(++++) SYMPHONIC EXPECTATIONS

Mahler: Symphony No. 7. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Artek. $16.99.

Nielsen: Symphonies No. 2 (“The Four Temperaments”) and 3 (“Sinfonia espansiva”). Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR conducted by Michael Schønwandt. Naxos. $8.99.

      Performers create expectations – to which they then live up or down. Here are two CDs for which listeners would do better to set their expectations aside. For example, one does not expect the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic to be particularly well-suited to the sonic richness of Mahler; and Gerard Schwarz is scarcely the first conductor whose name comes to mind as a Mahler specialist. But this recording of Mahler’s Seventh is quite exceptionally good. That may be because the symphony itself doesn’t quite fit neatly into the Mahler canon. So strange are its instrumentation and its tonic restlessness (it constantly strays from major to minor and back) that Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke, who prepared the first performing edition of the unfinished Tenth, gave the Seventh the subtitle “Mad.” But it is a fine madness here. Schwarz gives the first movement shrill, percussive treatment, and if the strings are not as warm as one expects for Mahler, they are solid and rhythmically attentive. Schwarz appreciates the oddities of scoring in this sprawling, discontinuous movement, and the result is a thrilling performance. In the first Nachtmusik, which follows, Schwarz emphasizes grotesqueries of rhythm and instrumentation, so the movement sounds very modern – but the lyricism really flows in the gorgeous central section. The Scherzo is genuinely spooky at the start, with Schwarz focusing on its dissonances and giving it the sort of flickering quality usually associated with (for example) the Scherzo of Bruckner’s Ninth. It is only in the second Nachtmusik that Schwarz’s approach falters: this movement is a little too hard-edged and surface-level, and is not true to the “amoroso” part of its “Andante amoroso” designation. The huge final Rondo, though, works splendidly – as it often does not in other performances. It can easily feel tacked on, so different is it in character from the first four movements, but Schwarz makes a strong case for it as the symphony’s capstone, emphasizing the timpani tattoos in a boisterous, rowdy performance that ends in a burst of joy. This is one of the best Mahler Sevenths currently available – a very pleasant surprise indeed.

      The surprise is not quite so pleasant in Michael Schønwandt’s handling of Nielsen’s Second and Third Symphonies. The expectation here is excellence and thorough familiarity with the music, and that is just what the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR delivers in the Third Symphony. The wordless voices of Inger Dam-Jensen and Poul Elming fit Nielsen’s sound beautifully in the slow movement, and the symphony feels tightly integrated – including its problematic finale, which can be a real letdown through the comparatively ordinary nature of its themes and Nielsen’s handling of them. Not so here: Schønwandt pushes the movement effectively, refusing to let it drag, and as a result the symphony becomes a thoroughly integrated experience from start to finish. But the results in the Second Symphony are, surprisingly, something of a disappointment. This is a deliberately episodic work, with each movement representing one of the “temperaments” once thought to be defined by excesses of specific bodily fluids: choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic and sanguine. Nielsen paints each temperament very skillfully, allowing only brief respite – for purely musical reasons – from the primary driving forces of each movement. But Schønwandt overemphasizes those contrasting sections throughout the work, perhaps seeking a more “musicianly” reading of the symphony but in fact spoiling its deliberately programmatic (and intentionally rather superficial) approach. As a result, none of the four temperaments seems to be painted in primary colors – they are shaded and nuanced, which is exactly what Nielsen did not intend. The symphony is certainly well played, and in light of the fact that this recording dates to 1999 – it was originally released by Dacapo – there could well be a more effective Nielsen Second from these forces one of these days. For now, Schønwandt’s Nielsen Third is ample reason to consider this CD a success.

(+++) FILMED MUSIC

Tony Palmer’s Film about Puccini. Written by Charles Wood. Starring Robert Stephens, Virginia McKenna, Judith Howarth and Robert Urquhart. Tony Palmer Films. $24.99 (DVD).

Tony Palmer’s Film of God Rot Tunbridge Wells. Written by John Osborne. Starring Trevor Howard, Dave Griffiths, Christopher Bramwell and Peter Stanger. Tony Palmer Films. $24.99 (DVD).

      As producer of films about Chopin and Sir Yehudi Menuhin, and director of ones about Britten, Stravinsky, Maria Callas, Renée Fleming and others, Tony Palmer has carved himself a niche in the visual exploration of classical music. Now his 1984 film on Puccini and 1985 exploration of Handel, both made for British TV, are available on DVD – and they are very much niche products. Palmer’s strength is in his belief in himself and his viewpoints. If you accept his ideas, you will become quickly involved in his films and find them enthralling. If you do not see eye-to-eye with him, though, watching his movies can be something between a chore and an irritation.

      This is particularly true in Palmer’s film about Puccini, whose focus is not the composer’s operatic career but the tragic story of the family’s maid, Doria Manfredi, who was wrongly accused by Puccini’s jealous wife of having an affair with the composer, a notorious womanizer. Distraught, Manfredi committed suicide – and Puccini’s wife, Elvira, was later convicted of public defamation in the case and sentenced to more than five years in prison. Palmer interweaves this story with preparations for a production of Turandot that Palmer himself designed for the Scottish National Opera. This is self-aggrandizement as much as anything: the production was roundly condemned and reflected far more on Palmer than on Puccini. In fact, Palmer goes so far as to suggest that Turandot may have been left incomplete – Puccini stopped writing it after the death of Liu – because Puccini was so emotionally torn by what happened to Dora Manfredi. This creates a variety of factual problems – for example, it would mean the composer stopped composing years earlier than is generally believed to be the case – but it certainly makes for good theater, and that is what Palmer is after. Unfortunately, the film itself is rather sloppily shot, especially in the scenes of preparations for the Turandot production; and in fact, only dedicated opera lovers will likely want as much of a backstage view as Palmer provides. The actual performance of parts of the opera, by the Scottish Opera Chorus and Scottish National Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson, is very good, but there is not much of it, and it is not Palmer’s main point in the film. In fact, his main point is a bit hard to come by – the film gives the impression of being several short movies cut together, sometimes rather haphazardly, all with a focus on something having to do with Puccini.

      God Rot Tunbridge Wells is argumentative in a different way. Screenwriter John Osborne, a well-known playwright, commemorated the 300^th anniversary of Handel’s birth with a film whose title comes from a letter that Osborne says Handel wrote to the Tunbridge Wells Ladies’ Music Circle after they put on a particularly hideous performance of Messiah. Did it happen? It scarcely matters to Osborne and Palmer, who are more interested in the way Handel shook up British music in the 18^th century and created a set of entirely new traditions. That did happen, but it is something of a scholarly matter and not well suited to film visualization. So Palmer and Osborne focus on the Tunbridge Wells matter as a kind of microcosm of bad music-making. The good news is that, in the process, they offer some very good music-making – from the English Chamber Orchestra under Sir Charles Mackerras, and a number of fine singers. Palmer does not inject himself as much into this film as into Puccini, where he uses his own Turandot production so prominently; God Rot Tunbridge Wells is as much Osborne’s vision as Palmer’s. If neither of the films is definitive – and neither is – both have interesting, if seriously skewed, points of view, and are likely to be enjoyable to the extent that viewers and listeners find the viewpoints congenial rather than maddening.

(++++) LEARNING, JUST FOR FUN

Dr. Seuss Beginner Concepts Cards: Colors & Shapes. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $10.99.

Dr. Seuss Beginner Alphabet Cards. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $10.99.

Fancy Nancy’s Favorite Fancy Words: From Accessories to Zany. By Jane O’Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. HarperCollins. $12.99.

      It is hard to realize that Theodor Seuss Geisel has been gone for 18 years. His books have never disappeared, and they keep showing up in new editions, new forms, and new shapes. One of the happiest is a new card shape – because Dr. Seuss was such a marvelous teacher, even when he did not overtly intend to be. His great rhymes taught kids word sounds; his amusing comments on make-believe creatures’ foibles taught kids tolerance, understanding and the importance of equality; his nonsense words taught kids the delights of language and word play. And now he is teaching the youngest children about colors, shapes and the alphabet, thanks to a couple of wonderful flip-top boxes containing cards that use Seussian illustrations to demonstrate basic concepts of language. Colors & Shapes includes a dozen large cards – about four-by-six inches apiece – with a color on one side of each and a shape on the other. The color blue goes with a blue-shelled turtle from Yertle the Turtle, for example, while the color red goes with a fish from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Shapes such as circle, square and star are also shown with amusing Seuss illustrations. There are a dozen “playing” cards (really “learning” cards), and a set of helpful instructions for parents on how to use them – for example, by engaging several of a child’s senses to help speed learning and retention. Everything is packed in a tough cardboard box with neatly concealed magnetic closure. This will be a real treat for young learners.

      So will the Dr. Seuss Beginner Alphabet Cards, which come in a similar box but more closely approximate the size of a standard deck of cards. There are 26 of them (of course!), again with useful instructions for parents, with each letter associated with something Seussian. “C” is, of course, for cat, as in the Cat in the Hat, but there are plenty of less-obvious Seuss drawings to enliven alphabet learning and practice. The cards can also be used to build small words, helping young children start to understand how letters are combined and what happens to their sounds and meanings when that occurs.

      One thing that happens is that the words get fancy. Or at least they do when Fancy Nancy is involved. Her alphabet book, for ages 4-7, is right in line with her character and is packed with words and comments that reflect her view of life as something to accessorize. B, for example, is for “Boa – a long scarf of feathers. Boas are very glamorous, but they itch!” Some of the word choices here are exceptionally clever, reflecting the way Jane O’Connor handles her books of Nancy’s adventures. For example, I is for “Improvise – to use whatever is handy in order to make something.” What Nancy has made is an “elegant” canopy bed, using a sheet, mop and broom – the whole thing endearingly portrayed by Robin Preiss Glasser in her usual just-right style. Whether on an Excursion in a pink convertible or being Joyous about Christmas in an outfit that includes a wig that looks like a fully decorated Christmas tree, Fancy Nancy is thoroughly overdone in a most endearing way – not a teacher for just anyone, perhaps, but if you have a child who will learn well from this classy lassy, you’ll know it.

(++++) MAGIC, REAL-WORLD AND OTHERWISE

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says about You. By Sam Gosling, Ph.D. Basic Books. $25.

The Book of Wizards. Selected and illustrated by Michael Hague. HarperCollins. $19.99.

      Sam Gosling doesn’t exactly wave a wand to learn things about people that they may prefer he not find out, but there is enough apparent wizardry in his snooping and analysis to make some of his revelations seem a lot like magic. Gosling, who is anything but a small goose, is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Most of what he does is observe people and their places closely – the basis of much magic as well as a great deal of hokum. But what Gosling finds out isn’t hokum at all. Many people understand intuitively that the things they own reflect on them – but what they reflect may not be what people think. The reason is “seepage and leakage,” which means that “many elements of personality find their ways into our behaviors without our being conscious of it. …Personality is expressed not just in our behaviors but also in the way we perceive the world; that is, anxious people not only fidget when under stress but they see more dangers, threats, and things to worry about than their laid-back neighbors, who see no good reason to get their knickers in a twist.” What this means is that the way people do simple things, such as shaking hands or jumping, reflects their personalities clearly to someone who has studied the relationship between behavior and personality as thoroughly as Gosling has. Furthermore, the things we accumulate – and the way we choose to display (or not display) them – can be important personality keys. Gosling builds on some important work done by earlier psychologists, such as Erving Goffman, author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. But Gosling thinks Goffman’s idea that people in daily life perform like characters in a play is insufficient, because people’s true personalities will peek through no matter how carefully they try to conceal them. This leads Gosling to a neat distinction between a tidy room and a tidied room: the former reflects a personality that naturally keeps things neat and organized, while the latter is a mostly transparent attempt to appear neater than a person actually is – an unsuccessful attempt when Gosling is observing the room, because “many parts of our personalities are simply irrepressible.” This is fascinating stuff – so fascinating that, no matter how many times Gosling reminds readers that he is primarily practicing careful observation and interpreting what he sees in accordance with established standards, a lot of his revelations about how we inevitably project ourselves to the world through our behaviors and owned objects still seem somewhat magical.

      Gosling may be a real-world wizard, but he is not a real wizard in the classic sense, as becomes clear in The Book of Wizards, which collects folktales from Russia, Wales, Iceland, Greece, the Baltic and elsewhere. Yet it is interesting to compare Gosling’s skill in real-world observation (in a book intended for adults) with the talents on display in Michael Hague’s fictional story compilation (for ages 6-11). It turns out that close observation of one’s environment is a key to successful wizardry, and that underlying personality characteristics do indeed determine one’s success not only on Earth but also in magical lands. Thus, in the Native American tale of “Coyote and the Medicine Woman,” Coyote’s careful observation of the way the medicine woman obtains meat makes it possible for him to steal her magic – but her own more-careful observation of Coyote brings the magic back. In the Russian story of “Baba Yaga,” the underlying generosity of young Sonya’s heart shines through even in a place of fear and terror – and gets her out of danger safely. In the medieval legend of “King Solomon’s Ring,” it requires both careful observation and an innate sense of patience and caution for the young hero to obtain ultimate power – which he wishes to use only for the common good. It will not do to push parallels between real and magical worlds too closely, but it does not hurt to probe them to a limited extent, since, after all, the creators of the old tales were living in the real world when they made up their stories – and those stories, however changed they may be after many years, still reflect some underlying truths as perceived by those who first told them and by their successors. Hague’s book gets a (+++) rating for its intended audience, because in addition to many high spots it also has some ill-told tales, such as an inaccurate distillation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” a peculiar take on the story of Merlin, and a version of the legend of Circe and Odysseus that is well presented but for no good reason insists on calling the Greek hero by the Roman name of Ulysses. Still, for young readers who may think J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sprang fully formed from Rowling’s fertile mind, The Book of Wizards will provide a good deal of interesting food for magical thought.

(+++) FAIRY-TALE FLOURISHES

The Eyes of a King. By Catherine Banner. Random House. $16.99.

Fairest. By Gail Carson Levine. HarperTrophy. $6.99.

Ever. By Gail Carson Levine. HarperCollins. $16.99.

      Fairy tales, as collected by Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm and others, were not intended for children – they were dark, often psychologically complex (although they long predate any formal understanding of psychology), and filled with genuine horror and awful punishments. Victorian Bowdlerizing of the old fairy tales started a trend toward making them children’s stories in the 20^th century – and now, in the 21^st, subjects for revamping in the name of creating books for teenagers and preteens. Sometimes that also means creating books by teenagers: Catherine Banner, author of The Eyes of a King, is 19, and is said to have started writing the book when she was just 14. It would be churlish to dismiss this book as mere juvenilia, and also unfair, since in many respects it is quite well done. Besides, it is the first book of a planned trilogy, and some of its inelegances of plot may be worked out (and worked through) in the later volumes. As is, The Eyes of a King follows a now-familiar formula, which has been done quite well by (for example) Cornelia Funke with Inkheart and its successors. This is a story in which a book has genuine power – not merely to teach or to allow a person to imagine other worlds, but literally to transport him or her somewhere else and affect his or her life directly. That’s the basis of The Eyes of a King: Leo North, who is 15, lives with his grandmother and takes care of his younger brother; he attends military school because other boys do. But he knows he has undeveloped magical powers – powers he must resist, since in his land, Malonia, they lead to serious trouble. Then Leo finds a blank book in the snow (a very typical kind of fairy-tale device), and words start to appear on its pages, and he learns of Malonia’s history and of a parallel universe where two other teens – Ryan and Anna – live. Their lives start to intersect Leo’s in ways that are supposed to be magical but that feel as if they have often been used before (which they have). Leo faces tragedy involving his brother, uncertainty about whether he is losing his mind, and a growing connection with another world. Banner cleverly gives Leo’s story in first person and the tale of Ryan and Anna, set in different type, in third person. And there is some genuine emotion here, and some genuine learning by the interlinked characters. But even though The Eyes of a King is a very good effort, it never quite makes the sort of connection between fairy tale and the real world that the old stories made so effortlessly.

      Gail Carson Levine is a more facile writer than Banner, but she seems to have her own difficulties with the world of fairy tales. Although her first novel, Ella Enchanted, was…well….enchanting, and she has shown a fine sense of humor (something Banner’s writing lacks) in certain of her books, such as Cinderellis and the Glass Hill, Levine seems to be trying too hard to make her books and their characters likable a lot of the time. Fairest, originally published in 2006 and now available in paperback, is loosely based on the Snow White legend. It is about a land where grace, beauty and especially song are prized, and it focuses on a girl named Aza -- who has little of the first two qualities but an extraordinary ability with the third. The wicked, untalented queen takes advantage of Aza’s wonderful voice for her own purposes, and it is only gradually that Aza learns to value herself for who and what she is instead of conforming to society’s dictates and expectations. The story is better than a bare plot summary makes it sound, but not much better – there are lots of songs (perhaps too many), and long descriptive passages that do not advance the story much, and a sense of rushing through the climaxes of the tale (including Aza’s finding true love). Aza herself is not especially appealing: it is easy to forgive her ugliness and gracelessness within a fairy-tale world, but she also seems rather dull and not especially intelligent. The book works on some levels but, taken as a whole, just seems too contrived and obvious.

      Yet it is not as contrived as Levine’s new fairy-tale book, Ever. This one has a genuinely offbeat plot. A 17-year-old god named Olus spends his time with mortals because he is uncomfortable with the other gods, who are much older. Olus is especially attracted to a 15-year-old mortal girl, Kezi, who – because of her father’s unwise oath – has only 30 days to live. Together, Olus and Kezi seek a way to save her life so they can both be together for Ever. The working-through of the plot, though, is not as good as the outline. Olus seems like something of a stalker at first; the tests the two must face in order to succeed in their quest seem to go by quickly; the characters’ love seems more shallow than heartfelt; and the writing itself is choppy, told in chapters alternating between Kezi and Olus – who do not sound very different, because the characters are not particularly well differentiated. There is a lot to like in Ever, including exotic settings and the interesting notion of a young god facing his fears to help save the one he loves. But the book lacks the stylistic punch of Levine’s better works, not to mention the power and immediacy of the old fairy tales themselves.

(++++) TWENTIETH-CENTURY BYWAYS

Anderson: Orchestral Music, Volume 3—Harvard Sketches; Melody on Two Notes; Mother’s Whistler; The Penny Whistle Song; The Phantom Regiment; Plink, Plank, Plunk!; Promenade; Sandpaper Ballet; Saraband; Serenata; Old MacDonald Had a Farm; Seventy-Six Trombones; Sleigh Ride; Suite of Carols for Brass Choir; Wintergreen for President; The Typewriter; A Trumpeter’s Lullaby; The Syncopated Clock. BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Naxos. $8.99.

Kabalevsky: Piano Concerto No. 3, “Dedicated to Soviet Youth”; Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra on the theme of the song “School Years,” “Dedicated to Young Musicians of the Volga Region”; Poem of Struggle for Orchestra and Chorus; Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Concerto in C sharp minor. Hsin-Ni Liu, piano; Russian Philharmonic Orchestra and Gnesin Academy Chorus conducted by Dmitry Yablonsky. Naxos. $8.99.

      While much of 20^th-century classical music moved in very serious directions – Schoenberg’s 12-tone constructions, Webern’s minimalism, Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, Richard Strauss’ operatic opulence, and so much more – some parts of it were distinctly less intense. Leroy Anderson’s music is a prime example: classically trained and quite expert in construction of orchestral miniatures, Anderson managed to bridge the classical and pop-music worlds through the short, upbeat pieces he created for the Boston Pops and for numerous recordings. The third volume of Naxos’ survey of Anderson’s complete orchestral music contains some of his most popular works, and they are real gems: The Phantom Regiment, a spooky march; Plink, Plank, Plunk! – a wonderful exploration of pizzicato; Sleigh Ride, perhaps Anderson’s most popular piece, which so beautifully captures a Currier-and-Ives winter event; The Typewriter, which treats the old-fashioned manual machine (played very quickly by Alasdair Malloy) as a percussion instrument; and The Syncopated Clock, featuring some highly creative tick-tock wood blocks. Anderson was quite a stickler for detail: Sandpaper Ballet requires three different grades of the construction material for its percussive effects. He was also highly self-critical, with the result that a number of his works have never been recorded before, because he withdrew them. There are four of those here: Harvard Sketches, Melody on Two Notes, the very clever Mother’s Whistler (not to be confused with the painting “Whistler’s Mother,” of course), and the rousing Gershwin arrangement Wintergreen for President. Actually, Anderson was highly skilled at arranging the music of others: Seventy-Six Trombones, from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, is quite a wonderful blend of Willson’s music with snippets of Sousa. And Old MacDonald Had a Farm is a simply hilarious sendup of the barnyard tune. The only ordinary-sounding piece here is Suite of Carols for Brass Choir, a pleasant enough seasonal medley, but not one with any unique Anderson touches. Leonard Slatkin leads the BBC Concert Orchestra with great verve and style, and the optimistic nature of the music on this CD is a welcome antidote to all the seriousness of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

      Dmitry Kabalevsky intended to produce far more serious works than Anderson did, but Kabalevsky’s have turned out to be taken less seriously than he wished, since he created them in the service of the now-dismantled Soviet Union. Their particular brand of revolutionary fervor, proletarian uplift and stylistic simplicity wears very poorly indeed, so the new Kabalevsky CD gets a (+++) rating despite the appropriately boisterous pianism of Hsin-Ni Liu and the idiomatic intensity of Dmitry Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra. The best Kabalevsky here is his Piano Concerto No. 3, written in a bright D major and totally lacking in subtlety – but conveying a certain forthright charm that makes it enjoyable to hear, at least occasionally. The rhapsody that Kabalevsky wrote on his own song School Years is less successful, although the interplay of piano and orchestra is well handled. As for Poem of Struggle, it is one of those Socialist Realist works that are an embarrassment nowadays: written in 1930, it features a chorus promoting the idea of a worldwide October Revolution, bringing the world – country by country – into the Soviet system. Interestingly, the most substantial music on this CD was written during Russia’s Czarist period: Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1883 Piano Concerto. Despite being obviously modeled on Liszt – specifically his Piano Concerto No. 2 – the work has a strong Russian flavor in its themes and some real originality in the handling of both piano and orchestra. It doesn’t quite fit with the other works here, because it stands above them. But the juxtaposition of 19^th-century seriousness with the Soviet-style 20^th-century version is quite interesting to hear.

(+++) MUSIC VIDEOS, CLASSICAL STYLE

Beethoven: String Quartets--No. 4, op. 18, no. 4; No. 7, op. 59, no. 1, “Rasumovsky”; No. 14, op. 131. Juilliard String Quartet. EuroArts DVD. $24.99.

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4. Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein. EuroArts DVD. $24.99.

Fazil Say: Alla Turca. A film by Gösta Courkamp. Arthaus Musik DVD. $24.99.

Jiří Kylián’s “Car Men.” A film by Boris Pavel Conen and Jiří Kylián. Arthaus DVD. $29.99.

      Although we live in a video-saturated age, it is not always easy to understand the rationalization for video releases of classical-music performances. Certainly there is a visual aspect to concert attendance that is missing when one listens to an audio recording; and certainly the release on video of works that have inherent visual elements, such as operas, makes eminent good sense. But when it comes to concerts of chamber or orchestral music, the rationale for video releases is by no means clear. An audience’s interaction with performers can affect the quality of a concert, but that applies only to people seeing it live. Spectators can enjoy watching the players, but they can choose whom to watch at which time, while a video forces viewers to see things from whatever point of view the director chooses from moment to moment. The sound quality of videos tends to be quite fine, but it is no better than the quality of an audio recording. So classical-music videos, such as the new ones of the Juilliard Quartet and the Boston Symphony under Leonard Bernstein, are at most niche products – even more so when the recordings were made before digital sound and audio existed.

      Thus, the wonderful 1975 Beethoven playing by the Juilliard Quartet (Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; Joel Krosnick, cello) gains little from being displayed on video. What shows up clearly is this quartet’s ability to bring its characteristic warmth and excellence of ensemble to one early, one middle and one late Beethoven quartet; but this is no clearer on the video than it would be on an audio release. The performances themselves are quite impressive, perhaps a touch less intense than quartets tend to make them 30-plus years later, and the cooperation among the players is nothing short of exceptional – which was the norm for the Juilliard Quartet in the mid-1970s. Leonard Bernstein’s Brahms is an even earlier release, dating to 1972. This is a live recording made at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony and the venue where Bernstein began his career in 1940. There is more passion and warmth in these interpretations than precision and classical poise, with the result that the Second is somewhat more successful than the Fourth. Indeed, Bernstein’s way with Brahms never did please everyone, since he strove more for an emotional connection with the audience than for careful ensemble work and close attention to tempos and dynamics. Bernstein’s Brahms is outsize, as was the conductor’s personality, and in that respect is a welcome change from the more straitlaced readings heard more frequently today, even if Bernstein’s performances sometimes seem to be as much about him as they are about Brahms. Here the video does add something to the equation, showing Bernstein’s own passionate involvement in these musical moments. Still, neither the video nor the Bernstein approach will be universally welcome – although the inclusion of a short film called Bernstein at Tanglewood is a nice bonus.

      In fact, video makes much more sense for presenting films than for showing concerts – so a film focusing on a classical artist, such as Gösta Courkamp’s about pianist Fazil Say, works well in this medium. Say has a fanatical following in his native Turkey and among Turkish expatriates in other nations, and a growing reputation on the international concert circuit. His style is worth watching – he throws himself into the music, swaying not only from side to side but also from front to back and almost in circles, while staying seated on the piano bench. Say is also a crossover artist: the film not only shows him performing Bach and Beethoven, but also includes material from a concert with Turkish pop star Sertab Erener. And there are several of Say’s own compositions here, in whole or in part: Black Earth, Nazim, Paganini Variations, and the Silk Road concerto. An interview with Say is included as well. The eclectic nature of the film and bonus material limits the audience for this DVD: it is for existing fans of Say, or people who want to know what all the fuss is about this onetime child prodigy. The focus is much less on the music than on the man – perhaps a sensible approach for a biographical feature, although in this case Say is young enough (he was born in 1970) so that much of his biography, it seems reasonable to assume, is yet to be written.

      The film called Jiří Kylián’s “Car Men” is limited in another way: to those interested in a drastic reinterpretation, in dance form, of Bizet’s Carmen. Kylián uses four dancers and music arranged from Bizet by Hans Otten – who also composed new material – to create a story focusing on Carmen (Sabine Kupferberg), Don José (Karel Hruška), Escamillo (David Krügel) and Micaëla (Gioconda Barbuto). The whole thing takes place at a (real) coal mine in the Czech Republic, and ends with a race in cars made from abandoned scrap. To say that this is not Bizet’s Carmen is a tremendous understatement; but those who know and like Kylián’s work, or are interested in some of the extremes of modern dance, will find the 2006 film exhilarating. And the DVD contains two bonuses of earlier Kylián ballets. La Cathédrale engloutie, first performed in 1975, uses Debussy’s music for choreography intended to focus on humans’ internal conflicts caused by the impetus to break self-imposed laws. And Silent Cries, which dates to 1986 and also uses music by Debussy, also tries to get at human beings’ inner conflicts, this time with a solo performance by Kupferberg, who seems to be trapped behind dirty glass and is not always fully visible. Kylián certainly has a vision of his own, and this DVD certainly gives him multiple chances to express it; but it remains unlikely that Kylián’s starkness and unusual visual sense will, through video, reach much beyond a core group of admirers of his works or similar ones.

(++++) DOG TALES

Dogfessions. Compiled by Nikki Moustaki. HarperCollins. $19.99.

A Home for Dixie: The True Story of a Rescued Puppy. By Emma Jackson. Photographs by Bob Carey. HarperCollins. $16.99.

Angus and Sadie. By Cynthia Voigt. Illustrations by Tom Leigh. HarperTrophy. $5.99.

My Dog May Be a Genius. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrations by James Stevenson. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $18.99.

      Here are some cases where the tale wags the dog – sorry about the bad pun, but it seems to go well with Dogfessions, Nikki Moustaki’s compilation of thoughts and comments from her Web site of the same name, where visitors can post anonymous “postcards” giving their thoughts (or their dogs’). The book’s subtitle is misleading: it says “Secret Confessions from Dogs,” but this book is just as much about secret confessions from dog owners…or, perhaps more accurately, dogs’ human companions. “I want her with me all the time” appears with a photo of the poster’s arm, tattooed with that sentiment and her dog’s face. Then there’s this: “My voice gets two octaves higher whenever I see this face,” with a picture of this person’s limpid-eyed dog looking right at the camera. Of course, there are plenty of postings “by” dogs as well: “I tried to eat a sheep at school today. I got in trouble. I’m only supposed to chase them, not eat them.” Or, with a photo of a dog apparently standing on back paws, with front paws draped over a counter or windowsill, tongue hanging out and what looks like a huge smile: “Eight hours waiting by the door is worth it because this is how happy I get when you come home.” Or, simply: “Maintain eye contact. She’ll never know what you’ve been up to.” Dog lovers will howl (sorry about that, again) as they recognize things here that they, or their own dogs, must be thinking in everyday real life.

      A Home for Dixie is a real-life story that is as heartwarming as any fictional dog tale. Written by 15-year-old Emma Jackson, it is simply about how she came to adopt an abandoned puppy – but with her fresh, forthright voice and the wonderful photos of her and her dog by Bob Carey, the book is not so much sentimental as it is life-affirming…and a celebration of the special bond that humans and dogs have forged with each other through thousands of years. The story is simple and quite common: a dog rescuer (Mary Cody, whose Aunt Mary’s Doghouse helps match dogs and people in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania), saves three sick puppies and nurses them back to health. Meanwhile, Emma is trying to persuade her parents to let her have a dog. They finally agree. Emma and her puppy meet at Aunt Mary’s, immediately fall for each other, and the rest of the story is about how they both adapt: “From now on, they would take care of each other.” The photos of Emma, Dixie and Mary keep the book grounded in reality, and the end-of-book discussion of Aunt Mary’s Doghouse and of all the animals in shelters that need homes should be a big help to families considering finding a canine companion of their own. Because it is intended for ages 4-8, A Home for Dixie does not discuss adoption costs, spaying or neutering, and other elements of pet ownership – but it can certainly open the door to a talk about the responsibilities as well as the joys of having a dog. And it is nice to know that a portion of the proceeds from the book’s sale will go to Aunt Mary’s Doghouse.

      Angus and Sadie is a very different sort of dog story – fictional, and featuring the title dog characters communicating in words with each other and with other animals, but nevertheless illuminating some important aspects of the canine personality and the human-dog relationship. Originally published in 2005 and now available in paperback, Angus and Sadie is the story of brother-and-sister farm dogs: Angus, larger and braver and cleverer, and Sadie, more timid and slower to learn how to help their human family. The dogs are more personalized than the humans with whom they live, who are simply called Mister and Missus. Angus and Sadie learn how to help around the farm, especially with herding the sheep – they are border collies. They deal with barn cats and wilder animals, such as a skunk with which Sadie has an unfortunate run-in. And they are shown to have very different personalities, with Angus’ obvious strength, obedience and eagerness to learn turning out to have some disadvantages when compared with Sadie’s different learning style and willingness to take chances in her own way. The tale ends up being about brothers and sisters in general, but told through the medium of a dog story – and at the same time, it nicely illuminates the qualities of an efficient working dog and the expectations that humans bring to this type of interspecies relationship.

      My Dog May Be a Genius is barely about dogs at all – the book’s title is the title of the first poem in this Jack Prelutsky collection, but the rest of the poetry takes on all sorts of other subjects. The dog poem is about a pup who knows many of the words that his boy speaks, such as “walk” and “food,” and now may, just may, be learning to spell them as well. Then there are poems about other real animals (“Two Penguins Once Collided”) and unreal ones (“The Zeenaleens”). There’s one about crossing a lion with a mouse, producing babies that “often roar, demanding cheese.” And one about shopping for a dinosaur – except it turns out that they are long gone, so how about a unicorn instead? Some of these poems go beyond Prelutsky’s usual silliness, such as “Sandwich Stan,” which includes (sandwiched within the rhymes) a list of some of the sandwiches that Stan makes: “badger belly boiled in bile,” “turtle tendon tuna tails,” “ants and cantaloupe with noodles,” and many more. James Stevenson’s delightful illustrations make this Prelutsky compendium especially enjoyable. For example, in the one for “The Blue-Bean-Bonking Bupple,” the expression on the face of the boy being bonked is just as much fun as the rhymes: “In a weird machine, unheard, unseen,/ lives the blue-bean-bonking Bupple,/ whose tentacles are long and lean,/ and sinuous and supple.” Stevenson also does a fine job illustrating poems whose shapes are part of the fun, such as “I’m Trapped in an Egg” with the words inside (of course) an egg, and “I Drank a Magic Potion” with its big-and-little theme. Not many dogs here, but plenty of fun.

(++++) POLITICAL CLASSINESS

The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t). By Alvin Stephen Felzenberg. Basic Books. $29.95.

Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter. By Rick Shenkman. Basic Books. $25.

Declare Yourself. Edited by America Ferrera. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $11.99.

      The handicapping of the presidential race every four years is paralleled by a surge in interest in the success of previous presidents – and which of their qualities the current aspirants should seek to emulate. This sort of “great-to-awful” ranking tends to be skewed by the social and political biases of the people making it and, often, by a lack of understanding of the times within which various presidents governed (not many people are thoroughly conversant with domestic economic issues in the days of, say, John Quincy Adams). Alvin Stephen Felzenberg, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University, has come up with an unusually clear-minded and reasonably unbiased approach to the question of leadership quality – and some suggestions on what voters should look for among current candidates to try to determine who has the potential to excel as the nation’s chief executive. Felsenberg has analyzed past presidents (excluding William Henry Harrison and John Garfield, who were assassinated early in their terms, and George W. Bush, whose term is not yet over) in three areas of personality and three of policy – thus making it possible to decide that someone was a good man but an ineffective leader, or a less-than-sterling human being but an effective policymaker. Felzenberg looks at each president’s character, vision and competence, and then at each one’s economic policy, his effectiveness at preserving and extending liberty, and his handling of defense, national security and foreign policy. Taken together, these six areas pretty well encompass the job of the occupant of the Oval Office – and Felzenberg’s system produces some surprises. Only Abraham Lincoln gets the highest rating, a 5, in all six categories; George Washington gets two 4 ratings and four ratings of 5. These are not unexpected results; but then things get interesting, with Ronald Reagan tied for third-highest ranking with Roosevelt – that’s Teddy, not Franklin. Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses S. Grant rank higher than many people will expect – and Felzenberg shows clearly why they should. At the bottom of the list is James Buchanan, who has been placed there by others as well; just above him, tied, are Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce; and just above them is a three-way tie that includes Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover and John Tyler. It is easy to quibble with Felzenberg’s (or anyone’s) rankings, but this author certainly draws valuable lessons from them for today’s voters – including “watch out for cynicism and complacency,” “stay away from whiners” and “keep away from know-it-alls.” There’s some really good advice in this book, in addition to really good analysis.

      But will voters pay any attention? Not according to investigative reporter Rick Shenkman, who asks Just How Stupid Are We? and answers, “Even dumber than you can imagine.” Much of Shenkman’s book rehashes oft-repeated statistics – for example, only one American out of every seven can find Iraq on a map – and the book’s bantering tone is overdone in a work attempting to draw attention to some very serious issues. So this book gets a (+++) rating – and is that high mostly because it does focus on major issues. Shenkman spreads the blame for voter stupidity around. TV, not surprisingly, is excoriated for giving incomplete and often inaccurate information, usually poorly, despite being the main news source for most Americans; and the educational establishment is blamed for the poor focus of students and the fact that – even though most Americans today have some college – they know less than most people did in 1940, when 60% did not get past eighth grade. Unfortunately, Shenkman’s jeremiad leads to nowhere very useful. He finds the Internet and blogosphere to be hopeful signs for transmission of accurate information – a questionable proposition – and essentially insists that “the People should be forced to face their own ignorance.” How? “If the pollsters paid by the media fail to probe the public’s ignorance, foundations should finance polls that do.” And then? Well, college students should be given weekly tests on current events, with graduation contingent on a passing grade; the fund setting up the program would be called “the Too Many Stupid Voters Act.” But not even poorly informed voters can believe that this proposal (under any name) will ever become law. Unfortunately, Shenkman’s book proves only, for the umpteenth time, that it is far easier to identify problems than to solve them.

      One partial answer to Shenkman’s concerns may be to bring in large numbers of new voters – ones who, ideally, will be more attuned to the problems of modern society and more willing to use their ballots to ameliorate them. That is the concept underlying Declare Yourself, in which stars and semi-stars of the entertainment world and Web explain why politics matters and why young people should register and vote. Shenkman actually points out that the United States now places “a high priority on entertainment,” notably celebrity-related entertainment, so perhaps this book is on to something. TV star America Ferrera (could her name be the reason she was chosen as editor?) talks about the need to “turn apathy into action” and then sets forth similar thoughts from such people as blogger Anastasia Goodstein, comedian Rachael Harris, CNN anchor Nicole Lapin, poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and actress and ex-model Gabrielle Union. There is nothing particularly original in any of the contributions, but the book deserves a (+++) rating just for making the attempt to connect with a new generation of potential voters through some people who may, just may, be able to get a civics message across.

(+++) WORLDS DISTURBED

Smiles to Go. By Jerry Spinelli. HarperCollins. $16.99.

The Crossroads. By Chris Grabenstein. Random House. $16.99.

      The proton dies. Then what? This is the unlikely premise of Jerry Spinelli’s latest book for ages 10 and up, Smiles to Go. Protons do not decay – but what if they did? The cosmic significance would be vast, but Spinelli is more interested in the impact of the event on the life of Will Tuppence. Will is a science geek and skateboarder, two interests that Spinelli manages to merge in his usual clever style of super-short chapters detailing Will’s worries that “matter is mortal. Everything is going to go. Disappear. Vanish. Rock. Water. The planets. The stars. Everything.” And of course, Will’s body will eventually go, too, and his life seems to be going now, since all his plans to become an astronomer, have a solid working life and eventually be a top senior chess player after retirement seem irrelevant in a universe in which protons die. Will’s 12-step plan for himself actually ends with “Heaven (angel) (forever),” but the proton news provokes such questions as, “Are angels made of protons? Is Heaven? If so, does this mean they won’t last forever?” And then there are the mundane realities of a ninth-grader, such as taking his friend Mi-Su Kelly to a movie (just the two of them, Will hopes), and figuring out how to tell BT that he is still Will’s best friend but that Mi-Su is a friend in a different kind of way, and so on. Among all his worries about his life, Will has time to fill in some of his family background, and to find out how much his current family means to him when a medical crisis hits his little sister, whom he has always (he thinks) hated. Smiles to Go has a few too many themes and tries to do too much with them, and Spinelli’s short-chapter format seems rather contrived here; but as usual, there are more high points than low in Spinelli’s latest look at the problems of preteen life.

      Chris Grabenstein’s The Crossroads is his first book for preteens (ages 9-12), but the problems in it are far from mundane. This is a story of ghosts and crazy old ladies and family ties that not only bind but also can strangle. At the center of everything is 11-year-old Zack Jennings, who has just moved from New York City to a better life in Connecticut, complete with a new stepmother, new dog and new neighbors. One part of the problem here is Zack’s dead mother – she is still haunting him. Another problem is the tree in the back yard of Zack’s new home – a malevolent spirit, linked to a past tragedy at the crossroads, lives in it. And the 50^th anniversary of that tragedy is coming up very, very soon. The Crossroads becomes the story of a supernatural mystery, into which it turns out someone was looking 25 years earlier. There are generational revenge elements here, and ghostly possession, and a suicide, and “long-buried secrets” that are revealed at last. The book devolves into a series of melodramatic disappearances and returns, with one key being a soul that lives again and again if it can “crawl inside a body that carries his royal blood.” This is creepy stuff, but it is piled on so thickly that even some preteen readers may find it over-the-top, as one part of the story seems to end, but then there’s another twist, and that is concluded, but another twist arrives, and so on and so forth. There are certainly clever things in Grabenstein’s book – including some people, or rather things, that you wouldn’t believe could be ghosts, but are. But even though parts of The Crossroads are done very well, the book as a whole is overdone.

(+++) SUMMER FLUFF

The Secrets of Peaches. By Jodi Lynn Anderson. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Off Campus: An Upper Class Novel. By Hobson Brown, Taylor Materne, and Caroline Says. HarperTeen. $8.99.

The Interns: Fashionistas. By Chloe Walsh. HarperTeen. $8.99.

The Interns: Truth or Fashion. By Chloe Walsh. HarperTeen. $8.99.

Frenemies. By Alexa Young. HarperTeen. $8.99.

      Summertime, and the readin’ is easy – and insubstantial. Teens looking for a throwaway book for the beach or the pool can pick up any of these, and it doesn’t much matter which. None pretends to be anything more than superficial; all have similar characters, defined by what they do and how they look rather than by any attempt to create personalities for them; and all offer plots that hit the expected points of the teen-beach-lit genre without trying to go beyond them. But they all fulfill the expectations that readers will bring to them – within their genre, they are done quite well.

      If you liked Peaches, you will probably enjoy Jodi Lynn Anderson’s sequel, The Secrets of Peaches. The same girls who suffered heartbreak while keeping their friendship strong in the earlier book now suffer heartbreak and keep their friendship strong in the new one. The plot revolves around the possibility that Murphy, Leeda and Birdie may have to leave the peach orchard where they spent a magical summer – the orchard that brought them together. There are family and boy and friendship issues throughout, and even though the friends are sundered at the end, there is an implication that there will be more of their tale to come – and indeed there will be, in the followup novel, Love and Peaches.

      The Upper Class novels, set in a privileged school filled with rich kids with secrets of various sorts, are essentially about culture clash – people showing up at Wellington who, for one reason or another, “don’t belong” there. In Off Campus, the third of these books, Nikki Olivetti finally feels comfortable enough to try to show someone new around – someone like transfer student Delia Breton, who comes from California with (of course) secrets. Nikki and Delia find themselves having a good time together on campus – but problems arise when they head out beyond Wellington. There are the expected boy issues and friendship issues, with the key being the eventual realization, “You feel low, you stand tall. You mess up, you move on.” And that sets the stage for Crash Test, the next novel in the series.

      Fashionistas is the first in The Interns series, in which four talented young women have the chance to make it big in the fashion world, where they all want to be, by succeeding in summer internships at Couture magazine. The characters of Callie, Nadine, Ava and Aynsley are all designed around different stereotypical personalities, guaranteeing that there will be clashes and uncertainty; and the question of who is behind a blog dispensing all-that fashion wisdom lends predictable spice to their tale. These girls aim high, they think: “If Sly could manage to toss back a bottle of Pinot, stumble to bed at two a.m., and still show up to work the next day pulling fashion miracles out of her ass, then Nadine was determined to do the same.” The girls, of course, learn about Life and Friendship, and the book sets the scene for its sequel, Truth or Fashion. In this one, Callie and Aynsley have found big success (not bad for interns!) – the former as a designer, no less – while Nadine and Ava hide secrets and worries. Throw in the continuing Fashionista blog, which here even talks back to (the ghosts of) Marilyn Monroe and Oscar Wilde, add the usual brand-label name dropping, and you have a continuing saga of shallowness that remains fun in its own way.

      Fashion also plays a big part in Frenemies, which is not, at least so far, part of a series. Avalon Greene is the fashionista par excellence at her Southern California middle school – yes, middle school – and has decided that she will host the social event of the season by giving a to-die-for party in honor of her BFF, Halley Brandon. Unfortunately, Halley has undergone a fashion conversion during art camp, becoming more funky than elegant, and that is so not going to happen in Avalon’s world. So the best friends become worst enemies, and get into disputes over who gets to keep which of their former friends-in-common, and how to share custody of the puppy they co-own, Pucci (that name is actually a nice touch). Then things get really nasty, since Avalon and Halley know each other’s deepest, darkest middle-school secrets. But after all the nastiness is aired and all the blog posts have evaporated into cyberspace, the girls realize that, after all, they really do need each other, and it’s better to go back to being friends. Awwwwwwww.

(++++) FORMS OF AUTHENTICITY

Varèse: Amériques (original version, 1921); Écuatorial (1932-4); Nocturnal (1961); Dance for Burgess (1949); Tuning Up (1947); Hyperprism (1922-3); Un grand Sommeil noir (1906); Density 21.5 (1936); Ionisation (1929-31). Elizabeth Watts, soprano; Maria Grochowska, flute; Thomas Bloch, ondes martenot; Men’s Voices of Camerata Silesia and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee. Naxos. $8.99.

Telemann: Concertos in G Major and A Major for Oboe d’amore; Bach: Concertos in A Major and D Major for Oboe d’amore. Thomas Stacy, oboe d’amore; Toronto Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kevin Mallon. Naxos. $8.99.

Hildegard von Bingen: Responsories and Antiphons from “Symphoniae armonie celestium revelationum.” Oxford Camerata conducted by Jeremy Summerly. Naxos. $8.99.

      It is not only the mists of time that make authentic performances difficult. Composers themselves have a hand in the situation through their propensity for modifying works for various purposes and sometimes rewriting them altogether. And when they leave works unfinished, or try to withdraw or destroy them after they have been performed, the authenticity issue gets even more complicated. Edgard Varèse was guilty (if that is the word) of all these confusions, with the result that his music, already so different sonically from what came before or after, can be notoriously difficult to perform “correctly.” Indeed, correctness is a slippery concept with Varèse, as is especially evident in the case of Amériques, whose original version (for a truly huge orchestra) has been performed in public only twice since the 1920s – with the new recording on Naxos being made after the second such performance, in 2005. Christopher Lyndon-Gee is an outstanding exponent of Varèse, able to communicate the composer’s distinctive and often odd visions by assuming the roles of a conductor, a pianist (in Tuning Up, which was supposed to be lighthearted but turned out to be a serious work containing fragments of other Varèse compositions), and a commentator (Lyndon-Gee’s booklet notes are an excellent mixture of erudition and explication). This Naxos CD, the second of the composer’s orchestral music under Lyndon-Gee’s direction, is first-class on all fronts, from the solo flute playing in Density 21.5 to the sole surviving early Varèse work (Un grand Sommeil noir) to the still-strange-sounding evocations of an earlier age in Écuatorial. Varèse was constantly straining for effects that only became fully possible after his death, in electronic music. Hearing his works played as well as they are here shows his pioneering spirit especially clearly – even though the authenticity question remains open, since several of these pieces were assembled or edited by Chou Wen-Chung, who was Varèse’s assistant for the last 17 years of the older composer’s life.

      The authenticity of the Telemann and Bach concertos for oboe d’amore, as played by Thomas Stacy, is of another order. This 18^th-century midrange woodwind (which later fell into disfavor until rediscovered by Richard Strauss, Debussy and others) needs to fit comfortably into an instrumental ensemble so its serene, mellow tone does not disappear – and its player does not feel the need to perform too loudly on an instrument that excels in softer, more tranquil passagework. Stacy, best known as an English horn player, handles the oboe d’amore with consummate skill as well; and Kevin Mallon, a specialist in 18^th-century music, conducts the Toronto Chamber Orchestra with verve and understanding, showcasing the solo instrument without pulling the orchestra too far into the background. However, neither the orchestra nor Stacy uses a period instrument. And in truth, the Telemann and Bach concertos on this CD are pleasant but not especially noteworthy works – more curiosities than great music. One of the Bach works is better known as a harpsichord concerto, and the other is assembled from parts of three separate pieces. Still, all the music is very well put together (no surprise there), and Stacy’s playing, which is beautiful even when the faster movements require considerable agility, makes a strong case for at least occasional hearings of works for this neglected woodwind.

      Move still further back in time, to the 12^th century, and the question of authentic performance becomes, essentially, unanswerable. Despite a variety of scholarly studies, we simply do not know with any certainty what performance practices prevailed in the era of Hildegard von Bingen, although it is quite clear from this abbess’s music that she had high expectations of anyone who would sing her songs to the Creator, the Blessed Virgin, the Martyrs and other seminal religious figures. Von Bingen’s Catholicism-saturated world – there was no other significant Western religion at the time – cannot be recaptured today. But, amazingly, it matters little when performances are as finely attuned as are those of the Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly. Summerly paces these eight excerpts from the 77 songs of von Bingen’s Symphoniae armonie celestium revelationum (“Symphony of the Harmony of Heavenly Revelations”) expertly, and the choral forces blend in beauty and passion. Von Bingen’s mysticism and her sometimes odd choices of religious figures to whom to address her songs are of little moment today. What does come through authentically in performances as well structured as these is that the music itself communicates strongly across nearly nine centuries. Its specifics may be dim in time, but its power and beauty remain authentically unalloyed.

(+++) SELF-PRODUCTIONS

Ravel: String Quartet in F; Thomas Adès: Arcadiana; Mozart: String Quartet in F Major, K. 590. Calder Quartet (Benjamin Jacobson and Andrew Bulbrook, violins; Jonathan Moerschel, viola; Eric Byers, cello). Calder Quartet CD. $20.

Matt McBane: In the Backyard; Magnet; No Response; Imagining Winter; Drivin’. Build (Matt McBane, violin; Andrea Lee, cello; Ben Campbell, bass; Mike Cassedy, piano/Rhodes; Adam Gold, drums). New Amsterdam. CD, $10; download, $5.

      One way for artists to show themselves to the world just as they want to be shown is to produce recordings of exactly the music they wish, programmed just as they want it to be. This can be highly effective – or perhaps a bit more revelatory of weaknesses than the artists thought it would be. In the case of the Calder Quartet’s new CD, it is both. The 71-minute recording approximates the sort of recital that this top-notch young group presents in concert. There is one major staple of the quartet repertoire, one less-known and more modern work by an important composer, and one contemporary piece that will be new to almost everyone hearing the CD. The Calder’s players are remarkably smooth in making transitions among these three works’ very different styles. They play almost always with excellent ensemble and near-intuitive collaboration. And they seem to have no difficulty with any of the composers’ technical demands. On balance, the Ravel Quartet is the most successful work here, with the players beautifully balancing its poise and its emotion, handling its rhythmic changes and sometimes-unusual bowing techniques with apparent ease. This is music that never quite settles – in part tranquil, in part almost frenzied, it jumps around emotionally and thematically (even though its first movement sets forth many of the themes of the whole piece). The Calder Quartet picks up beautifully on the work’s will-o’-the-wisp qualities.

      The players do a fine job with Thomas Adès’ Arcadiana, too, but there is far less to the music itself. This is a seven-movement work that seems to require a great deal of explanation – the odd-numbered movements “are all aquatic, and would be musically continuous if played consecutively,” for example, as the composer explains in the booklet notes. The middle (fourth) movement, which is the longest (although still under four minutes), is called “Et…” (with ellipsis) and refers to the saying on a tomb portrayed in a Poussin painting (actually, Nicolas Poussin used the phrase “Et in Arcadia ego” in two paintings, and the phrase’s meaning has an ambiguity of which Adès seems unaware). But the musical issue here is how well the piece works, whether or not one has the composer’s gloss on it; and the answer is that it is pleasant enough in its post-modern way, using the instruments cleverly and distinctively, but seems to say much less than Adès himself thinks it says. The Calder Quartet plays it very well indeed, but Arcadiana is not really much of a piece.

      Mozart’s 23^rd and final quartet, on the other hand, is one of the great chamber works – but here the performance is surprisingly flaccid. This quartet is nowhere near as languid as the Calder players make it, and there is even a touch of less-than-perfect ensemble work in the finale – a rarity for this group. It is almost as if the Calder Quartet gave the Mozart (which is superficially the easiest of these three works to play) too little thought before recording it; yet this piece requires a higher level of understanding than either of the others on the CD. The Calder Quartet is so good that it seems likely the players will grow into this music in time; but they do not quite have it yet. Incidentally, this CD’s packaging shows the power and peril of self-promotion: it features lovely original art by Dave Muller, but the design completely omits times – no lengths are given for the whole pieces or for their individual movements.

      The new Matt McBane release is of a very different type, although it too is intended to showcase someone – McBane himself – in the way he wants to be displayed. This is a very short CD – only 33 minutes – with five pieces that may best be described as easy-listening jazz fusion. The three shortest pieces have the least to say: In the Backyard is merely a floaty dreamscape that sounds like many others; Magnet features an interesting contrast between a specific rhythmic pattern and longer melodic lines, but it seems to go on and on and becomes gimmicky; and No Response is one of those pop tunes that seem to issue endlessly from middle-of-the-road radio. Imagining Winter is more interesting: its static chords at start and finish provide an effective chill, while its drum part suggests the advance of something dark. Also of interest is Drivin’, which at nearly 14 minutes is by far the longest work here. McBane says it resulted largely from his immersion in the music of minimalist composer Steve Reich, but Drivin’ is not an imitative work and uses minimalism quite differently from the way Reich does – primarily as a point of continuity among different kinds of music and a bridge from one type to the next. Drivin’ does go on a bit too long, but it offers many effective moments along the way, and the performance (of this and all the music) by McBane’s group, Build, is everything the composer could have wanted – which does not necessarily mean McBane’s music is destined to reach as large an audience as he would like.

(++++) DINOS AND HUGS

I’m Bad! By Kate & Jim McMullan. HarperCollins. $16.99.

T. Rex and the Mother’s Day Hug. By Lois R. Grambling. Illustrated by Jack E. Davis. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $16.99.

Daddy Hug. By Tim Warnes. Illustrated by Jane Chapman. HarperCollins. $16.99.

      There are lots of animals in these books doing lots of kid-centered things, starting with the fierce-looking T. Rex on the cover of I’m Bad! – from the same husband-and-wife team that previously produced I Stink! and I’m Dirty! Charming, no? In fact, what Kate and Jim McMullan offer here is charming in its own weird way, which is a way sure to appeal to lots of kids ages 4-8. The boastful T. Rex storms and stomps and crashes around, but every time he tries to catch something to eat, those other animals get away. Finally, hungry and upset, T. Rex throws a temper tantrum – which ends in a wonderful flip-up flap as his mother appears and drops a fresh-killed something-or-other on the ground so T. Rex can slurber, slobber and globber it up, afterwards concluding “I love my mom.” It’s all good clean bad dirty fun, missing only a scene in which little T. Rex hugs his mom in gratitude.

      For that hugging scene, turn to the much more domesticated, up-to-date and suburban T. Rex family in T. Rex and the Mother’s Day Hug. Lois R. Grambling and Jack E. Davis specialize in books in which the T. Rex family celebrates holidays – Halloween, Easter and now Mother’s Day. The problem for T. Rex is that he wants to do something for his mother, not just buy her something, but whatever he thinks of doing is, he realizes, a bad idea, because he has tried doing it before and things haven’t quite worked out as he wanted them to. As for Mama Rex, what she wants for Mother’s Day is simply a big hug; but that’s not good enough for little T. Rex, who finally thinks of something perfect to do – with the help of his friends, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Iguanodon. That “something perfect” turns out to involve Mama Rex’s car…and oh my, does it turn out to be a BIG surprise! “‘That’s…that’s my car?’ she asked. (Hoping it wasn’t!)” Oh, but it is – and the expression of her face is quite a sight. But before things can get too inflammatory, little T. Rex comes over and gives his mother a BIG hug, which is what she has been wanting all along, so everything ends happily, with Mama Rex being especially glad that “Mother’s Day came only once a year.”

      Daddy Hug continues the “hug” theme without the holiday trappings and without the dinosaurs, but there are plenty of other animals here in a gently appealing book by the husband-and-wife team of Tim Warnes and Jane Chapman. This book is for younger children, ages 3-5, and is nothing more than a series of brief descriptions of animal daddies – “Daddy spiky” for a porcupine, “Daddy jiggle” for a walrus, “Daddy creaky” for a huge tortoise, and so on. Chapman’s illustrations portray the animals realistically but show their interactions in human-friendly terms, as porcupines play with ostriches, snails climb happily on snakes, and so on. The activities of daddies and kids are delightful to watch – fathers will really enjoy reading this book with young children – and the expressions that Chapman gives to some of the daddies are wonderful (the bee and gorilla, for example). The book leads up to an eventual “Daddy hug” page showing most of the animals nuzzling and embracing – a fine invitation for human daddies to do the same thing with their kids.

(+++) BODIES AND SOULS

Airhead. By Meg Cabot. Point/Scholastic. $16.99.

All We Know of Heaven. By Jacquelyn Mitchard. HarperTeen. $16.99.

The Monk Upstairs. By Tim Farrington. HarperOne. $13.95.

      Here are three books that try, with varying degrees of success, to deal with big issues without tilting completely over into pure absurdity. Airhead gets the absurdity over with early and then handles the consequences: Emerson Watts goes to a major store opening to look after her little sister, Frida, and a bizarre and never-explained accident causes Em’s soul to migrate into the body of teen supermodel Nikki Howard, who is on site as part of the store-opening festivities. This setup makes no sense, and Meg Cabot – author of The Princess Diaries and other books that also make no sense but possess the same quality of transformation – is wise to get past it as quickly as possible. Then she can get to the heart of Airhead, which is: what does Em do now? How will she, in Nikki’s body, handle everything from her (Em’s) understandably distraught family to her (Nikki’s) roommate…err, loftmate? What about school? What about Christopher, on whom she (Em) had a crush even when she (Em) was her old tomboyish self? And who has been spying on her (Nikki’s) E-mails, and why? And how does Stark, the company in whose new store the bizarre brain switch occurred and the company that made the computer on whose her (Nikki’s) E-mails are being compromised, fit into all this? Cabot provides answers here and there, and some doses of amusement because of all the opportunities for mistaken identity (or rather correct but unbelievable identity); but she also holds plenty in reserve, and no wonder – more will surely be told in Being Nikki, the coming sequel to Airhead.

      All We Know of Heaven tries for more of a “true grit” approach to a heartwrenching story of mistaken identity. The book is based on an event that really happened, but it milks that event (or rather Jacquelyn Mitchard’s fictionalized version of it) for all it is worth and then some. The event is a car crash in which best friends Bridget and Maureen are involved one night, on an icy road. One girl dies and the other ends up in a coma, so severely injured that no one is sure which was which. Eventually, it is determined that Maureen died and Bridget lived – but then that turns out to be wrong, and Maureen is discovered to be the survivor. She emerges from her coma, but has brain damage as well as physical difficulties, and must contend with re-learning life and speech and human interaction…and with the jumble of emotions involving everyone in her small town, including Bridget’s mother and others who feel that the “wrong” girl lived. Slowly, slowly, Maury rebuilds herself, aided immeasurably by a boy named Danny Carmody, with whom she develops a love-or-not-love relationship that, like everything else in Maury’s life, is strongly intertwined with the accident and Bridget’s death. Mitchard loses no opportunity to tug on people’s emotional triggers, and as a result frequently goes too far into complete predictability: if something can be twisted, it is, and if something can be taken the wrong way, it will be. By the conclusion of the book, as the various young characters find ways to get on, tentatively, with becoming adults and living the best lives they can, some readers will surely have wept buckets, while others will likely be grateful that all Mitchard’s obvious emotional ploys have finally come to an end.

      Airhead and All We Know of Heaven are intended for teen readers, but The Monk Upstairs, although aimed at adults, does not have a very different emotional underpinning. This is a sequel to The Monk Downstairs (well, of course!), in which single mother Rebecca Martin found her life beginning to change when the new tenant in the apartment she was renting out proved to be a monk fleeing into the outside world after 20 years in a monastery. Love bloomed; and that leads, in The Monk Upstairs, to marriage – right at the start of the new novel. After that, love and marriage lead to complications, some of which involve interoffice (or intra-monastery) politics and others of which relate to Mike’s continued and sincere devotion to God and the strains that relationship puts on his marriage to Rebecca. Much of Tim Farrington’s writing style is clever, and it helps save the book from becoming as maudlin as it otherwise might be: “Father Thomas Dougherty turned out to be a burly man wearing floppy rubber boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt with ‘St. Luke’s: A Mission with a mission’ stretched across his barrel chest in an ill-advised red that made the words look like a wound.” But most of the characters are types rather than fully formed individuals, and while Rebecca is well fleshed out, Mike is less so. Farrington gives Mike a superficial rather than deeply thought-through relationship with God, making it surprising that Mike lasted as long as he did in the monastery. Still, Mike discovers (or rediscovers) an ability to bring comfort to people in emotional turmoil, and he and Rebecca do find a way to build their life together, so the overall tone of the book is uplifting. But it is profound neither in matters of faith nor in matters of marriage.