(++++) OLD-STYLE DAILY FUN

Calendars (page-a-day for 2022): Medical Cartoon-a-Day; Teacher Cartoon-a-Day. Andrews McMeel. $15.99 each.

     We live, it seems, in a singularly humorless age. Humor requires incongruity, weird juxtapositions, exaggeration, deviation from a shared sense of normality. But in the current ugly, constricted, straitjacketed “woke” world, where hordes of the ignorant and vicious hover in anticipation of destroying any vestige of amusement that might conceivably offend someone or something (or might have done so many decades in the past), it is distinctly difficult to offer anything that might be funny to a mass audience – because a tiny minority, emboldened by the Internet and delighted with societal schisms, stands ready to shred not only the (allegedly) amusing material but also the (allegedly) well-meaning creators of it.

     One way to cope with a life of drab, ugly, permanent seriousness and unending outrage is to perk things up with distinctly old-fashioned  cartoons that, while scarcely groundbreaking (and in fact basically “retro” in both style and substance), can at least bring a smile to get the daily drudgery started. Two calendars featuring single-panel drawings by Jonny Hawkins fit this particular bill very well. Focusing on two specific areas of life, they use distinctly old-fashioned art of a type that used to be common in magazines (when magazines were common!) and very mild punchlines that are sometimes punny, sometimes wry, often simply silly, and not likely at risk of offending the ever-present guardians of enforced unamusing conformity.

     Medical Cartoon-a-Day and Teacher Cartoon-a-Day have been around for years, the first labeled “a daily dose of humor” and the second “a daily lesson in humor.” The covers of the boxes in which the 2022 versions are packaged neatly encapsulate all the pages inside – one page per weekday and one for each weekend. The Medical calendar has a doctor (the initials “MD” appear on a wall plaque) telling a bird that is sitting on an exam table that it has “gull stones.” The Teacher offering shows an old-style, book-filled school library (the word “Library” is on the open door) in which an obviously befuddled student is sitting, surrounded by papers, as the librarian asks, “Who keeps putting the math books in the horror section?” It is highly unlikely that anyone could possibly take offense at the Medical cartoon, although there is probably someone out there ready to object, vociferously and probably profanely, to the Teacher cartoon for “denigrating” an all-important STEM subject. Luckily, unless you have one such inquisitor observing each daily page turn of the calendar, you can probably enjoy Hawkins’ mild humor without endangering your reputation or career.

     The Hawkins cartoons both look and sound retro, and that is a big part of their simple charm. They are neither great art nor great jokes, but they offer uncomplicated smiles and a daily dose of amusement that will be more than welcome throughout 2022. The Medical calendar actually has a page on which a doctor is telling a patient, “A person who spreads optimism is contagious” – about as old-fashioned a notion as you are likely to see anywhere. Other cartoons have no messages beyond fun. One shows a corridor with a Mayo Clinic sign and a box on the wall labeled “in case of emergency break glass” – inside the box is a jar of Miracle Whip. Another has a practitioner telling a patient, “Four out of five doctors recommend you stay far away from the one dissenting doctor.” One has a doctor telling a patient, “We don’t need a full MRI – just a kitten scan,” which is amusing for anyone who knows about CAT scans. One has an assistant in a burn ward telling the physician, “Jack B. Nimble is here again, Doctor” – a nursery-rhyme reminder. On very rare occasions, Hawkins goes beyond old-style humor and easy jokes here, creating something genuinely touching, as in a panel showing a little boy, a tear on his face, saying to a woman with a tear on hers, “Thanks for walking Grandma to heaven” – the woman’s briefcase bears the word “Hospice.” That is far more thoughtful and sensitive than most of the once-over-lightly cartoons in the Medical calendar, and all the more moving because it represents such a big change of pace.

     The Teacher calendar has nothing that instructive, but Hawkins is more inclined to be mildly satirical here, as in a panel showing a disheveled man asking for money by telling a well-dressed passerby, “Do you remember me? I was your economics tutor.” And there are a few attempts to take a serious topic and lighten it a bit, as in a panel showing a man, Sisyphus-like, rolling a huge stone uphill, explaining, “I chose this instead of having to pay off massive student debts.” There is also an occasional panel showing awareness of the world in which today’s educators operate, such as the cartoon in which the principal asks the guidance counselor, “How many of them say they want to be social media stars?” More often, though, what holds sway here is mild humor and mild puns, as in a scene outside a church where one person says to another, “The Reverend used to be a geometry teacher. That’s why he goes off on so many tangents.” Nothing in Hawkins’ Medical and Teacher calendars produces an old-fashioned guffaw, but many of the panels produce an old-fashioned smile and a sense that there remains a place for mild amusement in a world that often seems so intensely opposed to the notion that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

(++++) ELEGANCE ON A SMALL SCALE

Bach: Orchestral Suites Nos. 1-4. Concerto Copenhagen conducted by Lars Ulrik Mortensen. CPO. $16.99.

Classical String Trios, Volume 3—Music by Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, John Antes, Francesco Zannetti, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, Leopold Hofmann, and Paul Wranitzky. The Vivaldi Project (Elizabeth Field, violin; Allison Edberg Nyquist, violin and viola; Stephanie Vial, cello). MSR Classics. $14.95.

Mieczysław Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4. East-West Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rostislav Krimer. Naxos. $11.99.

     If the 19^th century was the age of gigantism in music, the late 20^th and 21^st are times for a refocus on the small – rediscovery of the power of communication through reduced ensemble size. In some cases, all that has been necessary is to return to the original approach of composers, often with remarkable results. That is what a new CPO recording of Bach’s orchestral suites (which Bach himself called overtures) does to exceptionally fine effect. Lars Ulrik Mortensen plays the harpsichord on this disc and also leads Concerto Copenhagen – an ensemble of a mere 11 players, including Mortensen himself. But there is nothing “mere” about their handling of this music. Their approach goes well beyond their use of period instruments and carefully studied historical performance practices. It involves a return to Bach’s original conception of the suites, which means playing them without the familiar trumpets and timpani that have long underlined these works’ ceremonial, festive character. Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen proceed on the basis of recent scholarship indicating that the suites, long thought to have been composed in the 1730s, were in fact only modified at that time – with their more celebratory instruments added – but were written decades earlier and in a plainer style, for much more modest performing forces. The back-and-forth arguments about provenance are the stuff of musical scholars’ lives, but what will matter to listeners is how the suites sound when performed in accordance with this particular scholarly analysis. And they sound very fine indeed – having a surprisingly impressive effect in this reduced/authentic instrumentation, with the crucial contrapuntal material coming through with exceptional clarity and the balance among the instruments carefully calculated and executed with thoroughly engaging precision. Using so small an ensemble for this music requires handling the pieces as, essentially, chamber music, which means all the performers are equally audible and all contribute noticeably to the overall effect – the give-and-take here is different from that in later chamber music, but the suites in this version do have a flavor of intimacy and close interpersonal (and inter-instrumental) communication that is altogether suitable. With their unerring feeling for pacing and their unobtrusive excellence in period performance, these musicians transport listeners back to the sound and effects of Bach’s own time – while offering a salutary contrast to the grander approach that is more often heard in this music. This CD makes that more-common approach seem, if not actually bloated, a touch overdone and unsubtle by comparison with this one.

     Subtlety and unaffected beauty are the watchwords for all the small-scale pieces being explored by the members of the Vivaldi Project in their first-rate series of recordings of classical string trios. To be precise, these are capital-C Classical pieces – pieces of the Classical era – mixed with some from the late Baroque, or at least with a strong Baroque flavor. Elizabeth Field, Allison Edberg Nyquist and Stephanie Vial know that there are many, many of these, even though the string-trio form has been far less explored than that of the same time period’s string quartets. It is easy, in some ways, to see why: these trios are largely unchallenging pieces both to play and to hear, having often been written for performance by amateur court musicians and heard in intimate settings as the equivalent of 18^th-century background music. But that does not in any way diminish the appeal of the works or the skill with which the mostly little-known composers of the time created them. The Vivaldi Project’s third MSR Classics release in this series offers seven pieces by composers mostly known to scholars and aficionados of 18^th-century music – and in some cases likely unknown even to them. Like Concerto Copenhagen, the Vivaldi Project is a period-instrument group, and Field, Nyquist and Vial are so well-versed in the style of the period they are exploring here that their performances flow with natural ease that fits these works perfectly. The pieces themselves are not particularly consequential – none strives to be more than a pleasantry – but the charm they all possess is so well extracted and reproduced by the performers that the CD is a delightful listening experience from start to finish. And even though the works here date from more-or-less the same time period – roughly mid-1750s to early 1790s – they do show differences in construction and handling of the instruments. Four of the pieces are in two movements, two are in four, and one is in three – and that one, a trio by John Antes (1740-1811), is the only minor-key offering on the CD. There is nothing emotionally trenchant in this D minor work, however, and not even anything particularly melancholy – the piece, for two violins and cello, is interesting mostly for being one of the earliest known chamber works by an American composer (Antes was born in Pennsylvania). Two of the two-movement pieces, a sonata by Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen (1745-1818) and a Trio Concertant by Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812), are also for two violins and cello. Of the other two-movement works, a sonata by Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700-1775) is for two violins with harpsichord or cello, and a trio by Francesco Zannetti (1737-1788) is for violin, viola and cello. As for the four-movement pieces, the interestingly labeled Trio ô Divertimento by Leopold Hofmann (1738-1793) is for first violin or flute, plus second violin and cello, while the Trio Concertant by Paul Wranitzky (1756-1808) is for violin, viola and cello. There is a good deal of intriguing history associated with some of these minor composers: Sirmen was unusual both for being a female composer and for being a well-known singer and violinist; Hoffmeister was primarily a publisher and a close friend of Mozart (whose String Quartet No. 20, K. 499, is the “Hoffmeister”); and Wranitzky’s singspiel Oberon was an inspiration for Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Knowing some of these historical tidbits adds to the pleasure of hearing these composers’ music, but there is enjoyment aplenty to be had here simply by sitting back and letting these small gems sparkle in the presentation by the members of the Vivaldi Project.

     Much-more-recent composers also knew that less can be more when it comes to the effective communication of musical thoughts and feelings. Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996), whose thinking was distinctly symphonic, had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with instrumental size in his works: he wrote 26 symphonies and 17 string quartets, but at times seemed to find the traditional symphony orchestra somewhat more than he wanted – his Symphonies Nos. 2, 7 and 10 are for strings only. And toward the end of his life, Weinberg stopped producing out-and-out symphonies and instead created four chamber symphonies (two in 1987 and one each in 1991 and 1992) – and the first three of them are in turn based on some of his string quartets, the very first chamber symphony being an outright quartet transcription. This rather complex back-and-forth of ensemble size and communicative prowess makes the new Naxos recording of Chamber Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 all the more intriguing. The East-West Chamber Orchestra, which has fewer than 20 players, has already released (also on Naxos) Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3, and it is clear that Rostislav Krimer has a deep understanding and appreciation of this music, which the ensemble plays idiomatically and with a well-balanced mixture of intensity and relaxation. Weinberg’s ambivalence about effective ensemble size for his musical thoughts shows in the creative way he structures the two chamber symphonies heard on the new CD. No. 2 includes a timpani with the strings, with the timpani especially important at the work’s start (where it urges the Allegro molto music onward) and conclusion (where it has the work’s last word). Chamber Symphony No. 2 revisits a 1944 string quartet but rearranges it significantly: the quartet’s second movement, for example, becomes the symphony’s finale. This chamber symphony is a three-movement work filled with tension and a kind of sternness of expression. It is a rather dour piece that communicates an overall sense of desolation, if not quite despair. Chamber Symphony No. 4 is different in almost every way. It is in four movements played continuously, and six of its seven tempo indications are slow: aside from a partial-movement Allegro molto, the markings are Lento, Moderato, Adagio, Meno mosso, Andantino, and Doppio più lento (Adagissimo) – the last being a highly unusual way to end a work. This chamber symphony calls for clarinet and triangle as well as strings, but while the clarinet (played here by Igor Fedorov) has a significant contribution to make, the triangle is used only in the final movement and is heard just four times. All this is testimony to the care with which Weinberg tried to use a small ensemble to color his musical thoughts and present them with clarity. Like much of Weinberg’s music, this piece is somber and has a plaintive air about it, and its final pizzicato chords (with a single triangle note) share some of the resignation of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique. Chamber Symphony No. 4 was Weinberg’s last completed work, indicating that at the end of his compositional life, he was thinking – as did many earlier composers – that big ideas can sometimes be best communicated by the careful use of small musical ensembles.

(++++) THREE ROUTES TO A NEW YEAR

Calendars (wall for 2022): Posh 17-Month. Andrews McMeel. $15.99.

Calendars (desk for 2022): Get It Together! with Sarah’s Scribbles. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Calendars (page-a-day for 2022): Seas the Day. Andrews McMeel. $15.99.

     One of the nice things about printed calendars, as opposed to the electronic type, is that the ink-on-paper ones provide all sorts of expressive potential: they are personalized in a way that bits, bytes, emojis and GIFs are not. Another nice thing is the way the many first-rate calendars available from major publishers such as Andrews McMeel let you track your life in multiple formats, each of which can express a different element of your interests and personality. For example, the Posh 17-Month wall calendar really does have a posh look about it; and since it includes pages from August 2021 through December 2022, it can be used immediately, as in right now, as an anodyne to help relieve the pain of realizing that 2021 – which everyone hoped would be far, far better than the ultra-miserable 2020 – has not turned out to be nearly as big an improvement as we all wished. But this attractive, uncluttered, pleasantly illustrated and especially well-colored wall calendar provides an instant “cheer up!” message when hung, and the continuity of design through the 17 months offers hope that the rest of 2021 will be an improvement on the months to date – and that that improvement will continue into and all through 2022. The designs of individual months here are essentially floral: flowers and leaves of all types are shown in differing color palettes for each month, presented in such a way that each day of the month is open and uncluttered for the jotting down of notes, plans, appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, and random thoughts of all sorts. The layout is on the elegant side – the word “posh” really does make sense for this offering – and the spiral hanger, much stronger than the usual single punched hole in wall calendars, gives an added sense of the upscale. The calendar measures 14 inches across and only 10 inches from top to bottom – a size that makes it easy to see and use without having it become intrusive. Posh indeed!

     Decidedly less elegant, more puckish than posh, the desktop planner by Sarah Andersen, Get It Together! with Sarah’s Scribbles, speaks to altogether different feelings – and complements the more-stately Posh 17-Month wall calendar quite well for anyone whose moods swing a bit (which is not to call them actual “mood swings”). One of the most impressive things about Sarah’s Scribbles is how well it reaches out beyond its ostensible purpose of chronicling (with a wry eye) the everyday life of a 21^st-century twentysomething woman (Andersen in cartoon form). This is partly because of cartoon Sarah’s almost-obligatory-in-comics animals (rabbit, cat, dog) but mostly because huge-eyed Sarah’s quotidian adventures reach across generations: small drawings atop pages show her beneath a transparent umbrella, next to a human-size avocado, dancing with a gingerbread man, beneath the bubbles of a bath, building a sand castle, and so on. At times, Andersen addresses generational issues directly, as in a four-panel strip of “intergenerational sparring” between Boomers and Millennials, at the end of which she shows “Gen Z Ascending.” At other times – and more frequently – Sarah’s Scribbles goes beyond its supposed limits because it focuses on things that people of many ages have in common (yes, such things exist!). One strip amusingly gives “Habits of the Common Bookworm,” such as “mispronouncing words because you’ve only ever read them.” Another shows Sarah’s cat interrupting her work with demands of “pet me pet me pet me pet me pet me,” and when Sarah finally says, “Okay, fine,” the cat replies, “I changed my mind.” Another, based on the story of the princess and the pea, has Sarah lying atop a stack of mattresses labeled denial – unable to sleep because, at the very bottom of the pile, there is a small round object labeled truth. Like the Posh 17-Month wall calendar, Get It Together! with Sarah’s Scribbles for 2022 is actually usable immediately: it contains 16 months of weekly planning space (each week gets columns labeled “appointments/misc.,” “stuff to do,” and “my social life”). Spiral-bound so it stays neat and flat on a desk or table, with a handy pocket on the inside back cover for storing receipts or other scraps of paper, it comes with a bonus page of self-adhesive stickers that neatly encapsulate some of the Sarah’s Scribbles themes. One, for example, shows two side-by-side doors labeled “work” and “sin,” and two others are simply the word “deadline!” inside spiky-looking frames. Those work for anyone, of any generation.

     Day-to-day calendars, on the other hand – the ones in which a page represents a single day (or two weekend days), to be torn off to reveal the next page – are strictly for the 12 months of the year for which they are intended, and are geared more to momentary amusement or quick communication of some sort than to jotting down thoughts and ideas or planning events. The nice thing about the more-evanescent nature of these calendars’ daily displays is that if you like the overall concept, there is a new variation on it on every page. Thus, while each Sarah’s Scribbles strip (four panels on most pages) remains visible for a week, each Seas the Day page is there for just one day (or one weekend). Given the fact that Seas the Day includes a full year of puns – many of them of the “groaner” variety – a day or two for a page will probably be plenty, no matter how much you enjoy the wordplay. The calendar’s title, in fact, goes with a cartoon of a smiling octopus whose eight tentacles are apparently about to, well, seize the day. Elsewhere here you will find a drawing of four female sheep above the words “ewe are so loved,” and a smiling fruit saying “you’ve got a peach of my heart,” and a bowl of Vietnamese soup with the words, “I love you phoever.” Then there are the fungi that go with the words, “I have so mushroom in my heart for you,” and the rabbit for Easter (“some bunny loves you”), and the lettuce leaves admonishing, “romaine calm!” It is true that a little of this punniness goes a long way, but that is exactly the point: there is only a little – a single example – on each page, so if one offering is a bit much, a new one will be along quite soon…and if one seems particularly enjoyable, it is easy to keep the page after tearing it off, maybe tucking it into the back-cover pocket of the Sarah’s Scribbles desktop planner. If you are trying to decide what to make of everything in Seas the Day, have no fear: one page features an appropriate piece of pasta and the words, “a penne for your thoughts?” It is certainly worth thinking about the many different forms that physical calendars can take and the many different uses to which they can be put. Think about all the options and you may very well find, along with the cartoon of a dock in Seas the Day, calendars to which you will want to say, “you’re pierfect.”

(+++) TUNEFUL DISCORD

Strauss: Waldmeister. Annika Egert, Martina Bortolotti von Haderburg, and Andrea Chudak, sopranos; Dorothe Ingenfeld, contralto; Friedemann Büttner, Noah Schaul, Daniel Schliewa, Simeon Pilibosyan, and Nikolai Ivanov, tenors; Robert Davidson, bass-baritone. Sofia Philharmonic Chorus and Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dario Salvi. Naxos. $23.99 (2 CDs).

     It is helpful, when considering the operettas of Johann Strauss Jr., to remember that the Strauss family business – of music – really was a business. That is how it was structured and that is how it was run. Strauss got into operettas in the first place because there was more money to be made from theatrical productions than from the dance tunes that flowed so effortlessly from his pen (and from those of Josef and Eduard as well). Furthermore, in the sprawling and moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, Strauss knew that appeals to various regional sounds and approaches could bring attractive financial rewards, through support from people living in those regions and through the comparative exoticism of the sounds as far as other residents of the empire were concerned. Thus, although Die Fledermaus is thoroughly Viennese (one reason for its enormous and continued popularity), and Der Zigeunerbaron is Hungarian, Jabuka is Serbian and its successor, Waldmeister, is a kind of Black Forest idyll with prominent hunting horns – grafted onto a comedy of manners that was creaky in its own time and is even creakier today.

     Once committed to theatrical work, the Strauss business needed to keep it going, and the coauthor of the Jabuka libretto, Gustav Davis, was commissioned to create Waldmeister, which he did by thoughtful reference to the elements of Die Fledermaus that had made it work so well: mistaken identity, an alcohol-fueled party and an important character speaking in not-always-perfect dialect. The last of those elements was Prince Orlofsky in the earlier work; in Waldmeister it is another “highly placed” person, a professor of botany named Erasmus Friedrich Müller – whose name means “miller” and whose repeated confusion with an actual miller is supposed to provide a considerable amount of the operetta’s fun.

     Davis got several parts of Strauss-favored stage works right, but like many operetta librettists, he over-complicated matters, creating a work whose many themes include the supposed discovery of a new form of Waldmeister (the plant known as woodruff in English), the overly strict morals of rural districts and their rulers, and the importance of brand-new technology such as photography (used here more extensively than W.S. Gilbert used the telephone in HMS Pinafore). For his part, Strauss, nearing the end of his life in this 1895 work (he died in 1899), continued to take much the same approach that he had used since his first completed operetta, Indigo und die vierzig Räuber, in 1871: he strung together a slew of wonderful dance tunes (mostly waltzes in Waldmeister) and let them carry the plot along to the extent possible.

     The result of all this, as with many Strauss operettas, is a mishmash that generally sounds wonderful but is thoroughly lacking in theatrical effectiveness. The world première recording of Waldmeister is thus in some ways very welcome and in some ways very irritating: what a waste of superb Strauss dance melodies, no matter the business impetus behind presenting them this way! To be sure, as with his other operettas, Strauss extracted music from Waldmeister for concert presentation – his works Opp. 463-468 all come from this production – but in their original stage context, the pieces seem paler than they do when heard independently of their theatrical origin.

     Make no mistake: Dario Salvi does a first-rate job with the music, and many of the soloists handle their roles with considerable skill. Among the women, Martina Bortolotti von Haderburg stands out as Pauline, a Dresden Opera singer who refuses to be scandalized by such matters as the appropriate dress to be worn when playing lawn tennis (another “modern” element of the plot). Among the men, Friedemann Büttner’s broad characterization of Professor Müller works well, and the four other tenors are all right if vocally undistinguished (with Daniel Schliewa the only disappointment: he too often sounds strained in the role of the forest steward Botho). The Sofia Philharmonic Chorus is quite fine, and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra plays the music with all the enthusiasm it requires.

     There are, though, multiple disappointments in this presentation – all the more so because Waldmeister is unlikely to be recorded again anytime soon. Naxos provides a somewhat convoluted plot summary and a link to an online version of the libretto – but the libretto is in German only, and while automated translation is available for those so inclined, it is not very good and makes the plot seem even more incoherent than it already is. Even more unfortunate, and quite difficult to understand, is the omission in this recording of so much of the opera. The fact that entire scenes are not presented may be deemed no serious matter, since so many are dialogue-only and brief – and the cutting of sections of other scenes may perhaps be justifiable on the same basis. But the failure to include complete versions of multiple arias is really inexcusable. This is an especially significant flaw because the couplets given to Professor Müller are among the most delightful portions of Waldmeister. Yet one of his arias, which should have three verses, is here heard with only two; and another that has two verses here was written to contain no fewer than five. There was certainly sufficient space on the CDs to include these and other missing elements: two discs easily handle 160 minutes of material, and these two include just 125. So the decision to omit some of the music that represents the primary pleasure of Waldmeister is a genuine disappointment.

     As for Strauss, he found that this 14^th of his 15 completed operettas did reasonably well from a business standpoint, initially running for 88 performances. This was much better than his next and final completed stage work, Die Göttin der Vernunft, which had only 36 performances and brought the Strauss family operetta business to a somewhat ignominious end (Strauss so disliked the libretto for that final operetta that he tried unsuccessfully to find a way to break his commitment to do the music). Certainly the story of Waldmeister is mild and comparatively pleasant, and certainly Strauss had no problem producing music that elevates Davis’ libretto as well as complementing it. But what this new, unfortunately and unnecessarily abridged recording shows is that the longstanding opinion of Strauss as a less-than-talented decision-maker in the field of operetta libretti is accurate. Waldmeister is filled with delightful music but really has no business being revived as a theatrical production.