(++++) THE THEN AND THE NOW

Ozy and Millie. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Ozy and Millie: Perfectly Normal. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

Big Nate: In Your Face! By Lincoln Peirce. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

     Although currently known for her long-running Phoebe and Her Unicorn comics, Dana Simpson had a previous strip, also long-running, that contained many of the same elements of homespun, gentle, offbeat, appropriate-for-many-ages amusement: Ozy and Millie, which ran from 1998 to 2008. Started in black-and-white on the Internet (where else?), Ozy and Millie eventually made it into book form in several specialty collections, and some of the strips are now showing up – in color, no less – in more-mainstream form. And that is a good thing, because “mainstream” is where they belong. Although the totality of Ozy and Millie reflected Simpson’s political views and contained some mild (and quickly outdated) social commentary, many of the strips have a timeless quality that deserves to be seen and enjoyed (and laughed at) by a wider audience. Two Andrews McMeel collections of the strip are most welcome for making that possible. The title characters are fifth-grade foxes, or rather human fifth-graders drawn as foxes; and, not surprisingly, they have opposite personalities that help make them best friends. Their full names contain hints of Simpson’s style of humor in the strip: Ozymandias J. Llewellyn and Millicent Mehitabel Mudd. The grandiosity and referential nature of the names – his to Shelley’s poem Ozymandias (which Ozy actually quotes in one panel) and hers perhaps to the Don Marquis cat Mehitabel, friend of cockroach typist Archie – contrast with the characters’ mundane concerns to very amusing effect. And Simpson hones that contrast to a fine edge (without, to continue the metaphor, ever becoming really cutting: there is nothing deeply sarcastic in Ozy and Millie). Millie lives with her mom, who was obviously much like her daughter at the same age and therefore usually knows exactly how to handle her, as when Millie abruptly asks for $700 and her mom says “sure, here you go,” handing her the money – leaving Millie completely stunned and her mom saying, “I always wanted to try that.” In another example, Millie says “life is fair” so her mother can no longer tell her, “no one ever said life is fair” – so her mom switches to, “No one credible ever said life is fair.” As for Ozy, he lives with his stepdad, who happens to be a dragon because – well, just because, which is also the reason Ozy almost always wears a top hat. Most of the enjoyment of the strip comes not from the central characters’ interactions with their parents or even with other, minor characters (such as the prototypical “mean girl” and the usual school bully). The fun comes from the way Ozy and Millie play off each other, each knowing the other’s foibles and weak spots and finding them endearing, amusing, or both. So when Millie worries, “Is there something wrong with me?” Ozy says, “Yes. That’s why we’re friends.” When Millie claims to be a great artist because nobody understands her work, Ozy observes that she has drawn “‘the blob’ eating a pecan pie,” so Millie says, “Dang it, people do understand my work,” and Ozy says, “If it helps any, we don’t understand much else about you.” Ozy tends to be the straight and somewhat straitlaced character, Millie the more out-of-control and rebellious one, but Simpson does such a good job of refining and polishing their personalities that their interactions seem to flow from genuineness rather than authorial manipulation. Thus, it makes perfect sense for Millie to decide she will find and vanquish evil people; then to decide that Ozy is evil because he plays mind games with her; then for Ozy to ask, if she vanquishes him, “Who are you going to get to play ‘Thoreau vs. Emerson Jello Death Match’ with you?” And to top that line, Simpson has Millie say, “I must vanquish evil that isn’t personally convenient!” The fact that she says this while wearing overalls – her usual costume – somehow makes the whole thing more piquant. And funnier. Ozy and Millie is no longer around (it ended, appropriately, with Ozy’s dad marrying Millie’s mom), but the chance to dip into its not-quite-Phoebe brand of sense and nonsense is very much welcome.

     While some cartoonists, such as Simpson, move on from one kind of strip to another, others, such as Lincoln Peirce, spend their time (and many years) refining and polishing the same basic idea. Peirce has drawn Big Nate for more than a quarter of a century, and his focus on the perennial sixth-grader (a touch older than Simpson’s Ozy and Millie) has only gotten sharper over time – although it remains odd that Nate goes through summer vacation again and again and always re-starts sixth grade afterwards. (It does not pay to think too much about time loops in comic strips.) The well-oiled machine of Nate’s world moves along very smoothly in the latest collection of the strip, Big Nate: In Your Face! The theme-and-variations form comes to mind here and is handled very adeptly by Peirce. For instance, Nate’s longtime student nemesis, super-smart Gina, is, as usual, a foil for Nate’s much more scattered intelligence (and much bigger mischievous streak). Here, though, a strip sequence has Nate’s friends pointing out all the ways in which Nate and Gina are similar. Even one of the teachers notices the thematic similarity of stories written by Nate and Gina and comments on it. That teacher is not, if course, Mrs. Godfrey, who is Nate’s teacher nemesis and who shows up again and again in that role, even intruding into an imaginary landscape that Nate is thinking up for art class (Nate imagines her as blue-skinned, polka-dotted, and carrying a huge pile of homework for Nate to do). The main focus in this collection, as in others and in the strip as a whole, is on Nate and friends Francis and Teddy, but Peirce – who does develop other characters over time, widening the scope of Big Nate while retaining its focus – also uses super-adorable Chad more often here. Nate recruits Chad to do school-newspaper interviews, for example, because teachers know Nate will twist their words if they speak to him. Nate shows Chad just how likable he is by asking a girl what she weighs – she of course shouts to Nate that it is none of his business. Then Nate has Chad ask her, and she immediately replies, “112. You’re adorable.” Peirce also focuses one sequence on Teddy’s decision to break up with his girlfriend, Paige – with Nate refusing to handle the breakup for him and Teddy eventually, after quite a few convoluted thoughts, having the courage to tell Paige they should not be a couple anymore. Paige, it turns out, is fine with that (“you’re a nice guy, but it’s not like you’re my dream guy”) – leaving Teddy thoroughly nonplussed. In addition to expanding on characters’ personalities and adventures, Peirce revisits some of his favorite themes here, as usual. There are the screamingly loud demands of Coach John, Nate’s enjoyment of the Klassik Komix store (where he becomes an intern), and Francis’ love of books of trivia – to the annoyance of both Nate and Teddy. What Peirce has done so well for so long is to mix the more-or-less-expected elements (the figure-skating obsession of Nate’s sister, the fecklessness of their dad, the oddities of neighbor dog Spitsy) with more-or-less-unexpected ones (Nate’s grandfather taking painting lessons from a TV-painting show whose host is long dead, Nate’s “secret Santa” problem involving a gift of lug nuts). Peirce has the many variations of Nate’s universe down to a science, but the way he combines and juggles them is an art – one that shows no sign of letting up anytime soon.

(++++) A SPECIAL AND SPECIALIZED SEARCH

The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences, 15^th Edition. By Marybeth Kravets and Imy F. Wax. Princeton Review/PenguinRandomHouse. $31.99.

     At a time when one must be super-super-super careful not to offend the Twitterverse and become a victim of cancel culture, the right form of addressing the inconvenient issues of everyday life is an absolute necessity. Marybeth Kravets and Imy F. Wax, and the folks at Princeton Review, are ahead of the game here: they do not create guides for students with learning difficulties or special needs or, heaven forbid, learning problems. Their K&W Guide has been and continues to be for students with learning differences. This is all a bit of feel-good disingenuousness, of course, since “differences” encompasses such a wide range of meanings. Would someone who reads four times as quickly as the average reader want this book? How about someone who has gone through multiple full-year courses in, say, two months each? Or has been writing code and selling apps since the age of nine? Certainly all those people have “learning differences,” but they are not the audience for The K&W Guide. It is one of those “you know who you are” situations.

     The book’s contents page is, thankfully, not afraid to address the actual families for which Kravets and Wax are writing. It points readers to brief but accurate and well-explained general guidelines for documentation of “a Learning Disability,” “Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),” and “Autism Spectrum Disorder,” and it is families dealing with those intransigent, difficult and emotionally/physically/financially draining conditions for which The K&W Guide has always been useful, and still is.

     The book runs to nearly 750 oversized pages, but families would do well to start at the back, with the authors’ exceptionally useful four-page overview of “Alternative Post-Secondary Options.” This is an alphabetical list of some programs that families may wish to consider outside standard college campuses and curricula – and an excellent list it is. Parents will surely have heard of many of the schools in the main section of the book, even if they need The K&W Guide to know about the specific offerings those colleges have for students with “learning differences.” But families are much less likely to know about, say, “Casa de Amma” in Capistrano, California, a “lifelong residential community for young adults who function independently but require assistance and structure in daily living,” or “Gersh College Experience at Daemen College” in Melville, New York, a “post-secondary, undergraduate program for students with neurobiological disorders like Asperger’s ADHD, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, Anxiety or Depression, Autism Spectrum, and Nonverbal Learning disorders.” A phone call to any of these back-of-the-book programs – the authors give phone numbers for all of them – could be a literally life-changing experience for students and parents alike.

     College itself, though, can be and often is a life-changing experience, and the bulk of The K&W Guide is intended to provide information on special programs and services for students with “learning differences” within traditional colleges. The book’s basic layout resembles that of other Princeton Review guides, with colleges given two pages apiece within which data are offered on costs, the student body, admissions requirements, campus life, and more. What The K&W Guide does differently from the other guides, though, is to devote a considerable amount of the available space to “Programs/Services for Students with Learning Difficulties” and a very useful box with simple yes-or-no information on “Accommodations” (nothing to do with residence halls: this listing details what aids are allowed in exams, what sorts of assistive technology are available, whether graduation requirements can be modified as needed, and so on). In addition, a simple, straightforward portion of the layout is used to present “Admissions Info for Students with Learning Differences” at each school, detailing academic requirements and documentation needed and providing contact information for each college so families can get details.

     Small but useful maps show the location of every school in the book – helpful for families concerned about proximity to home for the student and ease of access should parents need to get to campus. And the whole book is arranged alphabetically by state, not by college name, making it easy for parents to focus on individual states or specific regions of the U.S. where they want to consider a college. There is also an alphabetical index for families that do want to look up schools by name.

     The colleges included in The K&W Guide vary from those focused on students with “learning differences” to those with other focuses but with accommodative programs of one sort or another. In the former category, for example, is Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida, which “was founded to award bachelor degrees to students with learning disabilities, ADHD and other differences.” In the latter category are far more schools, some of them top-notch by any criteria. Boston College and Boston University, for example, both appear in the Massachusetts section of the book, as do Stanford University in the California section, University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, William and Mary in Virginia, and many more top names. Indeed, a look at the alphabetical index can be a good idea before exploring the book’s geographical layout, if only to show families that students with “learning differences” need not be relegated to second-tier schools but have many first-rate opportunities available to them that come with the accommodative policies they need.

     That said, it is important to note that every family’s perception of accommodations needed will be different, and every school makes somewhat different allowances for “learning differences” and therefore offers a somewhat different experience from the ones that others provide. The K&W Guide is therefore an important step in the decision-making process for families, but is scarcely a be-all and end-all: it is not designed to pinpoint the college or alternative program that will be right for any individual student. But it will be a great help to families in limiting the search for the best program to attend – and will provide tremendous reassurance to students and parents alike that there are plenty of choices, plenty of opportunities, in every geographical area of the country, no matter how an individual’s “learning differences” may be defined. That reassurance alone makes The K&W Guide an exceptionally valuable resource.

(++++) AN EXEMPLARY MATCH

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Grand Sonate “Les Quatre Âges de la vie,” Op. 33; Trois Morceaux dans le genre pathétique, Op. 15. Mark Viner, piano. Piano Classics. $18.99.

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Symphonie pour piano seul, Op. 39, Nos. 4-7; Salut, cendre du pauvre! Paraphrase, Op. 45; Super flumina Babylonis—Paraphrase du psaumme 137, Op. 52; Trois Marches quasi da cavalleria, Op. 37; Alleluia, Op. 25; Marche funèbre, Op. 26; Marche triomphale, Op. 27. Mark Viner, piano. Piano Classics. $18.99.

     When the impossibly complex music of Alkan meets the impossibly fluent pianism of Mark Viner, the result is, quite possibly, one of the great recorded piano cycles of our time. Viner is in the process of assembling all the piano music of Alkan, a feat that no one has even attempted before and that now runs to four CDs out of a projected total of 17 (more or less). Alkan, ever since Raymond Lewenthal introduced his music to a new generation of performers and listeners some 50 years ago, has become something of a Mount Everest for pianists, a monumental edifice that must be scaled because it is there – or, more accurately, because modern pianists now know it is there. Alkan’s works are so intense and often so strange that they require formidable technical skills combined with an interpretative worldview that can accept the outré as merely an element of a piece’s effects.

     Viner “gets” this, and it shows in all his performances. It shows in his writing, too: he provides extensive notes for each Piano Classics CD in the Alkan series, and within them he translates various commentaries and remarks by Alkan himself and by critics of Alkan’s time and musicians such as Liszt. The result is that each disc in this series is a multifaceted experience combining interpretative excellence, academic discussion, and a high level of understanding of the significance of Alkan’s piano music as well as the extent of its aural impact.

     The third and fourth volumes both combine a major work of substantial importance with additional material of somewhat lesser interest and/or quality. The approach is interesting, allowing listeners to experience some of Alkan’s greatest piano music while also hearing the undeniable quality and unusual sonorities and approaches to be found even in some of his less-towering works. Volume 3 features the truly monumental Grand Sonate “Les Quatre Âges de la vie,” which deserves to be called bizarre (an adjective applicable to a great deal of Alkan’s music, usually as a compliment). A representation of human life at the ages of 20, 30, 40 and 50, the sonata starts at a headlong pace that seems (like much of Alkan’s music) impossible for a pianist to sustain, and then slows down, movement by movement, ending with an “extremely slow” finale that, without knowledge of the work’s underlying program, comes across as a distinct letdown. The sonata is unified more by programmatic content than by musical ideas, and as a result, the second movement, marked Quasi-Faust, can be and often is played as a standalone piece – in which guise it clearly displays Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles themes and intermingles them intriguingly. In context, though, the movement is even better, appearing between a frantic and highly scattered opening movement and a “happy family” third movement that is almost (but not quite) disarming in its (relative) simplicity. Viner, an exceptionally thoughtful pianist, not only surmounts the immense technical difficulties of the sonata but also gives it as much cohesiveness as possible – which is to say, musically, not very much, but enough to make the 37-minute totality a strong sonic experience as well as an emotionally trenchant one. The sonata is coupled with the third of the four sets of “genre pieces” that Alkan wrote as Opp. 12, 13, 15 and 16 (there is no Alkan Op. 14). Within the pathétique genre, these three works are character pieces, bearing the evocative titles Aime-moi, Le vent and Morte. They are not nearly as successful in their expressiveness as are the movements of the sonata, yet they are filled with exceptional pianistic effects that are left to the interpreting pianist to figure out: they have no expression marks, a highly unusual situation. The first piece has a kind of beseeching quality to it; the second uses effective tone painting to contrast wind sounds (which Alkan figured out how to evoke from a percussion instrument) with a kind of dirge; and the third, which opens with the Dies irae, is jagged and intermittently intense. The pieces have many effective moments but, as a totality, seem as if they are trying a bit too hard to be demonstratably programmatic. Yet here as in the sonata, Viner uses his mastery of the technical demands of the music to maximize its communicative potential – to excellent effect.

     The fourth CD in the Alkan series features one of the largest and most complex works among the many large and complex ones that Alkan wrote: the Symphonie pour piano seul, consisting of four consecutive pieces from the set of 12 minor-key ones that Alkan produced as his Op. 39. This work has been recorded by many pianists over the years, including Lewenthal in his pioneering 1965 performance, but every performer seems to find something different in the music and to create new ways of expressing its many technical and emotional complexities. Viner ensures that the work has genuine symphonic proportions, bringing out its moods and its structural elements while never losing sight of its emotional intensity. The passion of the first movement, the sorrow of the second, the strangely haunted third, and the headlong and sparkling finale add up, in and under Viner’s hands, to a work of immense power and true symphonic proportions. Viner’s attentiveness to rhythmic detail and contrasts of speed is particularly stirring: he seems to take all of Alkan’s nearly insurmountable complexities as mere building blocks of some truly amazing communicative effects – a most impressive achievement. The other works on this CD are interesting in their own ways, although none is as grand (or grandiose) as the Symphonie. Two pieces here receive their first recordings: the second and third of the Trois Marches quasi da cavalleria. The first is the most interesting of this three-march set, which probably explains the neglect of the others, but Viner is so savvy an Alkan interpreter that he successfully negotiates the rather mundane second march and the wry and not-very-march-like third. The other two marches on the disc are larger than any of the Op. 37 ones, with the Marche funèbre being distinctly eerier and the Marche triomphale rather overdone in its determined positivity and swagger. As for the non-march short pieces on this disc, the very short Alleluia is filled with religious fervor and optimism; the comparatively well-known Super flumina Babylonis closely tracks the verses of Psalm 137, from deep mourning to a determination to do extreme violence to the captors of the exiles from Jerusalem; and the less-known Salut, cendre du pauvre! Paraphrase (whose title translates as “Hail, ashes of the poor!”) is a suitably melancholic elegy with overtones of respect for the ideals of the French Revolution. What Viner does remarkably well in all these works, the lesser as well as the greater, is to think through the emotional impact that Alkan was seeking and the means he used to try to obtain it – then utilizing those means and his own substantial technical prowess to delve into Alkan’s worldview as expressed in every one of these pieces, producing performances of rare quality and substantial insight. Alkan could scarcely have a better champion of his complete piano music than Viner, who shows every sign of continuing this series of discs at the same very high level as the first four.

(+++) IN THE CHAMBER, RECENTLY

Music for Clarinet and Strings by Cyril Scott, Nicola LeFanu, Howard Skempton, Tony Coe, Rebecca Clarke, and Sadie Harrison. Ian Mitchell, clarinet and conducting Gemini. Métier. $18.99.

Moto Eterno: Music by Matthew Hetz, Pierre Schroeder, Timothy Kramer, John Hawkes, David T. Bridges, John G. Bilotta, Christian Paterniti, Diane Jones, Katherine Price, and Michael Cohen. Trio Casals (Alexandr Kislitsyn, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano). Navona. $14.99.

     Chamber music, the contemporary sort and that of the fairly recent past, often manages to maintain a strong connection with earlier small-ensemble music while exploring some new areas. And many chamber works from the mid-20^th-century time period to the present remain little known – giving performers and listeners alike the chance to explore some unfamiliar territory. Both as clarinet soloist and as leader of the Gemini chamber ensemble, Ian Mitchell does a fine job of introducing audiences to seven little-known chamber works, by six composers, on a new Métier CD. The Clarinet Quintet by Cyril Scott (1879-1970) is a single-movement work of considerable intensity and rich post-Romantic sound. The four Songs without Words by Nicola LeFanu (born 1947) take the solo clarinet through a wide range of sounds and emotions, sometimes with accompaniment. There is only a modicum of the songful in these pieces, although there is quiet gloom in the last and longest piece, In Memoriam (Remembrance). Next on the CD is Lullaby by Howard Skempton (born 1947), and it is a warm and gently rocking piece, if not as relaxing as its title implies. Dream Odyssey by Tony Coe (born 1934) consists of three short pieces (each less than two minutes long) that are gently evocative of differing dreamscapes (Marsh Lanterns, The Pathless Wood and Bird of Fortune). In contrast, Prelude, Allegro & Pastorale by Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) is non-programmatic music, although it too produces feelings of disparate moods – first quiet and soulful, then bouncy and dissonant, and finally expansive and warm. Fire in Song by Sadie Harrison (born 1965) returns to the realm of deliberate tone-painting in movements called The World’s Lament, Bandicoot and the Hollow Log, Quail and the Burning Twig, Honey Bees and the Paperbark Swamp, Honey Bees and the Tall Grass, Bäru the Saltwater Crocodile and the Ancient Fire, and Lament for the Whole World. Knowledge of the underlying folk tales would certainly help explain the movements’ meanings and the introduction of percussive sounds into them – but even without such knowledge, it is interesting to hear the ways in which Harrison varies the harmonies and rhythms of the pieces to portray a variety of small but telling scenes, most lasting less than two minutes. The longest, crocodile-and-fire piece includes spoken narrative but is no more illustrative as a result. The disc concludes with another seven-short-movements work, the second offering by Skempton: Gemini Dances. Here most pieces actually are danceable (or marchable in the case of the central Alla marcia), and the overall impression of gentle give-and-take among instruments shows considerable sensitivity to the underlying concept of chamber music. Nothing on the disc stands out as an exceptional discovery or rediscovery, but most of the pieces are pleasurable, and all are very well performed by soloist and ensemble alike.

     The 10 chamber works by 10 contemporary composers on a Navona CD with the title of Moto Eterno have little in common except some scoring elements. John Hawkes’ Bright Hair, Falling, David T. Bridges’ Three Caprices, John G. Bilotta’s Beauty from Forgetfulness, Diane Jones’ Crooked Lake, Katherine Price’s Heliotrope, and Michael Cohen’s Monday Morning are for piano trio. Matthew Hetz’s Sarajevo Cellist, Pierre Schroeder’s Glimmer, and Christian Paterniti’s Notturno are for cello-and-piano duo. And Timothy Kramer’s Vanishing Perspectives is for cello solo. The intent of the works varies, as does their level of interest. For example, the Hetz piece is the first movement of a two-movement sonata based on the true story of a cellist playing for the wounded and dead during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to1996 – but without the second, placating movement, it presents terror and fear without balance. Kramer’s work uses an amplified cello. The Hawkes piece features loud, intense note clusters in the piano’s lowest range. The Bridges and Cohen works are on the lighter side, Three Caprices offering very short and somewhat dancelike material while Monday Morning is frenetic and intense except in a calmer central section. As often happens in anthologies, the lack of connection among the pieces means it is unlikely that listeners will find this entire CD palatable, much less strongly attractive; but because the works are so different, anyone interested in contemporary music for piano trio (or portions of a piano trio) will likely enjoy at least  some of the material. Thus, Paterniti’s work is somewhat stronger in intensity than nocturnes usually are, but may appeal to listeners who would find Jones’ slow, gentle and quiet piece a touch too tame. Certainly the disc is another indication, if another one was needed, that today’s composers continue to explore chamber music thoughtfully, and generally with a good deal of skill.