes in Brahms’ handling of violin-and-piano interplay from No. 1 (1878) to No. 2 (1886) to No. 3 (1888).

     Unusual elements abound on a new Delos CD featuring elegant clarinet playing by David Shifrin, who takes on a series of works by Carl Nielsen in unexpected and uniformly successful ways. The big piece here is the Clarinet Concerto, but it appears in a never-before-recorded chamber-music arrangement made by Rene Orth. This sets Shifrin against eight musicians rather than a full orchestra – although “against” really applies only to the snare drum, which here (as in Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5) seems determined to interrupt the musical flow and distract from it. The opposition between clarinet and snare drum is even clearer in this chamber arrangement than in Nielsen’s original scoring, and the rapprochement with which the work concludes is equally satisfying. This concerto can easily sound episodic – indeed, it is episodic in its design – but Shifrin manages to find coherence throughout and maintain musical flow even though the short episodes of which the work consists make it difficult to sustain a sense of organization. There is a delightful contrast between the chamber version of the concerto, which opens the CD, and the Serenata in Vano, which closes it and was recorded at the same live performance. Nielsen scored Serenata in Vano for a very unusual instrumental complement: clarinet, bassoon, horn, cello and double bass. The result is a work whose sound is unique, with the music itself being wry and witty. This is a three-section piece whose “story” involves serenaders seeking unsuccessfully to appeal to a woman with two different musical offerings, then giving up (hence the piece’s title) and heading home while playing a jaunty march for their own enjoyment. The players certainly share the pleasure here, not only with the audience for which they performed but also for listeners to the CD. In between the chamber works are three clarinet-and-piano pieces, two of which have their own unexpected presentation elements. One of those two is Six Humorous Bagatelles, a piano work arranged by Steven Cohen (himself a clarinetist) for clarinet and piano. This set of six small pieces, Nielsen’s own Children’s Corner Suite, dates to 1894-97 and therefore predates Debussy’s of 1908, which is also in six movements, by more than a decade. Nielsen’s work is far less often heard, which is a shame, since the straightforward miniatures are all nicely conceived and written at just the right length to avoid overstaying their welcome. Shifrin and pianist Yevgeny Yontov handle them with just the right amount of delicacy and charm. The two are also well-matched in Shifrin’s own transcription for clarinet and piano of Nielsen’s Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano – in fact, the first of these two early works (1889) takes on additional depth as arranged here, and the second is suitably playful. The CD also includes the short Fantasy for Clarinet and Piano, an even earlier work (dating to 1881, when Nielsen was just 16). Here too Shifrin and Yontov blend and contrast very well indeed, and the music benefits from their camaraderie. The arrangements of most of the pieces on this disc may be unusual, but it is the very high quality of the music-making, not the unexpected elements, that makes the recording a pleasure from start to finish.

(++++) THE INFLUENCED

Franz Krommer: Symphonies Nos. 4, 5 and 7. Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Howard Griffiths. CPO. $16.99.

Richard Heuberger: Der Opernball. Gerhard Ernst, Lotte Marquardt, Alexander Kaimbacher, Ivan Oreščanin, Nadja Mchantaf, Martin Fournier, Margareta Klobučar, Sieglinde Feldhofer, János Mischuretz; Chor der Oper Graf and Grazer Philharmonisches Orchester conducted by Marius Burkert. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

     Composers who significantly influenced other composers deservedly get a great deal of credit for doing so. Haydn’s enormous influence on Mozart and Beethoven, Beethoven’s on Schubert and Brahms and a plethora of Romantics, Offenbach’s on Suppé and Sullivan, Wagner’s on Verdi and Puccini and on through-composition of opera in general, Schoenberg’s on nearly all composers from the Second Viennese School down to our own time – these are just a few examples. Many of those who absorbed and extended the innovations of earlier composers became influential in their own right. But some did not: they took in enough techniques to produce interesting, sometimes even compelling music, but their works were dead ends, and whatever popularity they enjoyed for a time faded, often quickly, after the composers’ deaths. But it is a testament to the high quality of some of this music that, when it is rediscovered, it proves more than worthy of performance and of repeated hearings. Such is the case with the symphonies of Franz Krommer (1759-1831), a Viennese composer who lived and worked almost literally in Beethoven’s shadow and who, as a result, faded quickly into obscurity despite the initial enthusiasm with which his works were met. Krommer wrote nine symphonies, eight of which have survived, and Howard Griffiths, a dedicated explorer of some of the byways of musical history, offers three of them in exceptionally forceful and well-played versions on a new CPO disc featuring the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. It is easy to hear influences of Haydn in these works (especially in Symphony No. 7); and, like the symphonies of Louis Spohr, these are redolent of Beethoven as well. But it is Beethoven of around the time of his Symphony No. 2 (1801-1802), not later Beethoven – even though these three Krommer works date from 1820, 1821 and 1824, respectively. There is dynamism and a strong sense of sturm und drang in these pieces, and their sound may remind some listeners of that of Niels Gade’s symphonies (although those also have Mendelssohnian elements that Krommer’s symphonies lack). Krommer was writing some of his later symphonies, including No. 7, when Beethoven had advanced far beyond the Krommer sound: Beethoven’s Ninth was written from 1822 to 1824, and Krommer’s Seventh, which (like all three symphonies heard here) features a third movement labeled Menuetto, seems like something of a throwback. These are works of strength and solidity, but their style is a derivative one despite some clever twists that Krommer brings to the material. Symphony No. 4 in C minor is strong and dramatic, with a complex Adagio second movement. Symphony No. 5 in E-flat is filled with trumpets and timpani and offers intriguing contrasts between the martial and the pastoral within the first movement and between that whole movement and the following Andante sostenuto. And Symphony No. 7 in G minor is especially interesting for concluding with, of all things, a fugue – but one created in the harmonic language of Krommer’s time rather than that of Bach. Griffiths leads the orchestra with a sure hand in all the symphonies, giving Krommer his full due for the works’ structural integrity and thematic cogency. None of these symphonies is especially distinctive in breaking new ground for later composers: they are very much of their own time, and it is scarcely surprising that they were eclipsed by other material not long after Krommer’s death. Yet these well-made works are worthy of revival today, both for the innate pleasures they offer and for the insight they provide into the music being created in Vienna in Beethoven’s time.

     The influences that culminated in Der Opernball by Richard Heuberger (1850-1914) are apparent not only in the music but also in the story. This operetta, by far the best-known work by Heuberger and a piece whose overture continues to appear frequently on concert programs, has nearly the same plot as Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and a structure almost identical to that of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus. It is a straightforward and often amusing “bedroom comedy,” although here the room involved is a chamber séparée to which various men seek to bring various women who are not their wives – or maybe are. That is, the women decide to test their husbands’ faithfulness by creating a specific Carnival costume to be worn at the opera ball of the title – and matters get more complicated when the chambermaid of one couple decides that she too will wear the costume and use it to lure the man in whom she is interested. The opera ball occurs in the second act, as does the party in Die Fledermaus, and Heuberger’s third act is used to unravel matters, blame the confusion on the chambermaid, and assert, rather unconvincingly, the fidelity of both the married men: there is nothing here quite akin to Strauss’ conclusion that nur der Champagner war an allem schuld! However, Der Opernball of 1898 quite clearly echoes Die Fledermaus of 1874 (although the play on which Heuberger’s operetta was based did not appear until 1876). The music bubbles along in a similar vein as well – and it really is bubbly in the new two-CD recording from CPO. As for the overall Opera Graz production – well, sprechen Sie Deutsch? Dann ist die neue CPO-CD von "Der Opernball" ein echtes Vergnügen. If you do speak German – and are unfamiliar with Der Opernball or not particularly concerned about authenticity in performing it – then Marius Burkert and the Graz soloists, chorus and orchestra offer plenty of ebullience and charm in their rather broad interpretation. If you speak only English and/or would like to hear the operetta as Heuberger composed it, this release will be a disappointment despite the good playing and enjoyable singing. The language issue lies simply in the fact that the dialogue – which has been rewritten from the original libretto by Viktor Léon and Heinrich von Waldberg – is crucial to understanding the action and is neither printed in the booklet nor offered online, much less translated from German to English. The sung pieces are given in the booklet, and CPO deserves some credit for that, but they appear in German only. As for the sequences of the music, that issue belongs entirely to Opera Graz, which decided not only to alter the dialogue (a common if unfortunate occurrence in contemporary operetta presentations) but also to rearrange the order in which the set pieces are presented. It is very hard to understand why this was done: Der Opernball is confusing enough by intention so that it makes no sense to complicate matters further by moving its music around willy-nilly. Presumably the rewritten dialogue was designed to clarify the rearranged music, but it would have been a great deal simpler and a great deal more pleasant if Opera Graz had simply presented the operetta as the composer intended. Certainly the quality of the music, with whose orchestration Heuberger had the assistance of Alexander von Zemlinsky, comes through here, and certainly it is easy to hear why Geh'n wir in's Chambre séparée took Vienna by storm in 1898. The sheer quality of the musical material is enough to give this release a (+++) rating. But it could easily have been an even more welcome recording if the fine singing, playing and conducting had been put at the service of Der Openball as it was intended to be performed.

(++++) AMUSEMENT, WITH MONSTERS

Thisby Thestoop and the Black Mountain. By Zac Gorman. Illustrated by Sam Bosma. Harper. $16.99.

     It takes a certain amount of courage, or foolhardiness, to set a new fantasy-adventure series in a land called Nth. Nth? Zac Gorman’s debut novel may not be successful to the nth degree, but it is an unusually clever preteen adventure with an unusually strong focus on a single protagonist rather than the more-typical group of largely interchangeable buddies.

     Take that protagonist’s name, for example. “Thisby Thestoop”? There is a perfectly logical explanation for it, within Gorman’s twisted but consistent world. An infant girl abandoned by her parents (“most parents are idiots, yours especially,” one character sagely observes), she is grabbed by a minotaur, one of the less-terrifying denizens of the Black Mountain, who is a touch full from lunch and decides to keep this snack for later. So he leaves a courteous note for the goblin maintenance staff: “Found This By The Stoop. Please Keep For Later.” However, because minotaurs have poor penmanship – apparently cursive is not taught to them any more than it currently is to many human children in our world – the goblins read this as: “Found, Thisby Thestoop. Please Keep Forever.” And there you have it – the start of it, anyway.

     The “it” that starts here is the story of a 12-year-old girl in a fantastical realm where she cares for all sorts of monsters in such a way as to prevent all sorts of mayhem. She is not some undiscovered heroine about to come into potent powers, not the object of some strange prophecy – not, in short, any of the usual things that protagonists in preteen fantasy-adventures tend to be. Instead, and this is a wonderful notion on Gorman’s part, she is a careful observer of her environment who takes copious notes (presumably in better handwriting than that of a minotaur) that she reviews later. “It’s unbelievable what can be accomplished when a person pays attention and takes diligent notes, and nobody paid better attention or took better notes than Thisby Thestoop.” This is a most unusual talent for the central character in a book like this.

     The Black Mountain is intertwined with Castle Grimstone, and Gorman’s casual description of the castle’s provenance is a good sample of his clever writing: “Of the thirty-three architects who had overseen the construction of the castle, only two of them weren’t criminally insane, and at least one of those two was just never caught in the act.” The mountain and castle exist in Nth largely to give the land’s impoverished would-be adventurers the faint but inevitably vain hope of getting in, getting out alive, and bringing home some of the treasure reputed to be within the usual deep, black dungeons. Thisby’s job as maintainer of the various monsters, which mostly involves keeping them satisfied so they do not run amok and go after each other, is done so the population at large will not “realize this wasn’t actually an ‘evil dungeon being kept alive with powerful, ancient magic,’ but more of a tourist attraction, a sort of day care for bored kids with swords – albeit one with a terribly high mortality rate.”

     Thisby does have a couple of friends, including an elderly goblin named Grunda and a “talking ball of glowing mucus” named Mingus, who turns out to have a deep dark secret. Or rather a Deep Down secret – the Deep Down being the area below even the lowest parts of the lowest dungeons farthest beneath the Black Mountain. Mingus, to whom Thisby has given some make-believe eyes and a make-believe mouth so he can sort of have expressions, is another delightfully offbeat Gorman creation. And Gorman gets extra credit for occasional subtle references to other fantasy series, such as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld sequence: “Thisby had even read something once that claimed the world was held on the back of a giant turtle moving through space. She’d quite enjoyed that one.”

     All of Gorman’s cleverness, and there is quite a lot of it, makes up for an underlying plot that is far less unusual. It has to do with a Royal Inspection of Thisby’s environs, featuring the 15-year-old royal twins, Iphigenia and Ingo. Iphigenia is two minutes older, therefore destined to rule, and extremely stuck-up and self-involved. Ingo is handsome, persuasive, and quite obviously going to turn out to be a bad guy who wants to usurp the throne. This becomes clear quickly: the Royal Inspection is Ingo’s idea – and after everything, of course, goes wrong, Iphigenia finds herself thinking that “her brother had insisted on it” and “whatever Ingo wanted, Ingo got.” In case the hints early in the story are not enough, as the tale progresses and Iphigenia needs Thisby’s help to search for supposedly kidnapped Ingo, Iphigenia finds herself thinking, “Ingo was great at fooling everyone, but his sister saw through him. She knew him better than anyone else.” Umm, no. The one who knows Ingo better than anyone else is a gigantic force lying deep, deep, deep beneath everything and known as the Eyes in the Dark, the ultimate bad guy here. It is the machinations of the Eyes in the Dark and the growing friendship between Thisby and out-of-her-depth Iphigenia that together make up the major plot points in a generally well-paced, well-structured, thoroughly entertaining novel.

     This is not to say that everything works. Gorman can be a touch too cute for his own good, as in designating chapters 17.5 and 22.5 for no apparent reason. And many of the illustrations by Sam Bosma are disappointments. In one spot, for example, Gorman carefully describes the bizarre bricks of a building, which Bosma shows with ordinary bricks; in another, Gorman makes a point of writing about Iphigenia wearing Thisby’s gigantic backpack, but the illustration does not show her doing so. Still, the vast majority of Thisby Thestoop and the Black Mountain is several cuts above typical fantasy-adventures for ages 8-12, and will surely whet young readers’ appetite for further forays into the life, times and courage, or foolhardiness, of the oddly but appropriately named Thisby Thestoop. The next one will be called Thisby Thestoop and the Wretched Scrattle.

(++++) YES AND NO

Will Bear Share? By Hilary Leung. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $7.99.

Will Sheep Sleep? By Hilary Leung. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $7.99.

     Adorable critters doing things, or refusing to do them, make these board books a treat for the youngest children. Hilary Leung’s big-eyed, bright-eyed characters are equally emphatic whether answering the title questions of the books in the affirmative or the negative. And the books have little twists that put them a cut above many other board books. For example, adults may expect there to be a lesson that starts with selfishness and is all about how you must learn to share in Will Bear Share? But not so: from the start, Bear shares things already. The book turns out to be about things that should and should not be shared. “Will Bear share her berries?” asks Leung as Bear walks toward huge-eyed Ladybug, who is fully half Bear’s size. Turn the page and there is one word: “Yes.” Both Bear and Ladybug now have fruits to eat, and both look quite happy about it. But after a bit more sharing – of a book, with Giraffe – the question that comes up is, “Will Bear share her toothbrush?” Now she is with the wide-eyed and very toothy little Alligator – but now, on the page after the question, the answer is, “NO! Toothbrushes are not for sharing.” Alligator misses out on additional sharing, too – that is, after Bear successfully shares several other things. Alligator’s next appearance comes when Bear has an ice-cream cone – and this time, Bear simply refuses to share it, and Alligator looks suitably downcast. But then the ice cream falls out of the cone, onto the ground, and now neither of them has a sweet treat – until Ladybug shows up with a gigantic cake, bigger than herself and Bear and Alligator combined, and all the friends have something to share. An amusing, soft-pedaled lesson about what to share and what not to share – and what sometimes happens when you do not share – the book is good-humored throughout, and the simple, pleasantly rounded drawings that cause all the characters to look a bit like plush toys help make the story fun.

     The story is even more entertaining in Will Sheep Sleep? Here the answer is no – again and again. Even though Sheep is tired when the book starts, he will not go to sleep – instead, he springs into further play activity, wearing his bed’s blanket as a cape. All the characters seen in Will Bear Share? also show up in this story. Brushing his teeth – along with Alligator – does not help Sheep sleep. Neither does drinking water given to him by his friend Frog. Sheep makes everything into a game: dueling toothbrushes with Alligator, creating a water fountain with Frog. Even reading a book in bed – with Bear – does not help, since Sheep, instead of paying quiet attention, jumps up and dances all over the bed. The stay-awake amusements continue until the eventual and inevitable question, “Will counting sheep help Sheep sleep?” Turn that page and the one word that appears is, “Perhaps.” So, in the book’s funniest illustration, all the characters appear dressed as sheep and go jumping about to help Sheep rest. And each of the disguised characters has a number underneath, from 1 through 5 – so suddenly Will Sheep Sleep? turns into a counting book as well as a good-night one. This is particularly clever – and it seems only fair that at the book’s end, when all five helpful friends have had a night’s sleep but remain sleepy-eyed in bed, Sheep is bright-eyed and very much awake, showing up in the bedroom with breakfast for all. The characters in these books may sometimes say yes and sometimes no, but parents of very young children will be quite happy to say yes both to Will Sheep Sleep? and to Will Bear Share?

(+++) OOPS AND OOPS AND OOPS AGAIN

Oopsie-Do! By Tim Kubart. Pictures by Lori Richmond. Harper. $17.99.

     Even in well-meaning, well-written, well-illustrated kids’ books, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. And that is what readers ages 4-8, and their families, get from Tim Kubart and Lori Richmond in Oopsie-Do! The idea here is to use Kubart’s fame as a Grammy award winner, and an original song that is available online, to expand upon and reinforce the message of a book that tells young children not to be upset about mistakes – just take them in stride, and all the people around you, kids and adults alike, will come together to fix things.

     It certainly makes sense to present and reinforce the notion that everybody makes mistakes and that accidents, when they happen, are no big deal. And there are some very good books for this age range that make the point quite well, one recent one, for example, being Andrea Tsurumi’s Accident! The secret ingredient in that book, and in effective communication about accidents and their consequences or non-consequences, is humor, not repetition – although repetition can certainly play a role. But where Tsurumi’s book piles absurdity on absurdity as it has “awful” thing after “awful” thing occur for an ever-growing cast of characters, the Kubart/Richmond book has all the accidents – a whole string of them – happen to one single little girl. And while her friends, as shown immediately on the book’s cover, have expressions of concern about the messes that the mistakes cause, the girl herself is seen smiling, her arms thrown wide as if to shrug off the situation as no big deal at all.

     This is fine – up to a point. But the point is made again and again and again in Oopsie-Do! And the response to errors is overly simplistic, even for this age group: “No reason to fret if you make a mistake! Just say OOPSIE-DO!”  Well, yes, if you make a mistake. But in this book, the girl spills fish food when caring for the class aquarium; accidentally dumps her entire snack on the floor when getting her backpack; mixes colors with which she is painting in a way she does not want; falls when kicking a ball; mis-buttons her coat when heading home; and squirts toothpaste onto her pajama top at night. There are mistakes by her little brother and the family dog, too. Kubart and Richmond do not, however, use the pileup of small problems in any humorous way – all readers get is the admonition, again and again and again, to say the magic “oopsie-do!” so everything is all right. Sometimes things are all right because classmates help clean up the spilled fish food, sometimes because the teacher finds a snack replacement, sometimes because the messed-up colors become the basis of a whole new approach to painting – but it is a very messy one that does not earn an “oopsie-do!” even when the girl splatters paint on her face and all over the floor. And sometimes, as with the toothpaste incident, things are all right “just because”: the girl changes her pajama top and leaves the one with toothpaste on it on the floor, along with the toothpaste tube and everything coming out of it. Parents will need to explain that in real life, the paint and toothpaste messes would not be OK if handled as they are in this book.

     And that is the difficulty with the extremely well-intentioned Oopsie-Do! Kubart and Richmond are so determined to show young children that mistakes happen, are no big deal, and are easily corrected, that they deliver the message with considerable repetition and in a by-and-large serious manner. But without the leavening of laughter, the notion that one little girl could make so many mistakes in a single day may upset some kids instead of teaching them a valuable lesson. And the idea that only some messes resulting from accidents need to be cleaned up by the child who made the mistake, while others do not, is unlikely to be something that parents want their children to take into the real world: the cover picture in which the girl seems at most indifferent to what she has done is a bit much for real life. Kubart and Richmond certainly deserve praise for what they try to do in Oopsie-Do! But the way they try to do it turns out to be a bit of an oopsie-do itself.

(+++) WHEN MUSIC GETS PERSONAL

Copland: Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson; Jake Heggie: Newer Every Day; Gordon Getty: Four Dickinson Songs; Michael Tilson Thomas: Poems of Emily Dickinson (selections). Lisa Delan, soprano; Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille conducted by Lawrence Foster. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Elgar: Violin Sonata in E minor; Mozart: Violin Sonata No. 32 in B-flat, K. 454; Debussy: Violin Sonata in G minor. Dominika Dancewicz, violin; Donald Doucet, piano. World on Wire Records. $14.99.

TORCH: Music of Ben Thomas, Brian Chin, Eric Likkel, Erik Satie, Manual de Falla, and Igor Stravinsky. Common Tone Records. $15.

     Although there are always personal elements in music-making – and in composing – there are some recordings that come across with a more strongly personal stamp than others. A clear example is a new PentaTone SACD with the title, “A Certain Slant of Light” – a phrase from a poem that begins, “There’s a certain slant of light,/ Winter afternoons,/ That oppresses, like the heft/ Of cathedral tunes.” The poem is by Emily Dickinson and is one of 22 Dickinson settings, by four American composers, on the disc. This is an unusual and welcome compilation, with virtually no poems repeated on the release and with the totality of the recording revealing nearly as much about Dickinson (1830-1886) as it does about the composers represented. Dickinson’s voice is considered uniquely American, one of the first such voices in poetry, yet her words and the music they inspired clearly have international resonance, as is clear from the finely honed, sensitive performances by American soprano Lisa Delan and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille under Lawrence Foster. Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson (1948/1950) shows Aaron Copland in an interesting light. The settings are neither as accessible and tonal as his best-known works, nor as self-consciously modern as much of his less overtly popular music: they genuinely  support Dickinson’s language without overwhelming or commenting on it, giving Delan – who is highly sensitive to textual nuance – plenty of chances to bring forth the poems’ emotional strength. Copland did not have access to definitive editions of Dickinson’s poems, but this matters little in the context of the care and sensitivity with which he set the words. That Dickinson’s work can be handled in multiple ways is immediately clear when the disc moves on from Copland to the five poems in Newer Every Day (2014) by Jake Heggie (born 1961). Heggie finds acerbity, if not quite bitterness, in Dickinson’s words, and is especially effective at underlining the thoughts and feelings behind I’m Nobody! Who Are You? and Fame (one of two different poems on the disc with that title). The selection of specific poems to set is one aspect of the strong sense of personalization here. Four Dickinson Songs (2008) by Gordon Getty (born 1933) is in some ways an extension of Getty’s The White Election of 1981, which contains 31 Dickinson poems. The four here were orchestrated specifically for this recording, and three of the four are about death, including the famous Because I Could Not Stop for Death – which Copland also set, with slightly different words and in a version 50% longer than Getty’s. Getty engages directly with the poems here and does not hesitate to bring out their darker elements: if Copland’s settings are presentations of the poems, Getty’s are interpretations of them. The final offerings here are five selections from Poems of Emily Dickinson (2001) by composer/conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (born 1944), and again the choices say a great deal about composer and poet alike. Thomas introduces every poem with a kind of scene-setting orchestral opening, ranging from little more than a flourish to a kind of miniature tone poem. The poems heard here are all short, with Thomas choosing to keep two of them brief in presentation while expanding the other three – in one case, The Bible, to almost five minutes. This recording is quite clearly intended for listeners interested in Dickinson, in modern American music, and in art songs in general – an admittedly rarefied group. But the material is so compelling, and at the same time so variegated, that anyone who knows Dickinson’s poetry (even a little bit of it) will have an enriching experience by listening to it in this fascinating context.

     Context is also a matter of interest for the performances on a new World on Wire Records release featuring the Dancewicz-Doucet Duo. There are two sonatas here, by Elgar and Debussy, that date from the same time (1918 and 1917 respectively) and share a number of similar sensibilities, despite the considerable differences between the composers’ styles. They are separated on the disc, rather oddly, by Mozart’s K. 454 sonata of 1784, a work of very different provenance and style whose second-movement chromatic modulations look toward the future but whose overall mood is considerably lighter than that of the other works. The selection of these three pieces, placed in this order, quite clearly reflects the personal preferences of the performers, who bring warmth and considerable sensitivity to all the performances. The Elgar sonata is inward-focused and on the dark, melancholic side, somewhat along the lines of the composer’s Cello Concerto, written a year later. It is one of Elgar’s three minor-key chamber works of the same time period, along with the String Quartet and Piano Quintet, and repays careful listening and the sort of subtle, nuanced performance it receives from Dominika Dancewicz and Donald Doucet. Debussy’s sonata is likewise one of three related works – the others being those for cello and piano and for flute, viola and harp. But in this case there were supposed to be six pieces: Debussy’s death halted the creation of the full group. The violin-and-piano sonata is Debussy’s last major work, and his performance of its première, with violinist Gaston Poulet, was Debussy’s final public performance. Yet the work is scarcely autumnal in quality. Interestingly, it lacks a slow movement, the emotions that would normally be expressed through one instead emerging through the legato elements and generally long note values of the opening Allegro vivo, which does not come across as a traditional Allegro at all. The second movement is handled particularly well in this reading. An intermezzo marked Fantastique e legér, it seems to be part scherzo, part fantasia, with Dancewicz and Doucet showing themselves quite adept at contrasting and balancing the musical elements. Dancewicz has some very fine spiccato here. The finale is somewhat less engaging, not for any lack in the performance, but simply because the music itself never quite gels, having elements of perpetuum mobile and others that seem rather tacked-on, such as the fortissimo assertion of G major at the end. The main characteristics of the Elgar and Debussy performances here are warmth and understanding – and warmth predominates in the Mozart as well, but does not fit the music quite as well. The unusually slow introduction to the first movement, in which Mozart is also at pains to balance the contributions of the two instruments, sets the overall tone of the performance, which is broad and expansive and leans a bit too strongly in the direction of Romanticism – even the comparatively playful finale has a generally serious tone here. This reading does, however, help the Mozart fit well between the Elgar and Debussy sonatas. Listeners interested in these specific pieces and in hearing a duo with excellent skills at communicating – with each other and with an audience – will gravitate to this recording.

     The audience for a CD called TORCH, on the Common Tone Records label, is harder to discern. The works here are composed or re-composed by three of the group’s four members: Brian Chin (trumpets), Eric Likkel (clarinets), and Ben Thomas (vibes, percussion and bandoneón). The fourth person in TORCH is Steve Schermer (double bass). All the music on the CD has distinct jazz elements and an improvisational feel; much of it consists of very personal reimaginings of works by earlier composers, including Satie, de Falla and Stravinsky. Even when the material has been through-composed, it does not sound that way, which is part of the point: the group appears to be trying to blur the line between traditionally organized classical music (where what matters is what is on the page) and jazz (where the written score is only a starting point and the performers rather than the composer decide where the music goes and what impact it has). Many of the tracks on the CD have the usual trying-to-be-clever titles in which contemporary composers and performers often revel: The Surface of an Emerald, Yachtie, Andantinish, Larghetto-Land, Lento Bash, etc. The relationship of various pieces to their Satie/de Falla/Stravinsky inspirations is not particularly apparent or particularly relevant: the idea here is to move beyond the original compositions, not to dwell on or pay tribute to them. The actual playing on the CD is of very high quality, and some of the balance among the instruments is intriguing, with Thomas’s contributions particularly distinctive. TORCH seems to be an experiential group that would be intriguing to see and hear in person. But the material on this CD – although it will appeal to listeners who enjoy some rather unusual instrumental combinations and an overall feeling of jazziness – is not really distinctive enough to be involving beyond a comparatively limited audience. Of course, that may be the whole point of TORCH: to reach out to an “in crowd” of the group’s own making. Certainly the aim of bridging the gap between traditional notions of classical music and jazz is a good one, but it is scarcely new, and while this disc offers some pleasant listening, it is neither inspirational not musically compelling enough to suggest that it is the harbinger of a wide-ranging form of communication.

(+++) GOING BUGGY

Monsters Unleashed No. 1. By John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Mark Oliver. Harper. $6.99.

Monsters Unleashed No. 2: Bugging Out. By John Kloepfer. Illustrated by Mark Oliver. Harper. $16.99.

Fly Guy Presents: Police Officers. By Tedd Arnold. Scholastic. $3.99.

     The second book in John Kloepfer’s entertaining, if formulaic, Monsters Unleashed series ratchets up the ickiness quotient of the sequence by introducing something even worse than the monsters found in the first volume: bugs. Lots of them. Billions, in fact. And not just any bugs. No, these are 3D-printed thingies created by one of Freddie Liddle’s classmates, and they are about to be a big challenge to Freddie, his buddies, and their pet monsters. But first – well, anyone who wants to get the full flavor, so to speak, of Bugging Out, really needs to start with Monsters Unleashed No. 1, originally published last year and now available in paperback. It falls squarely into the typical-preteen-fantasy-adventure mode, in which groups of kids (largely indistinguishable from each other) band together to deal with issues that are much simpler and more straightforward to handle (although admittedly somewhat ickier) than the problems and difficulties of everyday real life. Kloepfer, a virtuoso at this sort of tale, starts the series (amply illustrated by Mark Oliver) by assembling the team, making sure there are a few nods to differing appearances and ethnic backgrounds. The primary protagonist is sixth-grader Freddie, who is the opposite of his name, being big (six-feet-four-inches tall) and rather klutzy. The child of divorced parents, he has moved to New Mexico and found only one friend, a small Hispanic boy named Manny Vasquez. The three other members of the “inner circle” here start out as Freddie’s enemies: they are bullies – a jock and jerk named Jordan, an “evil mega-nerd” named Quincy, and a black wannabe actress named Nina. Trying to handle his feelings about his tormentors, Freddie draws three monsters based on them, and then, with Manny’s help, uses, yes, a 3-D printer to make actual physical versions of the creatures – called Kraydon, Mega-Q and Yapzilla. But there is something mysterious and magical about this particular printer (never explained; why bother?), and the monsters it makes come to life – and start growing enormously as soon as they come in contact with water. Soon enough, mayhem ensues throughout the school, where as usual the adults are oblivious and/or clueless and/or invisible. Eventually, though, Freddie tames the monsters by understanding how they think. To do that, he has to enlist the kids on whom he modeled them – Jordan, Quincy and Nina – in the anti-monster brigade, with the result that the kids, working together in newfound friendship, rescue the town. The monsters are returned to a harmless state, shrunken to adorable size and cooperativeness – and hence are available for the onslaught of insects in the second book. The problem is that the 3D-printed bad bugs are strong, fast and nasty – and growing. And try as they might (and they do try), the kids and the now-nice monsters cannot smash and stomp the baddies quickly enough to save the town this time. Oh no!! What can they do?? “It’s like we are in our own video game, Freddie thought. Except there are no do-overs in this game of monsters. This one is life-and-death.” So everybody dies and – no, just kidding! Of course the kids and monsters emerge triumphant, and in fact there are more monsters here than in the first book, notably including one that the kids vote four-to-two to name Slurp (the losing two votes are for Filburt). Slurp, an “octovarkephant” (figure out what animal bits he contains!), has “huge waggling snouts” that are “like vacuum cleaners,” a big help in sucking up the bad bugs, known as “entomons” because the first two are “parentomons.” There is also an “entomonster” that, err, is really big. Anyway, everything works out just fine, with cupcakes for everyone at the end and the miraculous 3D printer taken out of action but not actually destroyed – after all, who says the second book of Monsters Unleashed needs to be the last one? Certainly not Kloepfer and Oliver – who, by the way, has an absolutely classic-of-its-type illustration in Bugging Out, showing the team members staring directly at the reader, wearing determined get-the-bugs expressions while holding weapons ranging from cans of bug spray to lacrosse sticks and a double-sided oar.

     Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy tends to have much milder adventures with his boy, Buzz, than Freddie Liddle and his friends have. But Fly Guy has some of his experiences in the real world as well as in fiction, specifically in the Fly Guy Presents “field trip” books. The latest of these, Police Officers, follows the pattern of earlier books (Space, Firefighters, Castles, White House and others) in using the drawings of Fly Guy and Buzz along with real-world photos to give Fly Guy’s young fans a simple but accurate introduction to everyday topics. One of the best things about these short books is the way Arnold presents surprising information along with the basics. In Police Officers, for example, he has Buzz mention that Hawaii is the only U.S. state that does not have a statewide police force; and he has Fly Guy get upset about the SWAT team because he thinks they carry “swatterzz,” giving Buzz the chance to explain that the letters stand for Special Weapons And Tactics. The basic narrative of the book is suitably simple: “A law is a rule. …When someone breaks these laws, they have committed a crime.” And some of the photos are particularly helpful for children who may hear adults discussing police activity – for example, one photo shows what a dashboard camera looks like in a police car; another shows the size and shape of a body-worn camera; and there are two pictures of officers riding on horseback: “Mounted officer patrols are useful in crowds since they have a better view than officers on foot.” There is good information on when to call 9-1-1 and what to do if you call it by mistake (“stay on the phone to let the dispatcher know you are okay”). And there are even brief explanations, with photos, of uniformed services that sometimes assist the police, including the National Guard and United States Marshals Service. Fly Guy Presents: Police Officers should take a lot of the mystery, and perhaps some of the fear, out of any encounters that young children might have with the police. And it can open the door to a family discussion of what the police do in the family’s own neighborhood – multiple photos show police-community interactions, and Arnold even has Buzz remark, “A police officer might be your neighbor.”

(++++) SOME ROADS LESS TRAVELED

Carl Friedrich Abel: Symphonies, Op. 1 and Op. 4. Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Paganini at the Piano: Arrangements and Variations by Hambourg, Busoni, Zadora, Friedman and Papandopulo. Goran Filipec, piano. Grand Piano. $16.99.

     Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787) is a footnote in most musical histories, but a somewhat longer footnote than might be expected. He interacted and intersected with genius without possessing a notable degree of it himself. He succeeded Bach as orchestra director in Köthen and was recommended by Bach to Johann Hasse’s Dresden court orchestra, which Abel duly joined and in which he served for 15 years. Nor did Abel’s involvement with the Bach family end there: he and Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian, became friends in the 1760s and jointly established the Bach-Abel concerts in London. These were England’s first-ever subscription concerts and thus a matter of considerable historical importance. Furthermore, a symphony from Abel’s Op. 7 set became quite famous for a time because of a misattribution: Mozart, at the age of eight, had copied the whole thing, apparently to study it, so it was wrongly attributed to him – and still appears in the Mozart catalog as his Symphony No. 3, K. 18. So to the extent that Abel is remembered, it is more as an impresario or the creator of a misattributed work – or as a performer on the viola da gamba, on which he was highly proficient – than as a composer. This is unfortunate, because although Abel’s six sets of six symphonies apiece – 36 such works in all in a total output of more than 40 with the “symphony” label – broke little new musical ground, they have some distinctive elements that make them very much worth reviving. And they show quite clearly where the symphony – at the time equally identified as “overture” – stood stylistically as the Baroque gave way to Classical times. The first two sets of Abel’s symphonies, published in 1761 and 1762 respectively, are now available in exceptionally fine performances on the CPO label. Michael Alexander Willens and the Kölner Akademie are exactly the right match for this music: they perform on period instruments in historically accurate style, and the entire ensemble is essentially an expanded chamber group that includes two oboes, two horns, six violins, a single viola, one cello, one double bass, and harpsichord continuo. The sure-handed and beautifully balanced music that emerges from the group shows both the similarities among Abel’s symphonies and their distinctive elements. All the works in Op. 1 and Op. 4 are in three movements, all in major keys and fast-slow-fast form, and all really do seem more like three-part overtures than like what came to be known as Classical symphonies: none lasts as long as 10 minutes, and several of the works run for only about six. Furthermore, the finales of all the symphonies are formulaic (generally dancelike), and the middle movements usually eschew use of the winds – which are relegated to accompaniment and doubling roles almost throughout. On the other hand, those same middle movements contain many felicitous touches, such as the “drooping” theme in Op. 1, No. 5, and the chromaticism in Op. 1, No. 2. There are also numerous instances showing Abel’s familiarity with the then-new techniques of the Mannheim school: Op. 4, No. 6 contains a very Mannheim-like crescendo, and Op. 4, No. 5 uses quadruple stopping in the violins (which are deftly handled throughout all these works). Like other transitional figures – Hummel comes to mind – Abel suffers from seeming neither here nor there when his works are viewed retrospectively: a bit too Baroque for comparison with Haydn, a touch too Classical to be mentioned in the same breath as Handel. But as this first-rate release shows, Abel’s symphonies are finely honed and filled with pleasantries; and if they are rather inconsequential when compared with the far more developed works of Haydn and, in particular, Mozart, it is worth remembering that Mozart developed as he did in part because of his close study of Abel’s music.

     Niccolò Paganini was born during Abel’s lifetime, in 1782, but the comparatively sedate virtuosity of Abel on the viola da gamba bears as little relationship to Paganini’s violin pyrotechnics as the Baroque/Classical interface does to the Romantic era – which Paganini was instrumental in introducing on the performance side, as Beethoven was in terms of compositions. Paganini was scarcely a great composer, but he was extremely adept in writing works that would showcase his own astonishing talents – and just as Liszt was so influenced by Paganini’s performing style that he modeled his own pianistic prowess on it, so other pianists have been inspired by Paganini to adapt his works to their particular interests and abilities. Goran Filipec explores a few of the works that resulted from this Paganini fascination in an unusual Grand Piano CD whose six works include four world première recordings. These are all 20^th-century compositions, but most partake to at least some degree of the Romantic temperament as well as the Romantic inclination to mold music around the performance characteristics of those presenting it. Busoni’s Introduzione e capriccio (Paganinesco) (1909/1925), the last of four works written by Busoni in an imitative/transformative sequence, draws on Paganini’s 11^th and 15^th Caprices but updates them harmonically. This is one of two works on the CD that have previously been recorded. The other is Studies on a Theme by Paganini (1914) by Ignaz Friedman (1882-1948), a 16-minute set of variations on the famous Caprice No. 24 in which Friedman explores the coloristic possibilities of the well-known theme through his own clearly substantial pianistic abilities. It is a tribute to Filipec’s musicianship that he manages to channel both the Busoni sound and the very different one of Friedman’s work. For that matter, Filipec is equally adept in handling the four première recordings here. One is as extended as Friedman’s: it is Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1902) by Mark Hambourg (1879-1960), which compares fascinatingly with the Friedman work. Both use the same Caprice No. 24 as their basis and vary it about the same number of times (16 for Hambourg, 17 for Friedman). But the sound of the pieces is quite different, with Hambourg’s having the flavor of a grand fantasy while Friedman’s seems more like an extended group of miniatures. Also here are two works by Michael Zadora (1882-1946), Eine Paganini-Caprice of 1911 (based on Caprice No. 4) and Paganini-Caprice No. 19 of 1913 – both of the pieces arranging, or rather rearranging, Paganini’s music in far denser form than would be possible on the violin. The final work on this CD is 3 Capriccios after Paganini (1981) by Boris Papandopulo (1906-1991), and it as different from the others as might be expected from its much later date. The three Caprices used here are Nos. 18, 14 and 5, and Papandopulo treats them all with a kind of neoclassicism that gives them a very different sound from the Romantic and post-Romantic effects presented by the other composers. The five composers represented on this CD are far from the only ones to have been inspired by Paganini to produce works taking the great violinist’s music into other realms; and none of the music played by Filipec can match, for example, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. But this scarcely matters: this disc offers a chance to hear some fascinating reinterpretations of Paganini’s music on an instrument for which he never wrote, but one that is able to produce effects as impressive in their way as Paganini’s own were on the violin.

(+++) SAVORING SOLOISTS

Rachmaninoff: Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42; Liszt: Grandes Études de Paganini; Haydn: Piano Sonata in C, HOB. XVI:48. Jooyoung Kim, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

The Eloquent Saxophone: Music of Jean Françaix, Alexander Tcherepnin, Gene DiNovi, Paule Maurice, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, Paul Bonneau, Charles Koechlin, Felix Arndt, and Leslie Bassett. David Tanner, alto, soprano, tenor, and baritone saxophones; Marc Widner, piano. Navona. $14.99.

The Fifth Row: An Acoustic Tour of Historic Theaters. Stuart Weber, guitar. Ravello. $14.99.

New Music for Flute—Works by Roger Dannenberg, David Stock, Tony Zilincik, Elainie Lillios, Linda Kernohan, Randall Woolf, Roger Zahab, and Judith Shatin. Lindsey Goodman, flute. Navona. $14.99.

     There is an interesting connection, beyond their Romantic style, between two of the works performed by Jooyoung Kim on a new piano-solo CD from MSR Classics. Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli uses a theme that is not by Corelli, although he did use the theme (known as “La Folia”) as the basis of a set of variations of his own – for violin and continuo – in 1700. But just as Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn retains its title even though Haydn did not write the theme, so Rachmaninoff’s work maintains its designation despite the historical inaccuracy. The intriguing “connection” element is that Liszt also used “La Folia” as a theme in one of his works: Rhapsodie espagnole. Beyond this tidbit of history, there is no particular relationship among the works here, except that Kim has clearly selected them to show her pianistic prowess – which two of them, the Rachmaninoff and Liszt, clearly do. Kim makes full use of the capabilities of a modern concert grand in these works, and this is particularly effective in the Rachmaninoff variations, which Kim plays with considerable finesse and a fine sense of contrast from piece to piece. Some of those contrasts are especially effective, such as that between variations 7 (Vivace) and 8 (Adagio misterioso). Kim is also strong in Liszt’s Grandes Études de Paganini, which she performs, as most pianists do, in the somewhat less difficult (but still formidable) 1851 version. These pieces are actually harder to play (either in the 1851 version or the original from 1838) on a modern piano than on one from Liszt’s time: mid-19^th-century pianos had a lighter action and shorter key travel, making some of Liszt’s demands in these pieces simpler, if scarcely easy. Kim handles the material well, and her light touch in the third étude, “La Campanella,” is particularly welcome, as is her handling of the arpeggios in the final étude. The one piece on this disc that does not come across as effectively as it might is the two-movement Haydn sonata, whose delicacy of sound fits poorly with the fullness of the piano here and whose poised first movement, Andante con espressione, seems less congenial for Kim than the more overt emotionalism of Liszt and Rachmaninoff. On the whole, though, Kim shows herself here to be an impressive performer and an effective interpreter of the Romantics.

     Solo-piano CDs are quite common, solo-saxophone ones much less so. The new Navona release featuring David Tanner – actually a re-release of a recording from 1988 – is both a solo offering and a multi-saxophone one, with Tanner, thanks to the magic of multi-tracking, playing four separate saxophones in two of the works recorded here. Although Kim’s piano recording is one to which listeners who especially like the music may well turn to hear her performances, it is more likely that fans of Tanner and/or saxophones in general will be interested in this CD than that they will select it because of the specific pieces Tanner plays. That is true even though the work opens with a real gem, Serenade comique by Jean Françaix, an under-appreciated composer whose music shows real wit and style. This is a two-and-a-half-minute quartet that bounces along so stylishly that one wishes it would go on considerably longer. The other quartet here, La Blues by Gene DiNovi, is at the opposite end of the expressive spectrum, being melancholy, reserved and crepuscular. The other works here showcase effects from the traditionally classical (in Sonatine Sportive by Tcherepnin, another underrated composer, and in Debussy’s Syrinx, Schumann’s Romance No. 1, and Koechlin’s Etude No. 8) to the jazzy and pop-influenced. Tanner is at home with pretty much every style of which the saxophone is capable, and he receives very able backup from Marc Widner in the saxophone-and-piano works. It would be overstating things to call any of the music here especially profound, and even the longest work, Maurice’s impressionistic Tableaux de Provence, lasts less than a quarter of an hour – with Maurice getting there via five very short movements. But every piece gives Tanner a chance to show the moods and colors of which the saxophone is capable. In addition to the pieces already mentioned, the CD includes Arndt’s Nola, Bassett’s four-movement Music for Alto Saxophone and Piano, and Bonneau’s Caprice en Forme de Valse, which is a real charmer for saxophone solo. Tanner’s saxophone playing is exuberant and always sure-handed, and if none of the works heard here is highly significant in itself, all of them give Tanner a chance to display not only his own multifaceted performance capabilities but also those of the instrument itself.

     Like Tanner on saxophone, Stuart Weber on guitar offers a broad stylistic mixture of material and a playing technique that shows familiarity not only with classical guitar style but also with folk and pop performance. The title of Weber’s new Ravello CD, The Fifth Row: An Acoustic Tour of Historic Theaters, shows to how great an extent the specific music heard here is not the main interest. What Weber offers are 11 compositions, of various types, recorded in historic American theaters – thereby intending to give listeners a sense of what it would sound like if they were sitting in the fifth row of each theater during a guitar performance. This rather curious concept is all that really unites the various pieces here, beyond the fact that all are short: the whole disc runs only 37 minutes. Certainly the CD is a treat for guitarists and for listeners interested in just how varied the sound of an acoustic guitar can be. The classical composers heard here include Telemann (Bourée alla Polacca), Dvořák (Humoreske), 18^th-century lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss (Passacaille), and Bartók (Evening in the Country). Weber also performs Randy Newman’s Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father and Samuel A. Ward’s America the Beautiful. And he includes five of his own works: Sacajawea, Spanish Creek, Jefferson Waltz, Toccata—Darkness, and Walk Away. The oldest music here, by Telemann and Weiss, offers a particularly strong contrast with the remainder of the material, moving in stately fashion through prescribed forms in a way that is very different from the sometimes unfocused emotionalism of Weber’s expressive pieces, among which the quiet beauty of Jefferson Waltz stands out. For those genuinely interested in the venues where these pieces were recorded, the CD helpfully provides that information: five works were recorded in Montana theaters, two in Colorado, two in Idaho, and one each in Utah and Wyoming. There are indeed sonic differences among the pieces, but it is difficult to know to what extent that results from the music itself rather than from the aural qualities of the venues where the recordings were made. Weber plays everything quite well, in any case, and listeners interested in this eclectic collection of material will find the disc quite satisfying.

     Somewhat similarly, the music on a Navona CD focused on flautist Lindsey Goodman – in this case, eight contemporary compositions – is not the disc’s primary attraction: Goodman’s playing is (along with her voice in two pieces). But this is a more rarefied disc than Weber’s, because all the music goes out of its way to show just how “modern” (or post-modern) it is. This means that five pieces include electronics or computer-generated sounds: Separation Logic for flute and live computer processing (2013) by Roger Dannenberg (born 1955); I Asked You for solo flute and fixed media (2016) by Tony Zilincik (born 1967); Sleep’s Undulating Tide for flute in C and live, interactive electroacoustics (2016) by Elainie Lillios (born 1968); The Line of Purples for flute and pre-recorded electronics (2015) by Randall Woolf (born 1959); and For the Fallen for amplified flute and electronics (2017) by Judith Shaitin (born 1949). The remaining works here are A Wedding Prayer for two flutes (2004) by David Stock (1939-2015), Demon/Daemon for solo flute (2016) by Linda Kernohan (born 1970), and the all-small-caps-titled suspicion of nakedness for flute (2012) by Roger Zahab (born 1957). The titles’ attempts at profundity, or at least meaningfulness, are entirely in line with the preferences of many contemporary composers, and the use of various electronic and computerized “enhancements” of the flute’s sound – including amplification of the instrument itself – make the disc’s provenance abundantly clear. Thus, this is not a CD for listeners enamored of the traditional sound of the flute or of skillful performance on the instrument. It is only for people who wish to hear the flute in this particular context, whose interest is in 21^st-century compositions that happen to employ the flute as part of their sonic texture, altering its sound and the form of its participation in the material as each composer wishes. All is carefully planned here. The genuinely unpleasant sound at the start of Separation Logic is entirely intentional, as is the percussive ostinato that opens I Asked You – and as are the words that pop out from within the musical line. So are the loud breaths, some sounding almost like gasping, in Demon/Daemon, and the dirgelike percussive background of For the Fallen. Goodman appears thoroughly satisfied to be performing this material, and certainly extracts from her instrument a very wide variety of sounds, some of which may come as a surprise to listeners not already familiar with the extent to which familiar instruments can be made to sound like something outside their inherent nature. So this is not a recording for listeners who want a chance simply to hear adept flute playing: context is everything here, and the CD is only for those attracted to this type of music and wanting to listen to the ways in which a flute can fit into it.

(+++) FAMILY MATTERS

A Most Unusual Day. By Sydra Mallery. Illustrations by E.B. Goodale. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.99.

We Love Our Mom! / We Love Our Dad! By Jan & Mike Berenstain. HarperFestival. $4.99.

     Gentle and sweet, Sydra Mallery’s A Most Unusual Day is all about a series of mishaps and unusual elements of a little girl’s day – and just what causes everything to be somewhat topsy-turvy. It is a lovely book for families adopting or considering adopting children, for that is what its underlying topic is. Mallery, herself an adoptive parent, finds a way to capture the excitement, uncertainty and confusion that a girl in the book’s target age range (4-8) might well feel on the day that her new baby sister is supposed to arrive. From where? That is never stated; indeed, there is nothing here about the adoption process and nothing about the adoptive parents except their appearance at the end – in a charming scene in which it turns out that they are just as befuddled on this day as is Caroline, the girl at the center of the book. Mallery repeatedly contrasts what Caroline usually does, at home and at school, with what she does on this particular, special, exciting, rather unnerving day – from forgetting to wear socks and take her lunch from home, to accidentally knocking out another girl’s loose tooth (the girl is happy to have it gone), to making big messes when she tries to clean up small ones. Caroline’s preoccupation, excitement and tinge of nervousness all come through both in Mallery’s text and in E.B. Goodale’s illustrations, especially so when, after school, Caroline’s usually “calm and collected” parents are anything but that when they bring Caroline her new baby sister. The book’s audience is self-limited – families not involved in adoptions will find little to captivate them here on an emotional level, and even if they enjoy the book at arm’s length, they will not get its full flavor. A Most Unusual Day is about a certain specific kind of unusual day, one that Mallery knows from her own life and brings heartwarmingly to the fore in portraying a far-from-ordinary day for the imaginary Caroline.

     The experiences of families of all sorts are reflected in a new, combined edition of two Berenstain Bears books: We Love Our Mom! (originally published in 2012) and We Love Our Dad! (originally from 2013). The combined edition invites kids to read one book, then flip it over and read the other, as the “back” cover becomes the front of the additional book. This is fun, and makes the combined volume suitable for both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – or, really, for pretty much anytime. Of course, it is suitable only for fans of the Berenstain Bears and of the rather overly sweet way their stories are inevitably told. For instance, at the start of the Mom book, “everything was fresh and fragrant” and the various animals are doing Berenstain-ish things: for instance, “Mama Frog was taking a jar full of tadpoles out for a stroll,” the jar being placed on a very small wagon-like stroller that the frog, walking on its hind legs, is pushing. The book includes plenty of examples of the way “Mama Bear took care of her cubs,” and the cubs’ determination to do something special for Mama Bear leads to creation of a scrapbook filled with family pictures that, of course, result in “a tear in Mama’s eye” and a trip out for brunch. In the Dad book, the cubs consider making Papa Bear his own scrapbook, but Mama Bear suggests “it would be a nice gift if you cubs did his jobs for him on Father’s Day and let him relax.” So the cubs make a series of we-will-do-your-chores gift certificates and give them to their dad – but when they actually try to do everything, they find out that chores are harder than they look, and Papa Bear has to pitch in and help out after all. Which he does, of course, with alacrity and enjoyment. The Berenstain Bears books in general, and these two in particular, are a bit too good to be true, a bit too idealized for many families to be able to accept them at face value. But parents and kids who enjoy the characters and are looking for tie-ins to the days on which moms and dads are supposed to get some extra attention from the family will certainly not be disappointed in this two-for-one paperback volume.

(+++) GHOST IN THE MACHINE

WhatsHisFace. By Gordon Korman. Scholastic. $16.99.

     The always-reliable Gordon Korman serves up another heaping helping of standard middle-school angst with to-be-expected Korman humor, all in the service of a plot that is offbeat on the surface but really quite formulaic underneath, in WhatsHisFace. Korman is an expert at writing for middle-schoolers, always finding ways to complicate his protagonists’ lives (school and social), then over-complicate their lives, then eventually make everything come out just fine, so everybody is happy and the whole cast of characters (except, perhaps, some overbearing adult) is in better shape than before.

     The formula creaks a bit in WhatsHisFace, though, because Korman goes rather too far into the fantastical. The title character’s actual name is Cooper Vega, but because his father is in the military and has to move every six months (a problem: that is not how military assignments work, although preteen readers are unlikely to know that), Cooper is constantly starting new schools in new towns where nobody knows his name or pays attention to him.

     Well, they are going to pay attention to him in this town, for sure. It is named Stratford, because it houses a Shakespeare collection owned by a billionaire named Somerset Wolfson, who takes the overbearing-adult role here. Korman’s idea is that Cooper’s parents, to try to help him feel better about the constant moves, get him a super-special new smartphone that turns out to be, umm, haunted. And the ghost in the phone belongs to one Roderick Northrop, who died in 1596 and who wrote a play called Barnabas and Ursula on which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was based. Shakespeare, you see, stole the idea from Roddy, who had just died of the plague, and now Roddy is back, in Cooper’s phone, learning about 21^st-century life (including both the hip and hop of hip-hop) and generally complicating things. Oh, and Mr. Wolfson has the play that Roddy wrote, but he is keeping it secret because revealing its existence would somehow undermine the value of all the Shakespeare memorabilia that Mr. Wolfson has been painstakingly collecting for many years (this makes absolutely not a lick of sense, but, again, preteens will likely have no idea how ridiculous the whole thing is).

     So somehow Cooper, called “Coopervega” by his friendly neighborhood ghost, has to negotiate the whole theft-of-ideas thing and also handle the everyday difficulties of being a seventh-grader. That means dealing with jock/bully Brock, who of course is cast as Romeo when the school decides to put on a play and chooses – what else? – Romeo and Juliet. And of course Cooper has a preteen-style crush on Jolie, the girl who will be playing Juliet opposite Brock. With a bit of unwanted help from Roddy, Brock is injured – just enough so he cannot play Romeo – and Cooper, who has been channeling Roddy just enough to be able to handle Shakespeare’s language with aplomb, takes over. And this eventually gives Cooper a way to make things right for long-dead Roddy, to the frustration of Mr. Wolfson; and Cooper even gets Jolie as a real-life girlfriend, at least until the family presumably has to move again.

     In reality, Shakespeare did borrow much of Romeo and Juliet from earlier material, as playwrights often did in Elizabethan times. Whether or not Korman knows that is irrelevant – but adults (or young readers who get interested in the topic) will likely decide that Korman is playing a little too fast and loose with both facts and fancy. For instance, take the supposed date of Roddy’s death. Korman makes a point of saying that Roddy (the “real” author of what became Romeo and Juliet) died in 1596, presumably because Korman did enough research to know that the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s play dates to 1597. However, it is known that the playwright was working on this drama by 1594, and possibly as early as 1591. Oops. But of course Korman does not have to adhere to any sort of scholarship or truth in creating WhatsHisFace, and neither truth nor scholarship is his point in the book. It is simply another moderately pleasing, nicely paced middle-school romp that will please Korman’s many fans for a short time – and if it is not particularly memorable or likely to receive multiple readings, that is fine, since Korman will undoubtedly have another middle-school novel out soon enough. There is not the ghost of a chance that this will be his last foray into seventh-grade life.