(++++) TARNISHED GOLD, BURNISHED SILVER

Lehár: Die Blaue Mazur. Johanna Stojkovich and Julia Bauer, sopranos; Johan Weigel and Jan Kobow, tenors; Hans Christoph Begemann, baritone; Kammerchor der Singakademie Frankfurt and Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt conducted by Frank Beermann. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Strauss: Fürstin Ninetta. Tua Åberg, Elin Rombo and Henrikka Gröndahl, sopranos; Fredrik Strid and Göran Eliasson, tenors; Jesper Taub, Ola Eliasson and Samuel Jarrick, baritones; Ninetta Chorus and Stockholm Strauss Orchestra conducted by Valéria Csányi. Naxos. $17.99 (2 CDs).

     Franz Lehár’s first big hit, the Gold and Silver Waltz of 1902, was not intended as a demarcation between the Golden Age and Silver Age of operetta, but in retrospect, that is pretty much what it turned out to be. Lehár himself was the prime successor to the operetta mantle of Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss Jr., with other composers (notably Emmerich Kálmán) also making significant contributions to operetta in the 20^th century. But except for The Merry Widow, Lehár’s operettas are underperformed today, and certainly the peculiarly titled Die Blaue Mazur (“The Blue Mazurka”) is almost completely unknown. The new CPO recording is therefore most welcome, showcasing some wonderful tunes in an unusual plot that starts with a wedding instead of ending with it. This 1920 work is a late pre-Tauber Lehár operetta – he started writing for tenor Richard Tauber with Frasquita in 1922, and his works from then on were darker and lacked happy endings. Die Blaue Mazur, though, sparkles. It is an operetta set in Poland, where (according to the libretto) it is said that a “blue mazurka,” played at dawn as the sky turns blue, is danced by a man only with the woman he wants to claim as his own forever. The plot has Count Olinski (Johan Weigel) marrying Blanka (Johanna Stojkovich) at the start, then lamenting his lost romantic freedom to his friend Adolar (Jan Kobow) at just about the same time Olinski’s ex-lover, Gretl (Julia Bauer), shows up. Blanka overhears Olinski’s concerns, Gretl stirs the pot of jealousy, Blanka flees the scene, and it takes the rest of the operetta for all misunderstandings to be sorted out and for Olinski to sweep Blanka into the blue mazurka. Dance itself is central to the operetta’s plot, and Lehár supplies an ample stream of it, from a lovely waltz song in the first scene, to a gavotte with typically beautiful Lehárian solo violin passages in the act’s second scene, to a waltz scene and the blue mazurka in Act II. There are also a march duet and a madrigal quintet. Everything is quite lovely – perhaps too lovely for a work written after the devastation of World War I (which is why Lehár did nothing like Die Blaue Mazur again). The singing is poised and heartfelt throughout the new CPO recording, and Frank Beermann keeps the action flowing smoothly and warmly. The only big disappointment here is the lack of a libretto: there is plenty of dialogue, and non-German speakers ought to have a chance to know both the spoken words and the lyrics of the arias. CPO used to be distinguished for the fine libretti it included with its recordings of less-known works. Its decision to stop issuing them is particularly unfortunate in the case of an operetta such as Die Blaue Mazur, whose libretto will be virtually impossible for interested listeners to find. A decent summary of the action is included, but it is scarcely enough.

     There is a summary of the action in the new Naxos recording of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Fürstin Ninetta, too; and Naxos offers the libretto online – but only in German, which won’t help English speakers much. In this case, though, it is harder to lament the absence of the text, since this operetta’s libretto is truly execrable – and Strauss wrote the music without knowing what the text in between the numbers would be! (He later expressed disappointment, saying the spoken sections did not go well with the music.) If Die Blaue Mazur is something of an undiscovered pleasure from operetta’s Silver Age, Fürstin Ninetta is a little-known example of an inferior production of the Golden Age. This does not mean that Strauss’ music for this 1893 work is poor – much of it is bright and charming. (The best-known piece, the Neue Pizzicato Polka, was written a year before the operetta and inserted into its third act.) But the story is completely incoherent, involving (among other things) a princess who first appears dressed as a man (for reasons never explained), and who in that guise attracts female guests at a beach hotel; a hypnotist with an Italian circus who was previously an Egyptian government official but is really a Russian nobleman; an English Lord who, because of a bet, is not allowed to speak; reports of a thief and murderer attacking people on the path to Mt. Vesuvius; and more. With such an incomprehensible mishmash of a plot, it may be just as well not to know the words and to be able to focus on the Strauss tunes, which include (in addition to the well-known polka) a “hypnotizing duet,” an effective tarantella, an attractive women’s chorus and, not surprisingly, some lovely (if mostly short) waltzes – the best being a paean to polygamy. This live performance of Fürstin Ninetta is not as polished as the studio recording of Die Blaue Mazur, with the large number of soloists (four sopranos, a contralto, four tenors and three baritones) often having indistinguishable vocal tone – although Jesper Taube shows some nuance, and fine comic timing, as both Cassim Pascha and the unfortunate Lord Plato, who can only sing “hum.” Conductor Valéria Csányi does an adequate job of propelling the action, but there is a little less bounce and flair than this bit of Straussian fluff ought to have. The result is a (+++) rating for this rendition of an operetta that is good to have available on CD despite its many manifest theatrical shortcomings.

(++++) HEAVY, MIDDLE AND LIGHT

Deeper. By Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. Chicken House/Scholastic. $18.99.

The 100 Cupboards, Book 2: Dandelion Fire. By N.D. Wilson. Random House. $16.99.

Dear Dumb Diary #8: It’s Not My Fault I Know Everything. By Jim Benton. Scholastic. $5.99.

     Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams are creating quite a series with their tales of a mysterious and often frightening underground world. Tunnels, the first book in the sequence and the authors’ first novel, introduced 14-year-old Will Burrows and his best friend, Chester, who investigated the mysterious disappearance of Will’s father – who vanished shortly after discovering a mysterious abandoned tunnel underneath London. The young explorers found an entire underground civilization and a malevolent and genuinely scary group called the Styx that dominated the belowground world through fear. Will and Chester eventually made it back to Topsoil – the everyday aboveground world – but there were plenty of loose ends that made it clear they would need to return to the world beneath soon. And so they do in Deeper, which combines the frightening elements that Gordon and Williams brought to Tunnels with an expanded sense of intricacy involving family relationships – including a confrontation between Will’s birth mother and adoptive mother that turns out to have a great deal to do with a Styx plan to eliminate Topsoilers altogether. The story proceeds in multiple threads, flashing from Styx activities to Will’s continuing search to the adventures of Will’s father himself. The notes that Dr. Burrows enters day after day in his journal provide a great deal of information on the underground world and the people living there, but it is the events involving the other characters that give Deeper its emotional punch and overarching sense of dread. Not surprisingly in a series of this type, Will’s importance increases as the events progress, as a Styx elder explains: “Will Burrows is contained for the moment, but he may yet become a false idol, a figurehead, for our enemies. They might seek to use him in their opposition of us and the measures we intend to take. He cannot be allowed to continue to roam unchecked in the Interior. He must be flushed out and stopped.” So as Will searches, others search for him, and the world beneath becomes increasingly multidimensional and complex, filled with alliances, renegades, competing social structures and considerable danger for the unwary. The elements of the story gradually interweave, and eventually Will and his companions learn of a deadly virus called Dominion that the Styx intend to release to destroy the Topsoilers. Pursued by Limiters and Stalkers, Will and the others are hopelessly overmatched and outmaneuvered, and anyone hoping for a happy ending will not find it here. Deeper is clearly a way station between Tunnels and the next book of the series, Freefall, but it does serve to deepen the story while providing a higher level of intensity than is usually found in books for ages 8-12. It will, in fact, likely be too intense for readers on the lower end of that age spectrum.

     Dandelion Fire, on the other hand, will be just fine for pretty much all preteens. Exciting but not nearly as disturbing as Deeper, N.D. Wilson’s sequel to The 100 Cupboards continues the adventure that began when rather timid 12-year-old Henry York found a wall covered with 100 cupboard doors in his aunt and uncle’s house in Kansas. Go through the cupboards and, to use an obvious phrase, you’re not in Kansas anymore. And Henry found in the first book that the cupboards were really portals that could conceal evil (in the form of the witch of Endor) in addition to wonders. The second book’s title refers to the gift of second sight: dandelion fire is said to run through the veins of those who have it. And Henry discovers that he is one of those. He now knows that he was born in one of the cupboard worlds, and is determined to reenter the cupboards to find his real parents and learn his own background and, perhaps, destiny. This is a rather formulaic setup for a quest story, and the tale is often told in rather formulaic language: “A knot tied in her stomach, and she felt the first stage of panic. She didn’t want to express her thought. Not even to herself. But she did. She might never get home.” Still, the very simplicity of the writing will make Dandelion Fire attractive to many young readers, and the nearly nonstop – if not particularly intense – action is well enough handled to earn the book a (+++) rating.

     Intensity is the last thing Jim Benton wants in his “Tales from Mackerel Middle School,” of which It’s Not My Fault I Know Everything is the eighth. In these books, Jamie Kelly’s diaries follow a familiar pattern (starting with an admonition to readers not to read them), although this one includes a “Diploma of Everything” foldout just to make things more interesting. In this episode as in earlier ones, Jamie has problems with her “best enemy,” Angeline, imaging that Angeline “wakes up in a puddle of her own beauty, and she glides over to the mirror and radiates gorgeous glamour all over the place.” Jamie has problems with boys, too (“bathing won’t kill you”), and with dogs (her dog and Angeline’s just had puppies together, leading Jamie to give the puppies names ranging from “The Bubblegum Duchess” to “Stinkette”). Jamie does not have problems (usually) with her best friend, Isabella, or with those quizzes in magazines: “I’m a Magazine Quiz Genius, so it just naturally follows that I am a genius at everything. I mean, we have to admit: The people who write these quizzes are the brightest people in the nation.” Like the other Dear Dumb Diary books, this one is a collection of largely unrelated events that eventually turn out to be sort-of-related after all. It helps that Jamie’s Aunt Carol works in the school office and is married to Uncle Dan, the assistant principal – who is Angeline’s uncle. But what really helps the book – and gives it a (+++) rating despite its predictability – are Benton’s drawings, which are consistently funnier than the often-amusing stories. This time, one picture shows a girl carrying a “sacred diary” and accompanied by a “sacred koala assistant, which would be awesome”; one shows a girl literally turning into a puddle when stared at by a huge-eyed puppy (“a puppy’s gaze can actually make a human girl melt with PURE LOVE”); one shows a famous-but-ugly person improving his looks by taping his paycheck to his face. Dear Dumb Diary is scarcely great writing and is not even great drawing; but it is great fun, which is clearly all that Benton wants it to be.

(++++) SF WITH A GERMAN ACCENT

The Black Mirror & Other Stories: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany & Austria. Edited by Franz Rottensteiner. Translated by Mike Mitchell. Wesleyan University Press. $27.95.

     Although this outstanding book is part of the Wesleyan University Press “Early Classics of Science Fiction” series, a great deal of it is not early at all: of the 25 stories here, only eight predate World War Two, and four were written in the 21^st century. But these tales will be terra incognita to most SF readers, because Germany and Austria have been, surprisingly, backwaters of the science-fiction field.

     This does not seem logical. The vaunted German prowess in scientific endeavors, including Germany’s development of the first successful rockets (admittedly under the Nazis and for purposes of war), would seem to indicate a culture where science fiction would flourish. But the field largely traces its modern roots to England (H.G. Wells) and France (Jules Verne), and even those who would push its origins back further – say, to Jonathan Swift’s tale of Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa – would be unlikely to find them in Germany. It is not entirely clear why this should be so (an “engineering” rather than “speculative” cultural mentality, perhaps?), and Franz Rottensteiner’s introduction to The Black Mirror makes no attempt to explore the question, instead tracing German SF’s early days and showing how the authors in the present volume fit into the flow. But Rottensteiner’s “Short History of Science Fiction in German” does do an excellent job of naming many of the authors who have used the SF form and showing how they influenced each other.

     It is the stories themselves, though, that make this book so special. This is one of those rare anthologies in which the relatively lower quality of some stories is quite deliberate: Rottensteiner says he did not try to select “‘the best,’ but [rather] a collection of texts and writers important for the development of the genre in the German language.” Still, if some tales are turgid or unconvincing, and others are derivative (of Wells and Verne, among others), most are quite intriguing, showing speculative explorations different from those attempted by SF writers in other languages. There is a considerable amount of purely philosophical thinking in some of these stories. The title tale, written by Erik Simon in 1983 in what was then East Germany, involves realized abstractions and ideally permeable mathematical surfaces. A much earlier story, “Malvu the Helmsman” (by Paul Scheerbart; 1912), starts with elements of Swiftian fantasy in its conception of a race in which all individuals have different types and numbers of limbs and different means of locomotion – and then, when the title character loses all limbs at the same time, becomes an exercise in philosophically reimagining how the race should live.

     There is more than a touch of surrealism in Scheerbart’s tale, and more than a touch as well in “Jules Verne in Hell” (Ludwig Hevesi; 1906), which fascinatingly and humorously imagines the French SF author attempting to understand how Hell works and then to convince its rulers to use more modern methods to achieve their aims.

     A number of the stories here are short-shorts, and while they do not rise to the level of Fredric Brown, the most consistently excellent creator of such tidbits, they are mostly excellent. Some examples: “Is the Earth Inhabited?” (Egon Friedell; 1931) explains why, from an alien point of view, no one could possibly live on our planet; “Thought Control” (Herbert W. Franke; 1961) shows a captive human outthinking a machine that can read his thoughts; “Say It with Flowers” (Ernst Vlcek; 1980) has a pithy and rather elegant anti-war message. There are plenty of longer stories, too, and some of the newest tales in the book are packed with particularly ingenious ideas: “Project 38 or the Game of Small Causes” (Thorsten Küper; 2003) features a protagonist who manipulates pictures, then news, then events themselves – until he inconveniently discovers that he has a conscience; “Hitler on the Campaign Trail in America” (Oliver Henkel; 2004) is an alternative-history tale featuring the Führer meeting with Al Capone, who proposes turning an old cruise ship into a “floating pleasure dome” with security provided by Hitler’s Brownshirts – a plan neatly foiled by Hitler’s translator, who has his own agenda, through some ingenious reworking of words.

     Speaking of translation: Mike Mitchell’s English versions of all these stories are as unstilted as can be, with the result that the writers’ many styles – which range from the pedestrian to the genuinely clever – come through quite clearly. As a book of stories, a book of ideas and a book of literary history, The Black Mirror & Other Stories is a pleasure, and a highly welcome discovery in the SF genre.

(+++) SHORT AND SWEET (OR NOT)

Variety’s “The Movie That Changed My Life”: 120 Celebrities Pick the Films That Made a Difference (for Better or Worse). By Robert Hofler. Da Capo. $15.95.

Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience—Short Fiction from Then to Now. Edited by Ishmael Reed with Carla Blank. Da Capo. $19.95.

     Stringing together unrelated vignettes or stories no more makes a coherent book than stringing together lots of words makes a coherent book title. So authors and editors of lengthily titled books, such as Robert Hofler and Ishmael Reed, create, or try to create, large themes within which their works’ small individual elements fit neatly. Unfortunately, the fit is not always neat – although when it is, it can be highly interesting. Variety magazine senior editor Hofler asked a wide variety of celebrities in various fields to tell him what movie made the greatest impression on their lives. Now, this is a recipe for self-aggrandizement if there ever was one. Can you imagine, say, Senator John McCain saying that The Bridges of Madison County mattered most to him – even if it did? Of course not; McCain picks Viva Zapata! – Elia Kazan’s 1952 story of the Mexican revolutionary. Can you imagine feel-good guru Sanjay Gupta saying that Rambo did more for him than any other film? Nope – Gupta picks the heartwarming E.T. What about director Tim Burton – can you imagine him choosing, say, Bambi as the movie that influenced him most? He picks, not at all surprisingly, Frankenstein (although James Whale’s sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, is actually a better film). The point is to take everything these celebrities say with several grains of salt – they are celebrities, which means they are always on the lookout for their image, and nothing they say about films is likely to go against whatever public persona they have carefully tried to cultivate. With that major caveat, Hofler’s book is fun, and it’s quite easy to read – each entry takes only a page or two, and there are plenty of illustrations from the films mentioned to make the brief text even shorter. Also, some of the celebrities use the book to extend their professional lives – Joan Rivers, for example, turns her appearance into a mini-sample of her frequently profane comedy. Hofler tries to divide his celebrities into categories into which they really do not fit: Danielle Steel and Hugh Hefner are in “The Romantics,” Kurt Vonnegut is among “The Front Liners” (with McCain and Senator James Webb, among others), Governor Bill Richardson is in “The Athletes,” Tom Brokaw appears among “The Historians,” and so on. Given the arbitrary nature of the classifications, the book would have worked better by simply presenting the celebrities in alphabetical order (they are not even alphabetical within the sections). But this is a minor issue in a book that, in the final analysis, has little that is major about it – although it is often entertaining in the way that minor movies can themselves be.

     Pow Wow, on the other hand, sets its sights on something very serious indeed: “a gathering of voices from the different American tribes,” as Reed, a poet and novelist, puts it in the Foreword. Reed here offers more than 500 pages of stories and poems – 63 of them in all – about various aspects of the American experience. Most of those aspects are negative – no Horatio Alger tales here – as the authors explore homelessness, bigotry, abusive relationships, racial and social isolation, and a general feeling of being outside the mainstream (however defined). There are some well-known or moderately well-known authors included, from Langston Hughes to Paul Laurence Dunbar to Mark Twain to Benjamin Franklin (yes, that Benjamin Franklin); and there are lots of unknowns. The backgrounds of the authors are highly varied: Aphrodite Désirée Navab is Iranian-Greek American, Ty Pak is from Korea, Bharati Mukherjee is from India, Mary Tallmountain is Alaskan, Lucha Corip is from Mexico, and so on. The “Contributors” section of the book is in its own way as interesting as many of the stories, showing just how many people fall under the category of “American.” As for the tales themselves, they vary extremely widely. Anna Nelson Harry’s fable “The Giant Rat” is about the meaninglessness of the things that cause war. Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Imagine My Life” is about living “on the dark side of life…nosing my way into patches of rotting life to find my answers.” Fielding Dawson’s “Pirate One” is about a memory of Roberto Clemente. Vivian Demuth’s “Night of the FEMA Trailers” is a post-Hurricane-Katrina story. And so on – each tale in its own style, with its own subject matter, related to the others only by virtue of having been placed between the covers of the same book. Reed’s work is as much hodgepodge as powwow, with its contents’ one nearly universal connecting thread being bleakness – even the Twain story, “The War Prayer,” is a dark and deeply cynical one. This is not a book for those seeking uplift – although a close reading of its “Contributors” section indicates that there are more positive things in America than these individual writers choose to observe.

(++++) STRING THINGS

Carter: String Quartets Nos. 2-4. Pacifica Quartet. Naxos. $8.99.

Bottesini: Fantasia “La Sonnambula”; Melodia in E (Romanza patetica); Capriccio à la Chopin; Melodia (Giovinetto innamorato); Tutto che il mondo serra; Introduzione e Gavotta; Meditazione (Aria di Bach); Nel cor più non mi sento; Ci divide l’ocean; Romanza; Variations on a Scottish Air “Auld Robin Gray”; Réverie; Introduction et Variations sue le Carnaval de Venise. Thomas Martin, double bass; Anthony Halstead, piano; Jacquelyn Fugelle, soprano. Naxos. $8.99.

     Leave it to Elliott Carter, whose music combines intellect with emotional appeal (although it leans more toward the brain than the heart), to create some of the most challenging and complex string quartets of the 20^th century. Carter, who turned 100 on December 11, created a quartet every decade or so, starting in 1951. Every one of the five quartets is challenging to play and to hear – and every one in a different way. The Pacifica Quartet – violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad, and cellist Brandon Vamos – previously released the first and fifth quartets on a Naxos CD, and now brings its same apparent indifference to the works’ tremendous complexities to the three remaining quartets. A single hearing will not be enough for most listeners to absorb the intricacies of this music, but it will be plenty to create tremendous admiration for the players’ skill. In the second quartet (1959), Carter is at his most intellectual, constructing each instrumental part from different intervals and rhythms – and forms of expressiveness, so the work does not became a dry exercise in compositional technique. This quartet comes across as if the players are arguing much of the time, agreeing occasionally and eventually going their separate ways. Quartet No. 3 (1971) subdivides the quartet into two duos: second violin with viola and first violin with cello. The subgroups play different types of music simultaneously, but each duo gets to play all the forms eventually – again, an intellectualized approach to quartet writing; but again, the Pacifica players make it work sonically and conquer the work’s very considerable difficulties with enough ease to leave room for expressiveness. Carter’s fourth quartet (1986) reverts to traditional four-movement form, but proves surprisingly hard to listen to, with harmonies that do not lie easily in the ear and a series of dramatic contrasts between sound and silence. It is not always clear whether Carter is writing quartets (or other music) for connoisseurs or the general public; certainly these quartets are not “easy” music in any sense, but they have genuine emotive power that may take a while to perceive but that emerges effectively when they are played as well as the Pacifica Quartet plays them.

     The playing is also outstanding in the latest Naxos rerelease of Thomas Martin’s renditions of double-bass music by 19^th-century virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. But this CD, originally released more than a decade ago, is filled with salon pieces rather than ones that boost the brain cells. This does not mean the works are easy to play – quite the opposite! – and it does not mean they are uniformly soothing: several are sit-up-and-take-notice spectacles or highly demanding encore-like quickies. In fact, two of the works – Capriccio à la Chopin and Nel cor più non mi sento (variations on a theme by Paisiello) – require great leaps between high and low notes that must be especially impressive to see in concert. Four of the works here – Melodia (Giovinetto innamorato), Tutto che il mondo serra, Ci divide l’ocean and Romanza – include vocal parts and would have been effective art songs in Bottesini’s time. Ci divide l’ocean is especially moving. The most interesting works on this CD, though, are strictly instrumental. They are Fantasia “La Sonnambula,” an early work that helped make Bottesini famous and that effectively merges Bellini’s rather delicate opera tunes into the double-bass register without depriving them of their charm; and Introduction et Variations sue le Carnaval de Venise, a showstopper if there ever was one, in which Martin’s ability to maintain equanimity and a flowing line through some truly amazing acrobatics is quite outstanding. Anthony Halstead provides top-notch piano accompaniment, and Jacquelyn Fugelle sings the four songs with sensitivity and feeling, but this is Martin’s disc through and through – and a perfect demonstration that, in the right hands and under the right fingers, the double bass is anything but a lumbering instrument.

(+++) SYMPHONIC QUIRKS – YOUR CHOICE

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9. Lucia Popp, soprano; Ann Murray, mezzo-soprano; Anthony Rolfe Johnson, tenor; René Pape, bass; London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir conducted by Klaus Tennstedt. LPO. $16.99.

Mahler: Symphony No. 6. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Artek. $16.99.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5. Royal Flemish Philharmonic conducted by Jaap van Zweden. Ambroisie. $16.99.

      There are enough versions of all these symphonies available to make it a safe bet that few listeners will pick any of these recordings as a first choice. For a second or third version of the music, though, all these CDs are worth considering: each is quirky in its own way, none is close to definitive (to the extent that these symphonies will ever have definitive performances), but all offer some unusual perspectives on the music and some insights that set them apart from other performances.

      Klaus Tennstedt’s Beethoven Ninth is the most intriguing of these discs. Recorded live in October 1992, two years before ill health forced Tennstedt to retire, it is an unapologetically old-fashioned, even Victorian-style treatment of the Ninth, giving it a cathedral-like structure that hints in parts at Bruckner while pacing the work generally slowly and with great majesty. The forces are large, the chorus full, the brass round and full-throated, the strings warm, and the percussion emphatic – the second movement is a real rouser, especially after a first movement that opens by plumbing near-Lisztian depths. The third movement wears its emotion frankly on its sleeve, and the finale simply bursts forth with the sort of intensity that Leopold Stokowski brought to his arrangements of Bach. Tennstedt’s Ninth may not be idiomatic Beethoven, but it hits every emotional button there is. In the finale, the singers are with the conductor all the way, with the lovely soprano of Lucia Popp (who died a year after this recording was made) soaring effortlessly above while the broad, round tones of René Pape provide the firmest of foundations. Ann Murray and Anthony Rolfe Johnson also acquit themselves admirably. But this is really Tennstedt’s show, as is especially clear whenever the chorus enters with as full and intense a sound as one would expect in Mahler. Indeed, there is something Mahlerian about this entire performance: grandiose, yes, but also world-spanningly intense and emotionally very strong. This is Beethoven that leaves a listener more drained than exalted – but it is convincing on its own terms.

      Gerard Schwarz’ Mahler Sixth is less so. Schwarz is proving himself surprisingly adept in his new series of Mahler symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – his recording of the Seventh is excellent – but he is a bit off the mark this time. Schwarz seems to see this symphony as a series of episodes, emphasizing its tempo and mood changes while downplaying its tight formal and key structure (three of the four movements are in A minor). As a result, this deeply felt and very intense work, often called Mahler’s “Tragic” symphony, seems to meander without focus much of the time. The opening march, for example, is nowhere near as crisp as it should be, and when the lovely second theme, possibly representing Mahler’s wife Alma, enters, the movement changes character altogether instead of growing in depth. Schwarz also makes a curious decision in the order of the movements: he plays the Andante Moderato second and the Scherzo third. Mahler himself couldn’t make up his mind about the best order – wherever you put the Scherzo, you get two consecutive A minor movements – but he eventually decided to have the Scherzo come second, and that seems structurally more convincing: in that position, the Scherzo continues to build the intensity of the first movement, with the Andante providing a modicum of relief before the huge finale again brings pain and woe. As Schwarz plays the movements, the finale starts as a bit of an anticlimax after the Scherzo’s conclusion; and there is a certain turgidity to the last movement throughout. Oddly, the booklet notes to the CD mention the uncertain placement of the middle movements and then state that this performance puts the Scherzo second. The error is symptomatic of a Mahler Sixth that offers some lovely detailing but that never effectively produces an overarching architecture of tragedy steeped in melody.

      Jaap van Zweden’s performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 does get some of the work’s tragedy right – the first three movements are all, at the very least, melancholy – but this well-played CD is strongest in the finale, which van Zweden gives a thoroughly triumphal air. This is an exhilarating conclusion – a vast distance from the very slow finales that some conductors have become fond of as they attempt to show that Shostakovich did not really cave in to Soviet pressure in writing this symphony. In fact, like Tennstedt’s Beethoven Ninth, van Zweden’s Shostakovich Fifth is a bit of a throwback, since conductors used to take the finale at its triumphal face value and not worry about any possible political undercurrents. Unfortunately, van Zweden emphasizes the dark elements of the first three movements so effectively that the finale seems almost to belong to another work – one of Shostakovich’s earlier theater pieces, perhaps. The symphony founders on its lack of unity, sounding a bit as if van Zweden has not thought through the relationships among the movements, or has not found any worth exploring. This is by no means a bad performance (although it is a pricey one, with nothing on the CD except the 47-minute symphony); but neither is it a particularly thoughtful rendition. It does have its moments, though, especially in that slam-bang conclusion.

(++++) FILLING THE HOLLOWS

White Witch, Black Curse. By Kim Harrison. Eos. $25.95.

     Kim Harrison has become such a good writer, so adept at producing hair-raising adventures filled with complex characters with believable motivations, that her world of the Hollows throbs with reality even though it is populated primarily by the dead and undead, by witches and werewolves, and by all sorts of things that go bump in the night – and the daytime. Indeed, Harrison has gotten so good that even when she is not quite at the top of her game, as in White Witch, Black Curse, she still creates novels that are unstoppably good and nearly impossible to put down.

     As usual in Harrison’s stories of the Hollows (a supernatural enclave permeating, of all places, Cincinnati), the book’s title recalls a Clint Eastwood movie – in this case, 1990’s White Hunter, Black Heart, which Eastwood directed and in which he starred as movie director John Huston. Aside from being a director’s movie about a movie director, the film is about obsession, specifically Huston’s determination to hunt down one particular elephant. White Witch, Black Curse is about obsession as well: witch and bounty hunter Rachel Morgan’s continued determination to find out who killed her vampire lover, Kisten. But for much of the book, the Kisten-killer quest takes a back seat to a series of adventures involving a variety of supernatural beings who have not appeared before in Harrison’s Hollows series, in which this is the seventh entry. And that’s the problem here: Harrison has proved herself so exceptionally good at imagining both the outer and inner lives of living and dead vampires, witches, werewolves, elves, pixies, demons and her other primary character groups that there is something a little cheap about her suddenly dragging in such previously unsuspected entities as banshees and ghosts, then building large sections of the story around them. Because these new beings have not been, so to speak, fleshed out as well as such characters as the demon Al, the pixy Jenks, the vampire Ivy, the elf Trent, and many other memorable Harrison creations, White Witch, Black Curse teems with occurrences that have less depth and resonance than those in earlier books of the series.

     This is not to say that the new novel isn’t exciting. It is – often tremendously so. Rachel’s near-fatal encounter with a banshee, her increasing level of comfort with using black curses as well as white spells to accomplish her aims, and the interlocking complexity of her life with grand political and social machinations among the supernatural Inderlanders and the humans among whom they move freely, add up to an intricate and fast-paced narrative. But there is one scene – a slowdown in the midst of an escape – that shows Harrison at her very best and makes some of the other parts of the book seem a bit pale. Rachel, hospitalized, is determined to leave despite doctors’ insistence that she stay; and as Ivy and Jenks help her get away, the three find themselves in a ward of desperately ill children. In nine pages out of the novel’s 500-plus, Harrison manages to deepen Rachel’s own character (she nearly died as a child; the way she was saved precipitated subtly world-shaking events that keep coming up in these stories); bring new empathy and humanity to Ivy; show a level of deep emotion lying just underneath Jenks’ frequent bluster; and pinpoint one of the series’ main themes – whether doing evil, even repeatedly, means that you are evil. Seeing Rachel’s blackened aura, caused by the curses she has invoked, a girl asks whether Rachel is a black witch, and Harrison writes (in Rachel’s first-person narrative): “There was no fear in her, not because she was ignorant, but because she knew she was dying, and she knew I wasn’t going to be the cause of her death. My heart went out to her. She was seeing around corners, but not yet ready to go. One more thing possibly to see and do.” Ivy manages to get the kids to see how closely related to them Rachel is, and the children become co-conspirators; and the entire scene – which passes in an eyeblink, compared with the rest of the novel – so thoroughly humanizes (if that’s the right word) everyone in it that the grander dramas of the banshee, the ghost and even of what happened to Kisten seem one-dimensional by comparison.

     White Witch, Black Curse is an excellent book and a wonderful addition to the Hollows sequence. It deserves to be (and undoubtedly will be) a best-seller. If it is not quite up to Harrison’s very best, that is only because she has heretofore held herself to such an uncompromisingly high standard.

(++++) DINOSAURS OF THEN AND NOW

The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. By Barbara Kerley. Drawings by Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $8.99.

Crocodile Safari. By Jim Arnosky. Scholastic. $22.99.

     A remarkable book about a remarkable man, The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins is an exciting intellectual adventure that takes young readers back to a time before everyone was familiar with dinosaurs’ appearance – telling the tale of the man who first gave people an idea of what the prehistoric creatures looked like. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1894) was a British sculptor and natural-history artist who was commissioned in 1853 to create 33 life-sized replicas of dinosaurs under the direction of Sir Richard Owen and other leading Victorian scientists. Hawkins’ models were astonishing, and Barbara Kerley’s book – aided enormously by Brian Selznick’s illustrations, many of which are based on Hawkins’ own sketches – vividly brings them to life. The book brings Hawkins to life, too, and what a life it was. Kerley divides it into three parts: London, America and Home Again. The first includes Hawkins’ early career and his initial construction of dinosaur models – and climaxes with Hawkins’ most unusual idea of all, which was to hold a New Year’s Eve dinner for more than 20 people, on December 31, 1853, inside his iguanodon model. The second section is about Hawkins’ ill-fated trip to America, where he intended to create dinosaur models for a museum in New York City, but where he ran afoul of infamous Tammany Hall leader “Boss” Tweed, who wrecked his models and had the pieces buried somewhere in Central Park (where they remain, in unknown locations, to this day). The third section of the book involves Hawkins’ return to England and the emerging knowledge that some of his models were not accurate, in light of new scientific discoveries – a state of affairs that fascinated Hawkins rather than dismaying him. It did indeed turn out that Hawkins’ models – many of which are still viewable at a museum in England – were incorrect; but they were remarkable design and engineering achievements, and gave the public its first look at the extinct animals that ruled the planet for so long. The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins is, finally, an uplifting story about scientific discovery and the persistence, despite reversals, of those involved in it. Kerley’s and Selznick’s afterwords, and a final page comparing Hawkins’ models with what certain dinosaurs are now thought to have looked like, add to the fascination of a thoroughly engrossing book.

     Crocodilians are a kind of living dinosaur: they existed in the dinosaur age and survived its end. But the American crocodile – the subject of Jim Arnosky’s Crocodile Safari – almost didn’t make it through its encounters with human beings: fewer than 300 of the animals were left when the species was classified as endangered. It is no longer listed that way in the United States, where it has recovered smartly, although it remains endangered in other areas where it lives (Mexico, the Caribbean, and parts of Central and South America). American crocodiles remain elusive in any case. Arnosky takes readers through a South Florida safari in which he and his wife, Deanna, roamed the Everglades looking for crocodiles, eventually spotting 20 of them. American crocodiles are different from and rarer than American alligators, and Arnosky clearly explains and illustrates how they differ. Crocodile Safari reads a bit like a diary, with Arnosky noting time, weather and tide for each spotting and showing, through well-executed drawings, where he saw the crocodiles – starting with a group of three perched on the hulls of discarded rowboats. Arnosky works in information on the reptiles’ feeding habits and the flora and fauna amid which they live; and he talks about a couple of unusual finds, including a toothless crocodile (which had to be very old: the animals regrow teeth until they reach old age) and a foot-long crocodile baby. The book concludes with the music and lyrics of a song that Arnosky wrote about crocodiles, and a bonus 22-minute CD bound into the back cover gives Arnosky’s impressions additional life and liveliness. The mixture of observational seriousness with lighthearted enjoyment makes Crocodile Safari very pleasantly distinctive – hopefully encouraging young readers to plan their own in-the-wild viewings someday, since all the crocodiles counted by Arnosky were seen in areas that anyone can visit.

(++++) THE PICTURE’S THE THING

Tommaso and the Missing Line. By Matteo Pericoli. Knopf. $15.99.

Chicken and Cat Clean Up. By Sara Varon. Scholastic. $16.99.

     There are words in both these books, but they take a back seat to the stories’ pictures. The story's distinctive pictures, in the case of Matteo Pericoli’s Tommaso and the Missing Line. This book is quite different from the usual ones targeting ages 5-8, being filled with concepts of art and architecture – none of them ever mentioned overtly, but all of them permeating the story. The tale is about a young Italian boy, Tommaso, who realizes one day that a line from a picture he made has suddenly disappeared. It has not rubbed away or faded – it is just gone. And Tommaso wants it back – he doesn’t want to re-draw it or accept its disappearance; he wants that line back. So he starts a journey through the city, asking characters from a mechanic to a barber to a sleepy cat whether they have seen his line. No one finds Tommaso’s quest strange; they simply accept it and suggest various places that the line might be – in a car antenna, for instance, or in the many shapes of cut-off hair on the barbershop’s floor. But Tommaso, acknowledging all those lines, knows that none of them is his line, so he goes to visit his nonna (grandma), at whose home he made his drawing – and he makes a warm and gently surreal discovery there. Pericoli, an architect as well as an artist, imbues his cityscapes with the feeling of reality, using perspective dramatically and including enjoyable little visual elements just for the fun of it – such as the multiple reflections of the barber in the barbershop’s mirrored wall, and the positioning of the sleepy cat atop a Corinthian column amid Roman (or at least Romanesque) ruins. The illustrations are in black and white – except that the various lines and Tommaso’s drawing are in orange – and this adds to a certain elegance in the book. Interestingly, Pericoli does not show Tommaso’s grandma’s face – perhaps the book’s dedication “to the memory of nonna Mimia” explains that. What does not need explaining is the thoughtfulness and lovely detailing that Pericoli brings to every page of this very special book.

     Sara Varon’s illustrations for Chicken and Cat Clean Up are much more cartoonish than Pericoli’s – scarcely a surprise, since Varon is (among other things) a comics artist. This nearly wordless sequel to the nearly wordless Chicken and Cat offers a simple story with an affirmation of friendship and a moral about doing what you are really good at – without using dialogue to communicate any of its message. Best friends Chicken and Cat are working together in Chicken’s housekeeping business, even though Cat isn’t really very awake in the morning and isn’t very good at cleaning things. In fact, he is so bad at the job that he gets thrown out of an apartment after causing a variety of messes (broken glass, overflowing washer, spilled water). Cat is just too catlike for a housekeeping job – when he gets hungry, he starts eating a plant. But Cat is just catlike enough to catch a thieving mouse that he spots while waiting outside the apartment building where Chicken is still working. Cat ends up a hero, makes some money, and gives Chicken an idea for an expansion of the business to include mousecatching – a happy ending for all, except maybe the mouse. Cat even ends up with a pet that he has been wordlessly wanting to buy, and the stage is set for Varon’s next visit to a world where pictures consistently communicate more than words.

(+++) SELF-CELEBRATION

Milestones: 30 Years of Chandos. Chandos. $99.99.

     It is equally possible to be generous or curmudgeonly about this fascinating 30-CD set – and both reactions are equally valid. Chandos Records, the outstanding, independent classical-music label, has repackaged and re-released 30 of its CDs in celebration of its 30 years in business – a time that classical-music lovers worldwide should celebrate, since Chandos offers a great deal of unusual repertoire in mostly excellent performances that are very well recorded and generally presented with highly interesting background information.

     But the deserved high praise for Chandos the company does not necessarily translate into equally high praise for this handsomely packaged celebratory issue. One reason is that the 30 CDs appear to have been chosen more for the way they reflect on Chandos’ self-image than in any attempt to provide a comprehensive or carefully organized view of music in general – or even of the music that Chandos offers. Inside the substantial-feeling flip-top box are 30 CDs in individual sleeves, a short booklet listing the basic contents of all 30 and containing some comments by Chandos executives, and a 324-page book that a purchaser would likely expect to contain notes on the performances but that in fact is a Chandos catalogue, complete with price-code key – in British pounds. Notes on the performances are available as PDFs from the Chandos Web site, but given the fact that the notes are one of the things that have made Chandos special for the past 30 years, it seems odd to make Chandos enthusiasts – or newcomers to the label – do so much downloading if they want to read about the music and the recording artists.

     Actually, a little information does appear on each CD’s sleeve, but it is of the promotional sort: “This disc is a showcase for Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage.” “This important disc of neglected French repertoire exemplifies Yon Pascal Tortelier’s remarkable tenure with the BBC Philharmonic.” “This disc is a testament to Richard Hickox’s memorable years at Bournemouth…” And so on.

     However – and it is a very big “however” indeed – once you get past the promos and the presentation disappointments, this box is filled to the brim with musical delights. Every single one of the 30 CDs has something to recommend it: sometimes unusual repertoire, sometimes an exceptional performance, sometimes a welcome insight into familiar music, sometimes an opportunity to explore pieces that only Chandos would have thought to issue. In this last category are the orchestral suite from Respighi’s Belkis, Queen of Sheba; three tone poems of war and the sea by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford; and music related to the novels of Louis de Bernières, best known for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (although to understand the professed relationships, listeners will need those PDFs from www.chandos.net).

     Among the more familiar music here are Chopin’s Études, sensitively played by Louis Lortie; Holst’s The Planets in a bang-up rendition by the Scottish National Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson; and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, played with knowing intensity by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under Mariss Jansons – not a truly great performance, but a very interesting and convincing one. And then there are the vocal CDs, from Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène and other works to Alexander Grechaninov’s Passion Week to highlights of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier to a disc of – what else? – Handel’s Chandos Anthems. The unusual nature of Chandos’ commitment to classical music comes through in these individual CDs, and also in some ways in the overall structure of the 30-CD box: the three composers to whom two CDs are devoted are Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and Hummel, and there is no Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn or Brahms to be found anywhere in the set.

     Milestones: 30 Years of Chandos turns out to be as quirky as the Chandos label itself. At just over $3 per CD, the set is a tremendous bargain compared to the cost of buying the same CDs one at a time. Even if a listener dislikes half the discs, the box is a bargain. But at whom is it aimed? It seems like an introduction to the Chandos label, but does not really succeed on that basis. People who already know Chandos and want to celebrate it will enjoy this set more than anyone else will. The lack of notes and the self-promotional aspects may be off-putting to others. And that is a shame, since Chandos, both in this set and elsewhere in its ever-growing catalogue, has so much truly excellent music to offer.

(++++) DELIGHTS OF YOUTH

Baby Nose to Baby Toes. By Vicky Ceelen. Random House. $6.99.

Mommy Calls Me Monkeypants. By J.D. Lester. Illustrations by Hiroe Nakata. Robin Corey Books. $7.99.

What a Good Big Brother! By Diane Wright Landolf. Paintings by Steve Johnson & Lou Fancher. Random House. $16.99.

Planet Earth: Wild Amazon. By Lisa L. Ryan-Herndon. Scholastic. $3.99.

     The youngest children, up to age four, are privileged to have some truly wonderful board books created just for them – including Baby Nose to Baby Toes and Mommy Calls Me Monkeypants. The first of these juxtaposes photos of human babies with ones of baby animals doing similar (or occasionally contrasting) things – and since the photos are big, clear close-ups, they will be easy for even very young children to see and enjoy. Some of the pairs are especially wonderful, such as “baby’s clean as clean can get” on the left (wide-eyed baby with a big smile and tongue almost hanging out) and “puppy’s dripping, sopping wet” on the right (big-eyed puppy with paws on the edge of a sink or tub and with tongue definitely hanging out). There is also a delightful left-page photo of two babies, both looking toward something obviously fascinating – contrasted with, on the right-hand page, two puppies also looking toward something fascinating…which, because of the angle of their heads, appears to be the babies on the facing page. But this is not to say that Vicky Ceelen’s book includes only puppies: there are pictures of a fawn, lion cub, elephant, frog, chimpanzee, and even a snail here, all of them delightfully framed to show similarities or differences between animals and people.

     Mommy Calls Me Monkeypants involves humans and animals, too, but not quite the same way. J.D. Lester’s book is about endearing nicknames: first, a baby wonders why his mommy calls him Monkeypants; then, various baby creatures describe their mothers’ nicknames for them in a series of pleasant rhymes. For instance, for horses, “Mommy calls me Giddyup…it’s lots of fun to ride me.” And then, for monkeys, “Mommy calls me Tagalong…I keep her right beside me.” Hiroe Nakata’s illustrations are pleasant and amusing, the ones of pandas and kangaroos especially so. And the book’s ending with a baby-and-mommy hug seems just right – and makes Mommy Calls Me Monkeypants a good choice for bedtime reading.

     For slightly older kids, ages 3-6 – especially ones with a new baby at home, or expecting one soon -- What a Good Big Brother! offers some basics of childcare within a lovely, gentle story. Diane Wright Landolf’s story of Cameron and his little sister, Sadie, shows the various reasons Sadie cries – she needs changing, a nap, food – and then shows how Cameron helps Sadie stop crying. But what happens when Sadie cries and the parents cannot figure out why? At that point, Cameron really comes into his own, finding a way to calm Sadie down and giving everyone a big and happy surprise. The illustrative paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher nicely capture the watercolor warmth of a family adjusting to a new baby at home, and the smiles on the faces of Cameron and Sadie at the end of the book will have real-world families smiling as well.

     Some elements of the latest Planet Earth collaboration between the BBC and Scholastic are a delight in their own, nonfictional way, but Wild Amazon is something less than an unalloyed triumph. The photos – the BBC’s contribution – are absolutely marvelous, from the overhead view of the Amazon River and the forest around it to the close-ups of such creatures as the pirarucu, tucuxi and bullet ant. But Lisa L. Ryan-Herndon’s text is disappointing, partly for what it does and partly for what it omits. There are quite a few grammatical mistakes here that somehow got through the editing process. For example, “the river can look like it’s boiling” is wrong – it should be “look as if it is boiling” or “can seem to be boiling.” And “echolocation is when sound waves are used to find objects” should be “echolocation is a process by which sound waves are used to find objects,” or the sentence should be rewritten altogether. As for omissions, it is fine to include animals whose odd names children have probably never heard – the book is a Level 3 Reader, intended for first through third grade. But when an animal is unique to the point of being enigmatic, as is the case with the hoatzin, it would make sense to mention that fact and not consign the creature to dismissal by simply mentioning its nickname of “stinkbird.” A little context would help, too: saying that an acre of rainforest land may be home to three million ants means little without a comparison with the number of ants elsewhere. Planet Earth: Wild Amazon has enough fascinating photos and interesting facts to get a (+++) rating, but a better narrative would have ratcheted it up a notch.

(+++) KEEPING THE FANS HAPPY

Blood and Bone. By William Lashner. William Morrow. $24.99.

The Sharing Knife, Volume Four: Horizon. By Lois McMaster Bujold. Eos. $26.99.

     Here are two well-crafted books that will immediately appeal to the well-established fan bases of their authors, but that are unlikely to bring in new readers – simply because the slickness with which they are written does not quite conceal the formulaic level of their plotting and characterization. Blood and Bone is a standalone novel from the author of the popular Victor Carl series, and it shares some of the moral ambiguities of that sequence in its story of Kyle Byrne, illegitimate son of a well-known Philadelphia lawyer. William Lashner knows this territory well: he lives near Philadelphia and has been a trial lawyer for the Justice Department. Straightforward legal cases are not for Lashner or his characters – they don’t make very good novels, in any case – and Blood and Bone is anything but straightforward. Byrne is a slacker in his mid-20s, enjoying an unpressured life while still (rather unbelievably) feeling the pain of the death of his father 12 years earlier. Obviously, in a noir novel like this, the plot complications are sure to involve Byrne’s father, and so they do: Kyle’s dad’s law partner is murdered, and Kyle (again, rather unbelievably) becomes a suspect, so he has to try to clear his name by finding the real killer. Kyle, who has never been a detective, turns out to be a pretty good one, but of course he turns up information that he would rather not know about his beloved dad. And of course the usual sleazy suspects start crawling out of the woodwork: a U.S. senator with a secret to hide, a crime boss, and more. The problem with Blood and Bone is that Kyle, unlike Victor Carl, is not an especially interesting character. And some hard-boiled scenes are (apparently unintentionally) funny, as when two stereotypical thugs attack Kyle (“the lug slammed a forearm into Kyle’s back, denting his kidneys”) and, while being dragged to an alley, Kyle tells them, “Watch out for the suit.” Furthermore, some aspects of procedural matters just don’t make sense: Philadelphia Detective Ramirez, seeking the death certificate of Kyle’s father, has never heard of Union County, New Jersey or the town of Summit – an unlikely state of affairs. There are the usual overdone coincidences (“maybe it wasn’t a coincidence,” Kyle thinks when one of them occurs – well, duh). And there is the usual overdone dialogue: “I’m going to tell you a story, Kyle. …I’m going to tell you because I’ve been wanting to tell someone for years. And I’m going to tell you because it involves your father, and I think you have the right to know.” Whether readers will have the desire to know all these seamy little details will depend entirely on how they already feel about Lashner’s style. Blood and Bone moves quickly and requires little in the way of thought or emotional involvement. It’s a good read in its way, but not at the level of Lashner’s other books. Lashner is usually a better stylist than to write this: “Didn’t I tell you to stop stirring the pot?” “The pot kept stirring me.”

     It is the style that Lois McMaster Bujold brings to her lengthy sagas that especially pleases her fan base, which will surely be glad to read the conclusion of The Sharing Knife tetralogy. Bujold builds her heroic fantasies deliberately, assembling characterizations through the small actions of the people she creates as much as through their grand plans or heroic deeds. In fact, one attractive element of The Sharing Knife is the way it makes small in addition to great actions heroic. The whole premise of the series involves Dag Redwood Hickory’s rescue of Fawn Bluefield, the two falling in love, the reasons they should not do so, the consequences of their ignoring those reasons, and the manner in which their marriage and the increasing closeness it brings to both of them raises their powers. For there certainly are powers here, magical powers (as usual in modern heroic fantasy), and Horizon would be an ineffective conclusion if those powers did not need to mature and be brought to bear against an overwhelming threat. That is just what happens here – an easily anticipated ending to the four-book series, even if the specifics of what will happen and how are revealed only gradually. But it is quite clear, and was even before this final book, that Dag’s magical abilities would grow and he would find himself becoming something more than anyone expected – his uniqueness was obvious from the moment he and Fawn predictably fell in love. Fawn grows and develops, too, as the two together lead a band of friends and followers. They lead them, of course, into danger, as Dag develops a “ground shield” that may or may not protect against the evil of a “malice,” while Fawn – who is pregnant – focuses on their growing child. There are many menaces to be faced here, such as a mud-man (“malices make them up out of animals and mud by groundwork – magic”) and “a black cloud of about fifty…bat-things.” There are sacrifices and successes and failures along Dag and Fawn’s road in Horizon, but eventually – satisfyingly, if scarcely unexpectedly – all obstacles are overcome and a new future is forged. Horizon neatly wraps up The Sharing Knife, but even Bujold’s stylish presentation cannot disguise the fact that the road Dag and Fawn travel is one that, with variations, many other heroic-fantasy heroes and heroines have trod before. Bujold tells her tale well, but there is, finally, little that is new in it.

(++++) CREATIVITY DESPITE TYRANNY

Wagner’s Mastersinger, Hitler’s Siegfried: The Life and Times of Max Lorenz. A film by Eric Schulz and Claus Wischmann. Medici Arts DVD. $24.99.

Prokofiev: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2. Mikhail Simonyan, violin; Alexei Podkorytov, piano. Delos. $16.99.

     The ability of art and artists to survive and even thrive in the worst conditions is a source of ongoing amazement and, perhaps, an indication that there is hope for humanity even in the depths of despair. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp for the instruments available there (clarinet, violin, cello and piano), is often cited as a flicker of artistic light in the midst of widespread atrocities. But the story of Hitler’s favorite tenor, Max Lorenz, is more remarkable still – and is beautifully told in the 54-minute documentary by Eric Schulz and Claus Wischmann. Lorenz’s survival in Hitler’s Reich was extraordinary on many levels: the singer was a homosexual with a Jewish wife and mother-in-law, and he chose to stay in Nazi Germany and use his favored status not only to protect his own family but also to save others from death. And he was a wonderful singer, with the sort of imposing stage presence that the Nazis cultivated as a way to showcase their own self-image. Wagner’s Mastersinger delves intelligently but non-academically into the various elements and contradictions of Lorenz’s life, including interviews with the singer himself; plenty of archival footage, including some showing Lorenz working with Bayreuth Artistic Director Heinz Tietjen; and commentary by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, tenors Waldemar Kmentt and René Kollo, soprano Hilde Zadek, and other artists and critics. The astonishing survival of Lorenz and those around him – which became increasingly difficult as the Nazi era progressed – becomes part and parcel of this story of music, which is particularly about Wagner as presented in Bayreuth. Lorenz (1901-1975) not only survived the war but continued to perform on stage until 1962. Yet his glory days clearly coincided with those of the Third Reich, as the music within this film abundantly shows – especially the excerpts from Götterdämmerung (1934), Siegfried (1937) and Rienzi (1942). There is also the evidence of a wonderful, 74-minute bonus CD included with the DVD. It contains a 1938 performance (not from Bayreuth but from Buenos Aires) of the entire first act of Siegfried and part of the second act. Sound quality becomes almost immaterial here: this is a masterful characterization by a Heldentenor who, in real life, did not at all fit the mold into which Wagner’s music and Hitler’s support poured him.

     Yet Hitler was not the greatest mass murderer of the 20^th century – that dubious distinction belongs to Joseph Stalin, and it was in Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that Sergei Prokofiev chose to live and produce much of his greatest music. In a new Delos recording, Prokofiev’s two Violin Sonatas get splendid performances by two artists from modern-day Russia: Mikhail Simonyan and Alexei Podkorytov. Both these sonatas were written for David Oistrakh during or close to World War II: No. 1, begun in 1938, was completed in 1946; No. 2 originated as a flute sonata in 1942 and was arranged by the composer for violin a year later. One of Oistrakh’s students, Victor Danchenko, is Simonyan’s mentor, giving these performances a direct line back to the sonatas’ origins. Equally important is the quality of Simonyan’s playing: the 22-year-old violinist has impeccable technique and considerable emotional fire, and pianist Podkorytov partners with him very effectively. The very dark Sonata No. 1 comes off particularly well here, with Podkorytov not afraid to ratchet up the intensity even at the risk of overwhelming Simonyan (although that never quite happens). Sonata No. 2, a more lyrical work with more strongly classical form and balance, is less well suited to the intensity and emotionalism of these performers, but they play it with strength and elegance in a performance that is highly convincing even if parts are not quite as relaxed as they could be. This meeting of modern Russia, which has its own authoritarian issues, with Stalin’s far more brutal USSR, is a testament to the ability of composers and performers alike to transcend geopolitics and present something of greater, more lasting value than the latest argumentative rhetoric.

(++) “TOSCA” TRAUMA

Puccini: Tosca. Virginia Opera production conducted by Peter Mark. Director: Marc Astafan. Scenic Designer: Michael Yeargan (design modified by Marc Astafan and Chris Kitrell). Lighting Designer: Chris Kitrell. Presented at George Mason University Center for the Arts, Fairfax, Virginia, February 13, 2009.

     It has to be one of an opera company’s worst nightmares: the lead tenor loses his voice during a performance. And that is just what happened during Virginia Opera’s Friday the 13^th presentation of Tosca, resulting in a production that creaked and stuttered throughout despite Artistic Director Peter Mark’s sure-handed conducting and the strengths brought by Mary Elizabeth Williams to the title role.

     It was obvious from the start that something was not quite right: Michael Hayes, as Cavaradossi, had far too much vibrato in his lower range, then sounded strained and breathless in “Qual occhio al mondo.” His unevenness throughout the first act served to highlight the vocal clarity of Christopher Temporelli as Angelotti and the particularly adept comic timing of Jason Budd as the Sacristan – but this sole light character in the opera ought not to become the center of attention by virtue of out-singing the lead tenor in “Scherza con i fanti e lascia stare i santi,” as happened here.

     Before Act II, it was announced that Hayes had a cold and could not continue singing – but would still act the part of Cavaradossi while Kevin Perry, who had sung Spoletta in Act I, would sing Cavaradossi’s words (and Johnny Lee Green would take over as Spoletta). This on-the-fly attempt to handle Hayes’ illness produced a series of embarrassing moments in Acts II and III, as Hayes strove to lip-synch his arias while Perry, who was quite visible in the orchestra pit, actually produced the words – frequently with slight but disconcerting differences in tempo or emphasis. The result was what looked like one of those badly dubbed old Japanese monster movies: the drama of Tosca was thoroughly vitiated. Closing one’s eyes whenever the Hayes/Perry pairing was singing was not a good option, either, since that meant missing what drama there was in the action. Perry did a more-than-creditable job in his thoroughly thankless task, although his light tenor is thin on top and not really up to the demands of the Cavaradossi role. “E lucevan le stele,” normally such an emotional high point in Act III and the opera as a whole, teetered on the edge of comedy in this dual performance.

     It was left to Williams as Tosca to carry the entire opera, and while she certainly gave it a try, there is more to Tosca than “Vissi d'arte,” which Williams delivered with strikingly intense emotionality and considerable vocal power. Elsewhere, though, her voice was less sure and her acting only so-so. Her lower register was her strongest in Act I, but in her confrontation with Scarpia in Act II, she repeatedly came perilously close to sounding shrill. Hopefully the numerous kisses she exchanged with Hayes in the first act – and presumably in rehearsal – had not given her a cold as well. By the end of Act III, when Tosca jumps to her death, Williams seemed tired and rather awkward. She did not outrun the soldiers on her way to the parapet – they stopped in their tracks and let her go there. Williams has considerable potential as Tosca, whose human side she seems to appreciate, but neither her singing nor her acting is yet as good as it could be.

     As Scarpia, Stephen Kechulius made a highly dramatic entrance in Act I, dressed in black and with a Dracula-style cape, flanked by his two also-dressed-in-black henchmen. He initially sang well, but his acting quickly turned Scarpia into a kind of parody of Victorian-era evildoers, along the lines of Sir Despard Murgatroyd in Ruddigore. Kechulius strutted and stamped and eventually crushed a flower, first petal by petal and then all at once, as he proclaimed that Tosca’s beauty made him forget God. He did everything but cackle. The result was that the character was too overdone to have the sense of real-world menace that the best Scarpias produce. This was true as well in Act II, where Kechulius dialed back some of his over-the-top acting to the point that Scarpia seemed more a government functionary ordering waterboarding than the man before whom all Rome trembled. The Scarpia-Tosca confrontation, so rich in drama and intensity, here became a conflict of unequals: Williams had Kechulius vocally overmatched and also seemed significantly stronger physically.

     Virginia Opera’s staging is usually so good that it helps buoy even indifferent singing, but this production was not one of its best. The church in Act I was impressive, with a real sense of grandeur and scale, and there were some good lighting effects as the mood changed during the act. But Scarpia’s room in Act II, its walls mostly red, was mundane, and some sort of electrical problem caused the supposedly candle-filled wall sconces to go out from time to time. There was also no door to the torture chamber, which was behind a moving bookcase; so when Scarpia ordered the door opened so Tosca could better hear Cavaradossi’s cries, there was no door to open (and the bookcase had already been slid partially aside, so an opening into the chamber already existed). As for Act III, the setting was simply dull, being entirely open-air, with the inevitable parapet at the rear of the stage.

     Virginia Opera is much better than this Tosca, and Michael Hayes is surely a better Cavaradossi than he was able to show at this performance. But perhaps the evening’s mishaps will start a new tradition for this company. Just as many Shakespearean troupes will not even say the name of the play Macbeth, calling it “The Scottish Play” to allay fears associated with the drama, so Virginia Opera may want to avoid Tosca on Friday the 13^th in the future – or perhaps refer to it as “The Singer’s Opera.”

(+++) PICKLES AND POOCHES

Magic Pickle and the Planet of the Grapes. By Scott Morse. Graphix/Scholastic. $5.99.

Magic Pickle vs. the Egg Poacher. By Scott Morse. Graphic/Scholastic. $5.99.

Hotel for Dogs. By Lois Duncan. Scholastic. $16.99.

     Ah, the visual possibilities! It is only a matter of time before Dreamworks or another animation studio creates a movie based on Scott Morse’s Magic Pickle character – just as Dreamworks has already made a film of Lois Duncan’s Hotel for Dogs. The pickle movie has a ri-pick-ulous number of possible scenarios, all of which can be easily drawn from Morse’s series of graphic novels, including the two newest and the original (which was simply called Magic Pickle and was basically an “origin story”). Magic Pickle, the result of a scientific experiment gone wrong (of course), lives in a secret lab under the bedroom of Jo Jo Wigman, and spends his time fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Produce, created in the same misguided experiment (by – who else? – Dr. Jekyll Formaldehyde). Just think of the scenes! In Planet of the Grapes, Magic Pickle blows up a lemonade stand that is causing strange behavior in people who drink the beverage – notably in Jo Jo’s classmate, Jarek, who shows up at school with a strange machine that “will replicate the diametric pentrosilius combustion present in all forms of transformation.” The result of this is the creation of an all-new evil-produce character called The Razin’ – whose objective is to turn everyone on Earth into grapes (hence the book’s title). The Wrinkled Wretch proves no match for Jo Jo and the Magic Pickle, of course. (And there’s the film’s title: Jo Jo and the Magic Pickle!) Nor, in Egg Poacher, can the Onion Ringer or the Rhyming Lime (who, of course, talks entirely in rhymes) overcome the dynamic duo (oops – that phrase is taken). This episode briefly introduces new bad guys, the Animal Crackers, defeated by Magic Pickle’s use of electricity – which unfortunately also manages to scramble, fry and boil an egg all at once. “He mustn’t be allowed to mix it up with the Brotherhood of Evil Produce,” warns Magic Pickle. “Together they could create some horrid Omelet of Evil.” But MP and Jo Jo are on the case, and in this case, there is actually some good information in the book in addition to the hijinks, because Jo Jo and her class go on a trip to the zoo and learn stuff (such as the scientific name of an egg-eating snake and the fact that boa constrictors are harmless and smooth). The Egg Poacher is of course eventually beaten (beating eggs – get it?), and there are plenty of puns and lots of action along the way. Just what moviegoers need.

     Of course, there is no guarantee that a Magic Pickle film would be a success. Hotel for Dogs, the movie, didn’t go over very well, with critics saying it was too full of implausibilities (even for a light comedy) and didn’t have much of a plot beyond what viewers could glean from its title. Lois Duncan’s book doesn’t have much of a plot, either, but in print, the plot that it does have works pretty well. Andi Walker and her family are moving temporarily into Aunt Alice’s house because Andi’s father just got a promotion at work and has to go to a new town – where Aunt Alice lives – for training. But Aunt Alice is highly allergic to dogs, so the Walkers have to leave their dog, Bebe, behind until they find out where Dad will be working after the training period. So when Andi and her brother, Bruce, find an adorable stray who soon has puppies, they can’t bring the brood to their current home – but there just happens to be an abandoned house down the street into which they can move the dog, which Andi names Friday, and the puppies as well. And it soon turns out that there are other dogs in need of a caring place to stay, including one that is mistreated and one that begs for scraps at school and – you get the idea. Andi, who is 10 and loves to write poetry, is soon mixed up with lots of dogs and lots of kids in her new school – and things get more complicated as Friday’s puppies get old enough to be weaned and adopted, and dog howls start to disturb the peace of the neighborhood, and then Andi’s father gets his assignment, which will let him live right in the same town…so the real-estate agent takes him to see a certain house that’s available just down the street from Aunt Alice’s... And of course the whole dog-hotel plot unravels, but revelations upon revelations mean that all nine dogs (10 if you count Bebe, who will soon be moving to the new town) end up with fine futures ahead of them – and Andi’s poetry gets a big boost, too. It’s as heartwarming as can be, with all the elements neatly buttoned up at the end – maybe a trifle too neatly, but that’s what makes the book the sort of pleasant fantasy that, one would think, would work as a film. Whether it does or not, Hotel for Dogs, the book, is sure to please preteens who love dogs – especially ones who love poetry as well.