(++++) ARRANGEMENT POWER

Janáček: Orchestral Suites from the Operas, Volume 3—The Cunning Little Vixen; From the House of the Dead. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Breiner. Naxos. $8.99.

Elgar: Cello Concerto, arranged for Viola; Schnittke: Viola Concerto. David Aaron Carpenter, viola; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Ondine. $16.99.

     The third and final volume of Peter Breiner’s thoughtfully assembled orchestral suites drawn from operas by Leoš Janáček is as effective as the first two. This time the six-movement suites draw from two late works, The Cunning Little Vixen (1924) and From the House of the Dead (first performed in 1930, two year after the composer’s death). There are lighter moments in The Cunning Little Vixen than in most of Janáček’s operas, despite the death of the title character, and Breiner does a good job of assembling a suite that preserves some of the Aesopian moments (such as the wedding celebration and the triumphal dance when the vixen dispossess the badger) as well as the lyrical ones (the lush courtship dance of the vixen and young fox). But there is melancholy throughout the opera and throughout the suite as well, with woodwinds representing late-summer heat, the orchestra depicting the hardships of winter, and solo clarinet and oboe heightening the tragedy of the vixen’s death before the suite ends with the opera’s paean to nature – a message whose ecological awareness seems, if anything, even more timely today than it was in the 1920s. For his suite from Janáček’s final opera – a non-narrative work based on Dostoevsky and filled with bitterness – Breiner intelligently opens with the opera’s overture, whose sounds (including that of chains) pull both operagoers and CD listeners immediately into the prison where the work is set. The middle portion of the suite uses music associated in the opera with the prisoners’ false hopes of liberty, and the work concludes – as does the opera – with musical pessimism. The pairing of these two suites works well on Breiner’s CD, and the New Zealand Symphony, here as in the two earlier volumes, plays very well for him. These suites are particularly effective for people who know the operas from which they are assembled, but even those unfamiliar with Janáček’s stage works will be pulled into his sonic world – and his philosophical one – by Breiner’s well-constructed arrangements.

     The new viola arrangement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto (1919) is less likely to please everyone – although violists, who have few enough grand works to play, will surely welcome it. Hindemith’s viola works, and the concertos by Walton and Bartók, are among the few 20^th-century viola-and-orchestra pieces around, and today’s violists are not fully satisfied by Telemann’s Viola Concerto or the viola arrangements of Bach’s Cello Suites (as tremendously challenging as those are). Nevertheless, the decision to produce a revised viola arrangement of Elgar’s concerto is bound to ruffle some feathers. The basic viola version has impeccable provenance, having been made by Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), for whom Bax, Vaughan Williams and others wrote pieces. Tertis actually played his version for Elgar in 1929, and the composer approved it. But that is not quite the version heard here: this one has been modified by the soloist, David Aaron Carpenter, to produce what Carpenter considers a work more closely attuned to Elgar’s intentions. Given the concerto’s near-classic status, this may well be deemed hubris by a 23-year-old violist making his first recording. So the question is: how does the Tertis/Carpenter version sound? The answer is that it is very effective, filled with lyricism and virtuosity, and played very well indeed by Carpenter, who gets top-notch support from the Philharmonia Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach. In fact, Carpenter’s modifications occur at the margins, leaving most of the Tertis version intact. However, the interpretation seems a bit lacking in what can only be called maturity: this is an autumnal Elgar work whose depth of meaning Carpenter does not always seem to plumb, even though he gets the notes right. The Elgar arrangement is paired on the CD with a fascinating 1985 viola concerto by Alfred Schnittke, which is in the same slow-fast-slow sequence that Elgar used. This is a concerto that grows as it progresses – each movement is longer than the previous one – and shows the influence of Walton and Shostakovich as well as violist Yuri Bashmet, who inspired it and gave the first performance. Stylistically, Schnittke’s concerto is a synthesis more than a statement of personal style; emotionally, it is a bleak work. Carpenter’s technique here is highly impressive, although some of his heart-on-sleeve gestures can seem a bit over the top. But his overall reading, filled with a kind of intense melodramatic flair, actually fits the music quite well.

(++++) FROM HUNGARY TO NORWAY

Johan Svendsen: Norwegian Rhapsodies Nos. 1-4; Romeo and Juliet; Zorahayda. South Jutland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bjarte Engeset. Naxos. $8.99.

Liszt: Organ Works, Volume 1. Martin Haselböck, organ. NCA. $24.99 (SACD).

     The influence of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies was widespread, extending even as far as Norway, where Johan Svendsen (1840-1911) used them as a model for four Norwegian Rhapsodies that he wrote in 1876 and 1877. Liszt’s works are “Hungarian” in only a very general sense – many of the supposed folk tunes were actually created by the composer himself in what he thought was the style of Gypsy music – but Svendsen made a real effort to incorporate Norwegian folksong into his works. The first rhapsody features a woodwind tune that was also used by Grieg in the third of his Norwegian Dances. The second combines syncopation, an elegiac theme, some rough good humor and an interesting use of muted strings. The third is distinguished by a timpani transition between its first and second themes. And the fourth features a theme drawn from the Hardanger fiddle music of southern Norway. All the pieces are well orchestrated and carefully constructed; and the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, although not the smoothest-sounding of ensembles, plays them with verve and sensitivity under Bjarte Engeset’s knowing direction. The CD also includes two well-put-together tone poems, Romeo and Juliet (the Norwegian title is Romeo og Julie) of 1876 (four years before Tchaikovsky’s far more famous work attained its final form) and Zorahayda of 1874. Svendsen’s Romeo and Juliet contrasts a lively theme with an oboe melody perhaps intended to represent love, but sounding more plaintive than passionate. The coda is subdued rather than tragic and dramatic – a touch lacking in emotional punch, although well written. Zorahayda is more effective. It is based on a Washington Irving story about the love of a Moorish princess for a Christian knight. Strings and horn calls are heard at both the start and the end; in between, there is an attractive passage for solo violin with pizzicato accompaniment, and some fine contrast of woodwinds with strings. There is a sense of resignation at the conclusion here, much as in Svendsen’s Romeo and Juliet, but in this case – perhaps because the underlying story is less well known – the ending seems to flow more organically from what has gone before.

     As famous as Liszt was and is for his Hungarian Rhapsodies, tone poems and piano music, he is much less noted as a composer for organ. But he created a substantial body of work for the instrument, ranging from religiously themed pieces (for which the organ would be considered appropriate) to entirely secular virtuoso showpieces (not what one would typically expect of organ music). Martin Haselböck’s first volume of Liszt’s organ music combines both types of works, offering five pieces from different times in Liszt’s life – and with very different intentions. The longest work here is the Fantasy and Fugue on the Choral “Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam” from the Opera “Le Prophète” by Meyerbeer, which lasts nearly half an hour and is monumentally conceived in every way. Despite the religious nature of the underlying material, Liszt’s work is wholly secular, and it generated considerable controversy in his own time as a result. The more forward-looking critics and audience members identified this piece, written in 1850, as a bridge to the future of organ music, while conservatives bemoaned the profanation of an instrument designed to enhance religious sentiment. Haselböck’s performance is a grand one, giving the work its full due and allowing it to flow forth with a scope that is truly remarkable. The interplay and conflict between old-school polyphony and the virtuosity of Liszt’s time set up tensions within the work that lean, in the end, more toward the old-fashioned side – but clearly point the way ahead.

     The other works on Haselböck’s recording are altogether more modest. Andante Religioso (1857-9), one of Liszt’s better-known organ pieces, is a transcription of a movement from the Berg Symphony, his first symphonic poem. Ave Maria I (1853-after 1856) is one of four musical versions that Liszt wrote on the Ave Maria text. Introduction to the Legend of Saint Elisabeth (1862-5) was composed in connection with an oratorio inspired by religious frescoes. And the awkwardly titled Otto Nicolai: Church Festival Overture on the Choral “Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,” Op. 31, for Organ or Pedal Piano (1844-52) is an adaptation of an adaptation, being Liszt’s version of Nicolai’s version of an overture based on the well-known hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” These are impressive works in their own way – although the extent of Liszt’s involvement with a couple of them is not entirely clear (other composers and performers appear to have had a hand in some of the arrangements). In any case, none of these pieces stakes out the sort of new territory for the organ toward which Liszt started to move with his fantasy and fugue drawn from Meyerbeer’s opera. Haselböck’s balanced, intelligent performances show that he understands Liszt’s organ works very well indeed. Hopefully later volumes in this series will continue to show both the new directions in which Liszt moved and the old ways to which he continued to pay homage.

(++++) MONSTERS, MAYBE

How the Nobble Was Finally Found. By C.K. Williams and Stephen Gammell. Harcourt. $18.

Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli. By Barbara Jean Hicks. Illustrated by Sue Hendra. Knopf. $16.99.

     The Nobble is not a monster – not exactly. It’s not clear what it is, exactly – it is “something, a creature or an animal or a person or, anyway, a something [with] huge eyes and dangly ears and long hair and two lovely wings and little claws on his fingers and a bunch of nice toes.” The Nobble is mighty cute and mighty lonely, having “never been discovered, or bumped into, or met, or found by anybody, anybody at all,” despite having lived “about four thousand three hundred and twenty-three years and three months and fourteen days.” And thereby hangs a tale – specifically, the story of How the Nobble Was Finally Found, which is as quirky as the Nobble himself. C.K. Williams’ sensitive narration and Stephen Gammell’s lovely and thoroughly strange pictures beautifully fit together in this story of the ultimate loner and how everyone, and everything, needs a friend. The narrative is cleverest in explaining just why no one has ever encountered the Nobble. This has to do with the places he hangs out, such as “in the bottom rung of the number eight…and sometimes he went to play in the space between Wednesday and Thursday, and naturally you’d expect that he’d be mostly by himself there, because in that little space there really wasn’t very much to see at all, except way off in the distance a little glow like a radio dial that the Nobble decided was probably something even farther away, between Friday and Saturday, maybe.” Parents may have to explain the glow of a radio dial to children, and there are a few other references here that bear explaining, too, but by and large, the poetic writing carries the story along very well indeed, as the Nobble realizes that he is lonely and sets out to find – well, something. His encounter with a city is beautifully told – big buildings, for example, are “things that went high up into the air like mountains but were all shiny and square.” The Nobble gets scared, first by a cat and then by a little girl, but it is the girl who helps him by directing him to a phone booth (another item that may require some explanation) and showing him that he is not, in fact, all alone in the world. The conventionality of the book’s conclusion, from the standpoint of plot, does not rob it of its essential charm, and the notion that the little girl hears only laughter when she can no longer see the Nobble and his newfound friend is a monstrously good finishing touch.

     The monsters that don’t eat broccoli are also not exactly monsters, although they certainly look like monsters throughout most of Barbara Jean Hicks’ amusingly rhymed story – which features the refrain, “Fum, foe, fie, fee, monsters don’t eat broccoli!” Kids will have a great time watching the monsters – rendered by Sue Hendra with lots of teeth, plenty of scales and near-constant smiles – explain all the things they do eat, including tractors, “tender trailer tidbits,” redwood trees and boulders. It is only at the very end that the “crunchy, munchy trees” turn out to be – what else? – broccoli, and the monsters “chowing down” on them turn out to be a couple of children who are having a great time eating vegetables. This may be a tad unconvincing to kids who are not crazy about the taste of produce – “WOW, are they delicious!” works in Hicks’ narrative but will not necessarily persuade real-world “monsters” that broccoli, carrots and tomatoes are scrumptious. It’s worth a try, though: Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli is enjoyable in and of itself, and maybe, just maybe, it will convince your homegrown monsters that they should at least try some of that green stuff on their plates.

(++++) PHILOSOPHER KINGS AND ARTISTIC MASTERS

Marcus Aurelius: A Life. By Frank McLynn. Da Capo. $30.

The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, Second Edition. By Carol Strickland, Ph.D. Andrews McMeel. $22.99.

     If there was one Roman emperor who most closely approximated the Platonic ideal of government by philosophers, it was Marcus Aurelius, who lived from 121 to 180 A.D. and ruled, jointly or alone, from 161 A.D. until his death. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, written in Greek between 170 and 180 A.D., anticipate much medieval philosophy and continue to speak to readers today. Frank McLynn’s exhaustively researched biography of the emperor, utilizing numerous primary sources (from Meditations itself to Marcus’ correspondence with his rhetoric teacher, Cornelius Fronto, and much more) as well as commentaries on Marcus through the ages, places the emperor’s work firmly in the context of the wars and political events of his time – and makes that very remote era come alive. Running nearly 700 pages, including 150 of appendices and index, Marcus Aurelius: A Life is a book more to be savored than read at a rapid pace – indeed, McLynn’s frequently lengthy sentences, although well constructed, can take some time to unravel: “Although Marcus sometimes pays lip service to the Stoic view that good and evil arise only from the use of reason and from misperceptions and ‘false representations,’ a strong element in his thinking, in flat contradiction to this (and here we can see the Gnostic element in his thinking), is that evil is a ‘partial’ phenomenon, something that exists in Nature, but not in the realm of reason.” Still, when McLynn wants to make a point quickly, he can and does: Meditations “is a curious work, which has been much misunderstood. …The book – if we may call it that – is a series of personal notes taken on a daily basis, which was a common practice in the ancient world, particularly as an aid to spiritual progress or self-improvement.” Although Marcus never intended Meditations to be published, its survival in two copies – one in the Vatican library, the other in a 1558 edition from a now-lost manuscript – brought Marcus to the admiring attention of such diverse figures as Goethe, John Stuart Mill and Frederick the Great. And Meditations was responsible for much of Alexander Pope’s philosophy as expressed in his elegant Essay on Criticism and, even more tellingly, in his Essay on Man, which McLynn aptly quotes: “All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.” The philosophical underpinnings of Marcus’ thought are woven expertly by McLynn into the narrative of the Parthian and Germanic wars that dominated his reign, and into family issues involving Marcus and his 30-year marriage to Faustina the Younger: “There is much circumstantial evidence that Marcus found his free-spirited, assertive and sometimes abrasive (the modern euphemism would be ‘feisty’) wife a trial.” Certainly McLynn’s exploration is aided by the fact that Marcus was a multifaceted character and was genuinely concerned with being a good ruler, dedicated to duty and service to Rome and its people. Also, there is fascination aplenty in the wars, revolts, and political machinations of his time. And Marcus’ position as the last of what Machiavelli called Rome’s “five good emperors” – his son and successor, Commodus, was arbitrary, capricious and often embroiled in political intrigue – guarantees the biography a certain heft beyond its sheer physical size. Still, these elements alone would not be enough for a successful study of this ruler and Stoic philosopher. It is to McLynn’s considerable credit that he pulls so many strands of Marcus’ life and thinking so effectively together.

     A far thinner book, Carol Strickland’s The Annotated Mona Lisa knits together even more elements – of which one small one is the Capitoline Hill statue of Marcus Aurelius, dating to 165 A.D. The title of Strickland’s book is a misnomer, implying a narrower focus than this ambitious work actually has. The subtitle, A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, makes the work’s scope much clearer. In short but information-packed chapters filled with illustrations, intelligent captions, historical data, brief biographies and analyses of paintings, sculptures and architecture, Strickland starts with cave paintings and Stonehenge, moves through Greece and Rome to “the reign of religion” in the Middle Ages, then marches inexorably (and very informatively) through Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, 19^th century and more recent art and artists. Although inevitably somewhat superficial – it runs only 206 pages – The Annotated Mona Lisa is extraordinarily packed with information and some interesting opinions. For example, Strickland pronounces Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-1653) “the first feminist painter” and Caravaggio (1571-1610) “the first Bohemian artist.” The sheer volume of material sometimes leads to errors – in Caravaggio’s specific case, Strickland says he died at age 37 rather than 38 – but in general, the book is accurate, intelligent and well argued. Many of its most useful sections are to be found in boxed and tabular layout. The “Romanticism” box, for example, is a once-over-lightly view of the field’s values (“intuition, emotion, imagination”), inspiration, tone, color, subjects, genres, artistic technique (“quick brushstrokes, strong light-and-shade contrasts”) and composition (“use of diagonal”). The tables comparing various artists of the same time period are even more impressive, such as “How to Tell Them Apart” about Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas – giving, for each, his subjects, colors, style and advice. Strickland’s wide-ranging interests go far beyond traditional definitions of art, encompassing photography (and its relationship to painting), architecture and more. And she does a wonderful job explaining the various “isms” of art: fauvism, impressionism, abstract expressionism, cubism, modernism, etc. Her opinions of specific artists, sprinkled throughout the text, are pithy and pointed: “The opposite of [Robert] Rauschenberg’s passionate, Jack Daniels-swilling welcome of chaos is the cool calculation of Jasper Johns.” And her forays into humor are welcome in a field that tends to take itself very seriously, as when she calls minimalism “the cool school.” The Annotated Mona Lisa is a wonderful introduction to the art world – and beyond – for anyone who wants a better understanding of the meanings behind all those paintings and sculptures in museums, not to mention all those tourist-attraction buildings that sprinkle cities worldwide.

(+++) SPECTRAL DOINGS

The Book of Ghosts. By Michael Hague and Devon Hague. HarperCollins. $19.99.

Magic Tree House #42: A Good Night for Ghosts. By Mary Pope Osborne. Random House. $11.99.

Magic Tree House Research Guide #20: Ghosts. By Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Random House. $4.99.

     The fictional hauntings in these books are intended to entertain readers ages 6-11, which means they are rather on the mild side – much milder, in fact, than the authors’ names in The Book of Ghosts would seem to indicate: Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce et al. Michael Hague and his son, Devon, have toned down the fearsomeness of some classic horror stories to make them accessible to a younger audience – an approach that works moderately well with tales containing an element of humor (“The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost” by H.G. Wells) but far less well in ones dependent for their effects on the authors’ style (Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” neither of which is actually a ghost story). Adults who know W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost” may worry that these retellings will give younger children nightmares, but that is unlikely. The more atmospheric elements of the stories have been stripped from them, and the book’s illustrations – while accurate enough in terms of the tales’ events – are scarcely designed to heighten any frights inherent in the writing. The Hagues do a good job of simplifying the stories while retaining their basic narrative elements, but it is precisely from the atmospheric portions of tales such as Louisa May Alcott’s “The Mummy’s Curse,” Bierce’s “A Diagnosis of Death” and Saki’s “Laura” that readers get a frisson of surprise or terror. None of these nine adaptations provides that, and apparently none of them is intended to. The result is a book more of adventure tales than of ghost stories; even the ones that are about ghosts have little of the unearthly about them here.

     Nor is there anything very frightening or threatening in Magic Tree House #42: A Good Night for Ghosts, which finds brother Jack and sister Annie on a “Merlin Mission” to New Orleans on All Saints’ Day in 1915. The missions in recent Magic Tree House books have tended to be rather thin as this long-running series swings between mythical and real-world locations. The idea this time is to find Louis Armstrong and help him bring his musical gift to the world so that millions of people will be happier. This is not much of a story, and the use of ghosts does not turn it into much more. The ghosts show up toward the end to encourage young Louis, known as Dipper, to pursue a musical career instead of doing the many odd jobs that Jack and Annie find him doing (and with which they help him). There is a little social consciousness here, and a little politics – Dipper talks about enforced separation of whites and blacks, and Jack and Annie promise him that one day a black man will become president of the United States – but by and large, the book is a typical Magic Tree House adventure, with minimal scariness and a foregone conclusion. Fans of the series will, of course, enjoy it.

     They will likely enjoy the latest Magic Tree House Research Guide as well. Here, Mary Pope Osborne and her sister, Natalie Pope Bryce, offer a variety of stories of ghosts that people really have seen, or believe they have seen. There are tales from North Carolina, from Washington, D.C., from England and from other places, including a description of ghost folklore in India, China, Japan and Mexico. Photos of supposedly haunted places are mixed with stories of sightings and drawings of what the ghosts are supposed to look like. There is even a brief look at professional ghost hunters. Like the other books in the Magic Tree House Research Guide series, this one is only tenuously connected to the adventure story to which it is ostensibly linked. But young readers interested in the general subject matter may find this a good starting point for further research – perhaps at some of the locations or using some of the books and Web sites listed at the end of the book.

(+++) OLD-FASHIONED FUN

The Nursery Rhyme Book. Compiled by Helen Cumberbatch. Illustrated by Anne Anderson and Lisa Jackson. Scholastic. $9.99.

The Games Book. By Huw Davies. Illustrated by Lisa Jackson. Scholastic. $9.99.

When the Leaf Blew In. By Steve Metzger. Illustrated by Kellie Lewis. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

     The Nursery Rhyme Book and The Games Book, two hardcovers with an old-fashioned appearance, are designed to help families “remember the rhymes of yesterday” and learn “how to play the games of yesterday,” according to their respective subtitles. Old-style layout and illustrations reminiscent of those in books from the past complete the visual picture. The question is: to what sorts of families will the books appeal? The books are designed to inspire nostalgia in parents, helping them connect their children to memories of the parents’ own childhoods and even to earlier times. How well the books work will depend heavily on modern family dynamics. The Nursery Rhyme Book includes quite a number of rhymes that remain familiar today: “Humpty Dumpty,” “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” “Little Bo-Peep,” “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” and so on. It also offers some rhymes that are still well-known to British children (both this book and The Games Book were originally published last year in England): “Christmas Is Coming,” “Lucy Locket,” “Aiken Drum,” “Ladybird, Ladybird” (known as “Ladybug, Ladybug” in the United States), and others. And then there are some verses that have indeed fallen from popularity in recent times, such as “The Big Ship Sails on the Ally-Ally-Oh,” “Little Polly Flinders,” “Three Children Sliding,” “Heigh-Ho, the Carrion Crow” and “Who Killed Cock Robin?” Parents who find the mixture pleasing – thumb through the book before buying! – will find its pseudo-old-fashioned charm attractive; others may simply not be interested in passing many of these old rhymes along.

     The Games Book will provoke similar interest, or lack of it. Here too there are games that remain quite familiar, such as “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” “Simon Says,” “Tag,” “Hide-and-Seek” and “Pat-a-Cake.” But there are also some with which modern families are unlikely to be familiar: “Fizz Buzz” (a counting game where “fizz” substitutes for numbers divisible by three and “buzz” for ones divisible by seven); “Adder’s Nest” (an attempt to pull one player onto a central object, such as a manhole cover); “Wink Murder” (a game of potential victims, detectives and a make-believe killer); “Crusts and Crumbs” (a two-team tag game); and “Queenie” (a find-who-is-hiding-the-ball game). Many of these games require a fairly large number of cooperative players, and quite a few need a good deal of outdoor space and plenty of adult supervision. Again, this is a book to look through before purchase – parents will know whether their children and their kids’ friends will find these games enjoyably participatory or, in our video-game age, hopelessly slow-paced and out of date.

     When the Leaf Blew In is not an attempt to reinvigorate old-style entertainment, nor is it an old book (it was originally published in 2006 and is now available in paperback). But it does make use of a variation on an old form called cumulative rhyme. Most parents know this technique, even if they do not know what it is called – it is the form in which every line connects back to previous ones, as in “The House That Jack Built,” “The Twelve Days of Christmas” of “For Want of a Nail” (the last of these being one of the poems in The Nursery Rhyme Book). Steve Metzger’s text in When the Leaf Blew In does not rhyme, but the underlying idea is the same: a leaf blows into the barn, so the cow sneezes; the cow’s sneeze causes a spider to land on an owl; that causes the owl to swoop out of the barn; that leads the pig to dive into the mud; and so on. The cause-and-effect cycle, amusingly illustrated by Kellie Lewis, eventually leads right back to the beginning, as we find out why the leaf blew into the barn in the first place – and the whole cycle presumably starts all over again. This is a gently amusing story, featuring animals with pleasantly human expressions and reactions – there is nothing consequential here, but the book is easy to read, and young children will enjoy looking at the pictures.

(++++) MAKING THE FAMILIAR NEW AGAIN

Mozart: Overtures to “La Clemenza di Tito” (plus Marcia), “The Marriage of Figaro” (plus Marcia), “The Magic Flute” (plus Marsch der Priester), “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” “Die Schauspieldirektor,” “Idomeneo” (plus Marcia, Passepied, and Pas seul de Monsieur Legrand, Largo [ballet]), “Mitridate, Rè di Ponto” (plus Marcia), “Don Giovanni,” “Les Petits Riens,” “Bastien und Bastienne,” “Così Fan Tutte.” Norwegian National Opera Orchestra conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Naïve. $16.99.

Handel: Water Music, Suites 1-3; Telemann: Water Music (“Hamburg Ebb and Flow”). Zefiro conducted by Alfredo Bernardini. Ambroisie. $12.99.

     There is little music on these CDs with which classical-music lovers will be unfamiliar. But the brightness and verve of the performances combine with a cleverly chosen program (on the Mozart CD) and excellent original-instrument playing (on the CD of Handel and Telemann) to make these well-known works sound fresh and thoroughly enjoyable.

     Rinaldo Alessandrini is better known for authentic performances of Baroque music than for Mozart, but he turns out to be as skillful a conductor of Mozart overtures as he is of Bach and his contemporaries. This is a highly personal CD: the overtures are not in chronological or any other particular order; music from operas is mixed with the overture to the ballet Les Petits Riens; overtures to several (but not all) operas are followed by additional music from them; and La Clemenza di Tito both opens the CD (with its Overture) and closes it (with its Marcia). If this were not music by Mozart, it would likely seem a hodgepodge; but Mozart’s musical flow, and the lovely playing that Alessandrini extracts from the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, make the CD a pure joy from start to finish. The tripartite overture to Mitridate, Rè di Ponto and the short overture to Bastien und Bastienne (using a theme on which Beethoven would later expand significantly in the “Eroica” symphony) are perhaps the least-known pieces here, but even the highly familiar ones – The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così Fan Tutte and others – are played with such bounce and freshness that the music simply washes over a listener in waves of pure pleasure. This is not a CD designed to “prove” anything through specialized performance practices or rediscovery of little-known music – it is simply a collection of wonderful works, arranged to give the conductor enjoyment and, as a result, providing plenty of pleasure to listeners as well.

     The pleasures of Zefiro’s excellently played Water Music CD are of a different sort. To be sure, this CD’s arrangement is also a touch on the quirky side: Telemann’s music appears between Handel’s Suite in F (whose movements are rearranged from their usual sequence) and before Handel’s Suites in D and G (whose movements are commingled). But the main things that Alfredo Bernardini and Zefiro bring to the music are impeccably tasteful playing, a thorough understanding of the tempi and ornamentation of Handel’s and Telemann’s time, and a bright sound that accords perfectly with music that was intended to be played outdoors. Zefiro, by design, emphasizes wind instruments (as is clear from its name: Zephyr was the god of the gentle West Wind), and that focus is particularly apt for this double helping of water music, in which winds predominate and are designed (by both composers) to reflect life al fresco. Handel’s more-familiar music is less directly linked to the “water” theme – it was written to be played during trips upon the water rather than to sound like water itself. Telemann’s work is closer to program music, its dances sometimes depicting mythological gods associated with water and other times representing harbor life along the Elbe, in the city of Hamburg. These are loving and lovely performances of beautiful music – and the dual photos of Zefiro, one with members in concert dress and the other with them in bathing suits, are a wonderful and very amusing bonus.

(++++) MEANING AND THE VIOLIN

Niels Wilhelm Gade: Violin Concerto in D minor; Peter Erasmus Lange-Müller: Violin Concerto in C major; Rued Langgaard: Violin Concerto. Christina Åstrand, violin; Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds. Dacapo. $16.99.

Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2; Violin Sonata No. 1. Lydia Mordkovitch, violin; Gerhard Oppitz, piano; Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi. Chandos. $11.99.

     The violin concerto and the Romantic era are inextricably linked, but surprisingly, many composers of the time came up with only a single example: think of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Dvořák. Add to that list the Danish composers Gade, Lange-Müller and Langgaard: each composed just one work in this form. None of these pieces is well known outside Denmark; indeed, they are not particularly well known there. Having all three together on one CD presents an unusual opportunity to hear some less-known violin concertos representing a time in which composers strove to extract emotional meaning from their works – but apparently found, in many cases, that they could do so only once in an orchestral piece with the violin at its center. Gade (1817-1890) wrote his concerto late in life, in 1880, and sent it as a Christmas gift to famed violinist Joseph Joachim – for whom Schumann, Brahms, Bruch and Dvořák had composed concertos. Joachim did not always play the works written for him, but he did give the first performance of Gade’s concerto – which, despite this auspicious start, never quite caught on. Christina Åstrand’s lovely playing actually shows why: the work begins strongly, with a beautiful and grand-scale opening theme, but thereafter it tends to meander, and the final rondo, although pleasant enough, is musically rather weak. Interestingly, it was Gade’s son, Axel Gade, who gave the first performance (in 1904) of the concerto by Lange-Müller (1850-1926), a composer best known (to the extent that he is known at all) for his vocal music. Lange-Müller wrote the concerto in 1902, filling it with long lines and soaring, dancelike themes, including (in the second movement) the sounds of Norwegian folk music. One oddity of this interesting but not-quite-compelling work is that the first movement has a place for an optional cadenza (Axel Gade and others played one; Åstrand does not). Another is that the work as a whole seems more a fantasia with violin than a concerto for it – perhaps the lack of virtuoso fireworks has kept it out of most violinists’ repertoire. As for the concerto by Langgaard (1893-1952), it was written much later – in 1943-4 – but is essentially Romantic in approach, as was Langgaard’s music in general. However, it seems even less of a concerto than does Lange-Müller’s: Langgaard’s one-movement work lasts less than 10 minutes and gives a concertante piano (played by Ville Hautala in this recording) as much prominence as the violin. Langgaard’s piece feels more like expanded chamber music than a traditional violin concerto – although it does have a certain charm that Åstrand and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra under John Storgårds bring out effectively.

     The re-release of Lydia Mordkovitch’s recording of Prokofiev’s two violin concertos pulls listeners back into traditional three-movement concerto form, although Prokofiev’s works (from 1917 and 1935, respectively) have less of the Romantic era about them than do those by Gade, Lange-Müller and Langgaard. Mordkovitch’s recordings date to 1988 and have stood up very well. She neatly balances the lyricism of the first concerto with its episodes of considerable virtuosity. Prokofiev placed a sardonic scherzo rather than a slow movement at the center of this concerto, and Mordkovitch handles it skillfully, then allowing the lyricism of the first movement to re-emerge effectively in the work’s finale. In the second concerto, which reverts to the traditional form of a slow middle movement, Mordkovitch again focuses on the work’s lyrical side – which is dominant through much of the piece – but also handles the strong accents and frequent rhythmic shifts of the finale to fine effect. And she is ably backed up by the Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi. Interestingly, the third work on this CD, the Violin Sonata No. 1, is longer than either of the concertos. Prokofiev started composing this work in 1938 but did not finish it until 1946 (by which time the sonata designated as No. 2 had already been performed). This sonata is quite a serious piece, with little of the occasional puckishness of the violin concertos. Its four movements are of nearly equal length but of contrasting character. Mordkovitch and pianist Gerhard Oppitz recorded the sonata together in 1984, and even after 25 years, their nuanced, closely intertwined reading is highly effective – and capped with a splendidly realized finale whose complex rhythms flow beautifully from both instruments.

(++++) ENDEARINGLY, ENDURINGLY SILLY

The Marshmallow Incident. By Judi Barrett. Drawn by Ron Barrett. Scholastic. $16.99.

Sheep in a Jeep. By Nancy Shaw. Illustrated by Margot Apple. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $11.99.

     It is the juxtaposition of Ron Barrett’s serious-appearing drawings with the absurdist text by his wife, Judi, that lends The Marshmallow Incident immediate appeal. The creators of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs have again taken a slice of almost-ordinary life and twisted it through a Möbius strip of thoroughly engaging ridiculousness. The story is about the towns of Left and Right, where everyone is, respectively, left-handed and right-handed, and where buildings sport such slogans as “we proudly serve leftovers” and “the right stuff.” The blocky illustrations, with an old-fashioned realism to them, showcase the side-by-side towns perfectly. One town has a flag bearing an upraised left hand; the other, a flag with an upraised right hand. One town has a clock tower with the left side of a round clock (6 through 12), the other town’s clock tower shows the clock’s right side (12 through 6). In the middle of all this is a yellow line that some unforgotten person painted in the dim past. And guarding the line is the Order of the Ambidextrous Knights, whose members live in a castle through the middle of which the yellow line passes. And in the castle are 50,000 boxes of marshmallows (well, why not?). The pages showing what the knights usually do with the marshmallows are hilarious: they serve them on pizza, for example, and roast them by placing them on sword tips while a dragon breathes fire in their direction. Naturally, the unnatural separation of Left and Right has to end. When a well-meaning Right resident trips while trying to prevent some children from crossing the yellow line, he falls into Left and the knights immediately take action with “the nearest ammunition, which, oddly enough, turned out to be their marshmallows.” Chaos ensues (the marshmallow rain is a delight to behold), after which everyone realizes “how silly the whole thing was” and the two towns vote to eradicate the line and henceforth use the marshmallows for practical purposes, such as marshmallow mattresses and the game of tic-tac-marshmallow. Written in a gently amusing style and illustrated with page after page of well-formed hilarity, The Marshmallow Incident is a book to which children will return again and again, spotting some silly new detail time after time.

     Kids have been returning to Sheep in a Jeep for many years already – Nancy Shaw’s book was originally published in 1986 – and now it is available as an oversize board book for a new generation of children to enjoy. This is another book whose illustrations wonderfully complement its text. Margot Apple gets the animals’ expressions just right when “sheep leap to push the jeep,” when “sheep shrug” after the jeep gets stuck in mud, and so on. The text’s simplicity somehow fits the story perfectly, as when two pigs taking a mud bath come to the rescue: “Sheep yelp. Sheep get help. Jeep comes out. Sheep shout.” The sheep, careless, end up carless, but it all happens so delightfully (and with no injury to anyone) that today’s young children will be as charmed as were those of 20-plus years ago. And the lap edition of Sheep in a Jeep is so sturdy that kids will be able to play with it themselves, looking at the pictures and starting to puzzle out the words, without damaging it. And then they will undoubtedly want to know more about the sheep’s adventures, which will give parents the chance to introduce Sheep on a Ship, Sheep in a Shop and the other delightful Shaw-Apple collaborations in this simple, simply wonderful series.

(++++) ADVENTURES WITH BITE

Night Huntress: Book One—Halfway to the Grave; Book Two—One Foot in the Grave; Book Three—At Grave’s End; Book Four—Destined for an Early Grave. By Jeaniene Frost. Avon. $7.99 each.

     Think of the antithesis of the innocence of the vampiric Twilight series and you will have some idea of what Jeaniene Frost has created in Night Huntress. Think of Kim Harrison’s novels of the Hollows and you will have more of an idea. But Frost’s voice is her own. Night Huntress lacks the sweetness and youth orientation of Twilight, but has an equally strong focus on romance – although it is a much earthier and more physical sort of romance than anything in Stephenie Meyer’s books. And Frost’s books have many of the intense action-adventure elements of Harrison’s, albeit without the finely honed characterizations and well-crafted view of an alternative (but not too alternative) universe. Avon calls Night Huntress “paranormal romance,” which is a pretty good description; “urban fantasy romance” is another. The books are fast-paced, often sexy, frequently violent and always page-turners, from Halfway to the Grave (originally published in 2007) to the brand-new Destined for an Early Grave.

     The underlying story here is absurd even by genre conventions. Catherine Kathleen “Cat” Crawfield is a half-vampire, product of a human mother impregnated by a bloodsucker. Somehow the interbreeding resulted in an offspring, even though that is “almost unheard of,” as we learn early on. Cat’s life is focused on revenge: because of what one vampire did to her mother, Cat hunts all vampires, unhesitatingly using her physical charms (“my battle armor was a push-up bra, curled hair, and a short dress”) to lure them to places where she can destroy them. That’s all there is to it, but that’s not all there is to these books, by a long shot. Having established Cat’s provenance and giving her some motivation for vampire involvement, Frost then twists and turns Cat’s stories in a wide variety of dangerous and romantic directions. In Halfway to the Grave, Cat meets Bones, a master vampire with his own reasons for hunting down members of his own kind; learns one theory about the origin of vampires (it has to do with Cain’s actions after he killed Abel); re-encounters her first boyfriend, who barely survives the meeting; and becomes a professional rather than amateur hunter of the undead. She does this in part because Bones agrees to help her find her father – but really because she is so intensely attracted to him. They make quite a pair as the adventure plays out.

     In One Foot in the Grave, Cat gets a government job. Nothing to do with paper pushing, of course – she is a special agent hunting down the undead. She has broken up with Bones (for reasons explained, not terribly convincingly, at the end of the first book), but needs to re-connect with him four years later because of an assassination plot. It’s a plot against Cat herself, and even with all she has learned from Bones, she can’t handle it alone. Nor does she really want to, it turns out. Frost shows a sly sense of humor at times in this volume, as when Bones tells Cat she has to go to a spa before they can handle part of a dangerous assignment. This is also the book in which Cat does find her father – which leads to a major decision on her part. And it is here that Frost explains the difference between vampires and ghouls, and shows how one of the latter can be created.

     At Grave’s End finds Cat in still more danger (of course). And this time Bones (interchangeably called Crispin) is under threat, too. You get a hint of these characters’ relationship from something Bones says to Cat early in this third book: “Because of me, you dangled yourself out as bait to a group of murdering white slavers years ago. You had to drive a car through a house to rescue your mum – while covered in your grandparents’ blood.” Well, yes, and that’s only part of it. We also learn more of Bones’ past here, back to the 18^th century, and of course it has resonance right into the present day. Also here is dialogue like this: “I don’t want to spend the rest of my night being dead dead” – but hey, profundity is far from the point in these novels. This book turns a great deal on not forgetting one’s debts or the kindnesses that other people do – a strange notion in books like these, perhaps, but the nature of the debts and kindnesses stays well in context. A particularly interesting character named Mencheres – more fully developed than most of the other vampires – is important in this book, in which Cat for a time believes Bones truly dead. Vampire rivalries, petty and intense, take a larger role here, sometimes in a deadly way and sometimes rather amusingly, as when one master vampire tells Cat that Bones is “an uppity street peasant who’s been gifted far and away over what he deserves.” Toward the end, through betrayals and tales of ruined centuries-long relationships, Cat comments that “our situation had upgraded from awful to doomed,” but eventually the prime mover of evil here is dispatched, although Cat is left thinking, “Some things shouldn’t be possible, and it was scary to know they were.”

     And that leads to Destined for an Early Grave, where what should be possible is a nice Parisian vacation for Cat and Bones. This, it of course turns out, is not possible, as a dream-invading vampire named Gregor appears to terrorize Cat as she sleeps, claiming that she belongs to him rather than to Bones. At Grave’s End pulled in a large number of vampires and various other supernaturals, and Destined for an Early Grave does so, too, but this is more of a mano-a-mano book, pitting Gregor against Bones. Because these books remain focused on Cat, though, it turns out that the only way Gregor’s hold over Cat can be broken is by Cat herself. But does she want to break it? That becomes a real question. There is a strong emotional confrontation between her and Bones midway through this book – stronger than anything in the earlier novels – in which Bones reveals the depth of his feeling for Cat by enumerating all the ways in which she has always withheld her deepest, innermost being from him. It is some of Frost’s best writing, because while she is no stylist, she here taps into a level of anguish that fleshes out both Bones and, through what he says, Cat herself. Eventually, after all sorts of miscommunication and anger, Cat remarks, “I wanted so badly to believe that love could conquer all. That Bones and I could make things work based on sheer feelings alone, but life wasn’t that easy.” No, it isn’t, as it turns out that Cat is the pawn in a vampire power play that stretches over 220 years. And she is also more than the half-human-half-vampire that she has thought herself to be – and is capable, when she must, of defeating Gregor herself.

     The Night Huntress series is by no means great literature, but it has a great deal to recommend it: fast pacing, some interesting characters (set against some cardboard ones), and a created world whose possibilities keep expanding as Frost pulls in new elements. Clearly, Cat’s newfound powers and status will be important in future books; and Night Huntress is about to spawn (if that’s the right word) a spinoff series featuring one of the characters from Cat’s world. Frost has the right mixture of elements for her books’ commercial success, and she pulls them together in well-crafted if scarcely elegant prose that captures readers quickly and is likely to keep them coming back for more. There’s nothing profound here, but there is much that is very effective.

(++++) BEING AGONIZED, WITH HUMOR

The Treasure Map of Boys. By E. Lockhart. Delacorte Press. $15.99.

Matisse on the Loose. By Georgia Bragg. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

     Ruby Oliver, slut by reputation, misunderstood innocent who has kissed only six boys in 16 years and never done anything but kiss them, or not much else, is back again in The Treasure Map of Boys, as endearingly neurotic as in The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book. Ruby is quite a character, self-aware enough to understand the interpersonal mistakes she makes and even why she makes them (well, some of them), and perceptive enough to write entertainingly about her errors, but unable to keep from messing things up. E. Lockhart’s books, for ages 12 and up, make the perils of dating – and nondating, also known as being in the state of Noboyfriend – a lot more interesting and pleasurable than they are in real life. Ruby’s exaggerated problems with friends, ex-friends, possible future friends, possible future ex-friends, and her therapist. add up to far more fun than similar situations ever would in the real world. And that’s just the point of Lockhart’s book: it can give readers a little perspective, as in, “Thank goodness my life isn’t as messed up as that!” Consider, for example, Dr. Z, the aforementioned therapist, whom Ruby has been seeing because of her panic attacks. At one point in The Treasure Map of Boys, Ruby, working in a store called Granola Brothers, has to fit sandals on a man with “the strangest, hairiest, smelliest feet I’d ever seen.” Nearly gagging, she manages to get him a pair that works; he then asks if he can keep wearing them until his girlfriend comes in; Ruby says that’s fine; and when the girlfriend shows up, she turns out to be – Dr. Z. Ruby nearly has a panic attack right then. “It was so weird to see her out in the real world, holding a mesh bag full of winter squash and something wrapped in brown paper that was probably fish. …[N]ow I knew what she was having for dinner, and that she was going to cook, and that she must really like winter squash because there were several big gourdlike items in that bag of hers Who on earth likes winter squash that much?” Ruby clearly has something of the obsessive-compulsive about her, on top of everything else. But there’s so much everything else, and it’s all handled so entertainingly, that readers will feel simultaneously sorry for Ruby and charmed by her. She writes the narratives – and provides her own footnotes. She self-analyzes: “Over the next two days, my life was like a movie entitled Return of the Roly-poly Slut.” She gets a cheer-up picture of a frog from her ex-boyfriend and asks herself, “Was it an innocuous frog? …Or was it a Frog Laden with Meaning?” She then thinks up five possible meanings, none of them satisfactory, before concluding, “I knew I should throw it in the trash and never think about it again, but I couldn’t.” Ruby is clearly her own worst enemy – although she has quite a few others, or thinks she does – but even when she feels sorry for herself, she does so in such an amusingly presented way that the heartache, despite being as real as what any high-school junior ever feels, is mitigated by her presentation of it. Ruby’s incessant list-making has gotten her in trouble many times, and her adventures in miscommunication do so again and again in The Treasure Map of Boys, but Ruby is clearly a survivor, who will make it through high school – and life – bruised and battered but better for it. Which, indeed, is how she eventually makes it through this book.

     The problems are simpler, or at least more straightforward, in Matisse on the Loose, because Georgia Bragg’s book is intended for preteens, on the cusp of all those pesky hormones but not yet immersed in them. This is a book about mischief gone awry, and although it tries too hard to be a carefree romp, it is an entertaining bit of fluff that merits a (+++) rating. Matisse is the 11-year-old son of strange parents: “My dad is just one big advertisement for someone whose brains are all gone,” because he has invented a barbecue that roasts a whole pig and insists on wheeling it all over town to whatever event wants it. Matisse’s parents have a thing for art: his older sister is named Frida and his baby brother is Man Ray. This dovetails nicely with his mother’s job as head of security at the local art museum. But before the main plot gets started, Bragg tosses in some slapstick in the form of Frida’s obsession with the color purple and the escape of Dad’s barbecue into the middle of a five-year-old’s birthday party. This is the first example of the book trying too hard, but not the last. The primary story turns on the fact that Matisse really does have a talent for art – for copying it, that is. He is especially good at copying paintings by his namesake, Henri Matisse, one of which, “Portrait of Pierre Matisse,” features the painter’s son – a boy who looks a bit like Matisse, the book’s hero. So young Matisse copies the painting repeatedly, getting better and better at it. And then he finds himself alone with the real painting, with the security protections shut off. And on a whim, or in the grip of what Edgar Allan Poe called “the imp of the perverse,” he takes the real Matisse off the wall, frame and all, takes it out of the frame, and replaces it with his own copy. And no one notices. And when he tries to switch the paintings back, the alarm goes off and he’s stuck with the real one, rolled up – which ends up at his house. So Matisse tries to confess, but no one believes him. His mother goes off on a story about the time she took a friend’s Girl Scout pin. The police chief shows up at the museum and tries to catch Matisse, but it’s only to get some pointers on painting – Matisse actually says “you can book me, or send me to the torture chamber, whatever you want,” but of course the chief has no idea what he is talking about. Matisse is not entirely dumb – he realizes that his mother could easily be blamed for the theft of the painting, and he tells the chief that she had nothing to do with it. But again, the policeman thinks this is all part of a kids’ game of cops-and-robbers. It takes a meeting with the real Pierre Matisse – a deus ex machina if there ever was one – to straighten things out. Pierre Matisse actually died in 1989, but Bragg explains in an Author’s Note that she needed him in the present-day novel to interact with modern museum security. This is just one way in which Matisse on the Loose is a trifle more contrived than perhaps it had to be. It has its amusing moments, to be sure, but everything in it feels a bit too convenient and manipulated – almost like the novelistic version of a paint-by-numbers picture.

(++++) ANIMAL ANTICS

Confessions of a Swinging Single Sea Turtle: The Fourteenth “Sherman’s Lagoon” Collection. By Jim Toomey. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

What the Duck: A W.T. Duck Collection. By Aaron Johnson. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Peekaboo Planet: A Collection of “Rose Is Rose” Comics. By Don Wimmer. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

     A longstanding genre of comic strips is “funny animal comics” – Mickey Mouse and many other characters come from that line. But the field isn’t at all what it used to be – now the animals are almost always thinly veiled human beings, their shapes and forms of communication used to say things about the human condition rather than to produce laughter through simple antics, pratfalls and the like. The sea creatures in Jim Toomey’s Sherman’s Lagoon are a perfect case in point. Aside from breathing water, having fins, living in shells, and other such superficialities, they are entirely human. They use speed dating when seeking romance; go fishing for “hairless beach apes”; set up their own underwater radio stations; become computer hackers; hope to go to rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camp; try on spirituality for size; get into arguments with mythological figures – you know, just a bunch of everyday sort-of-human activities. Toomey’s latest collection even includes a touch of comic-strip self-reference – something that’s all the rage these days – as characters from various comics show up for a convention on Kapupu Island. This gives Toomey’s turtle character, the perpetually mateless Fillmore, a chance to meet the Over the Hedge turtle, Verne; Toomey’s shark, Sherman, an opportunity to ask Rex Morgan, M.D., a medical question; and Sherman’s wife, Megan, a meal (she eats Lola). Add in an adventure in text messaging, a wine class, and a visit to Walden Pond, and you have the makings of another of Toomey’s typically skewed worldviews. Or fishviews. Whatever.

     What the Duck is skewed, too, but W.T. Duck stays on land. And takes pictures of its denizens – he’s a photographer. Drawn as a white lump with tiny eyes – looking almost like one of Al Capp’s famous Shmoos – W.T. spends his time interacting with ever-complaining clients (he asks one, “Is Poo Poo Head hyphenated?”), photoshopping real-life problems when possible, and dealing with photo editors and other impossibly demanding near-nitwits (Aaron Johnson draws the human body convincingly, but you never see people’s expressions – he always has speech balloons or objects covering people’s faces). The strip throws in the occasional motto-like remark: “Photoshop – helping the ugly since 1988.” It shows the button used when a client demands that everyone in a photo be made to look 20% happier – it’s an eject button for the client’s chair. It explains “the magic hour” as “the hour between my kids’ bedtime and my own.” And it offers a photographer’s viewpoint on work: “Today I chased wild animals, endured hostile environments, and warded off restless natives. I’m shooting another wedding tomorrow.” Johnson is given to a few too many in jokes – non-photographers will miss some points and find some elements of the strip repetitious – but the off-kilter worldview here means there are many more hits than misses.

     Peekaboo Planet is the only one of these three books in which a cartoon animal behaves almost like a real-world one (albeit exaggeratedly). That animal would be Peekaboo, the perpetually playful (and frequently thoughtful) kitten sharing the Gumbo household with Rose, husband Jimbo and son Pasquale. This is one of the better books that Don Wimmer has produced since taking over production of Rose Is Rose from its creator, Pat Brady, in 2004. Wimmer’s plotting remains mediocre – he never comes up with anything new for the characters to do, instead recycling Brady’s innovations again and again (Pasquale’s dreamship and guardian angel, for instance). But in Peekaboo Planet, Wimmer frequently focuses on squirrels, birds and puppies as well as the title kitten, and in a strip founded to be endearing, it’s hard to go wrong with cute animals. Pasquale’s cousin, Clem, a one-note character (he likes to hog all the attention, brownies, etc.), gets too much focus here, and Wimmer really isn’t sure what to do with some of Brady’s best concepts: Rose’s wonderful alter ego, Vicky the biker, who symbolizes everyone’s occasional desire to dump a solid life and take off for parts unknown, is here reduced to returning overdue library books and anticipating a Christmas present. And neighbor baby Mimi, who talks in near-nonsense syllables originally invented by Brady for baby Pasquale, is too intelligible here – and the strips featuring her spend too much time just repeating what she says in ordinary English, even though Wimmer makes her words perfectly comprehensible (as Brady did not). Still, Peekaboo’s adventure with a little lost puppy, his day with his mom (which includes both of them having toe snags), his stretchability to cover multiple laps at different places in the room, and his octopus-like (or octo-puss-like) spreading over the entire big sofa, are sweet and amusing enough – and sufficiently reminiscent of real-world cats’ behavior – to earn Peekaboo Planet a (+++) rating, even though Wimmer remains nowhere near Brady’s level for thoughtful artistry and warm-hearted family fun.

(++++) PIANO RARITIES AND STANDARDS

Tchaikovsky: 18 Pieces, Op. 72. Igor Kamenz, piano. Oehms. $16.99.

Nietzsche: Complete Solo Piano Works. Michael Krücker, piano. NCA. $24.99 (SACD).

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition; A Night on Bald Mountain; Rachmaninoff: 6 Etudes Tableaux. Sa Chen, piano. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Idil Biret Beethoven Edition, Volume 10: Piano Sonatas Nos. 9, 10, 13 and 14 (“Moonlight”). Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

     It is easy to assume that the 19^th century has been fully explored in terms of piano music – it is the mainstay of many a recital and recording. Yet there remain some astonishingly good, little-known works for solo piano from the Romantic era, and Tchaikovsky’s 18 Pieces is one of the most surprisingly neglected. Written late in his life, after he had completed the sketches for the “Pathétique” symphony, the 18 Pieces are as lovely and generally upbeat as the symphony, for all its lyricism, is dour. The cycle’s opus number, 72, places it immediately after The Nutcracker, which is Op. 71, and some of the 18 Pieces reflect the stage work: No. 1 takes after the ballet’s overture, No. 4 is reminiscent of “Mother Ginger,” and No. 11 sounds a bit like the “Waltz of the Flowers” combined with “Chocolate.” Other pieces sound a bit like Eugene Onegin, the second movement of the “Pathétique” and the work that would eventually become Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Yet none of these 18 Pieces is slavishly imitative of anything else in the composer’s oeuvre – they are charming, virtuosic and imaginative by turns, and succeed very much on their own terms. Igor Kamenz plays the cycle with intelligence, care and fine musicianship – so well, in fact, that it makes the neglect of these pieces even harder to understand. Perhaps the 80-minute length of the cycle explains why it is not often heard as a whole in concert – but surely individual pieces ought to be performed more often.

     It is harder to argue for frequent performances of the solo-piano music of Friedrich Nietzsche, even though much of it is intriguing and all of it is well crafted. Although known today only as a philosopher, Nietzsche was a fine self-taught musician and, for a time, a devotee of Richard Wagner, although the relationship between the men was forever broken when Wagner turned to Christianity for the setting of his last opera, Parsifal. Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote most of the works that Michael Krücker plays between 1861 and 1865, so they qualify as juvenilia – and their echoes of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt are scarcely surprising. But the longest work here, Hymnus an die Freundschaft, was written in 1872 and revised in 1875, and shows more signs of originality, although it scarcely rises to the level of great music. Krücker includes with the completed works a variety of fragments, from a half-minute Marcia to a two-minute Albumblatt to a three-minute portion of a fugue. These provide interesting insight into Nietzsche’s compositional process, even if they are not in themselves particularly compelling. The Krücker recording is more of a curiosity than anything else – Nietzsche contributed a great deal to philosophy but not much to music, despite his obvious talent for it. Yet Nietzsche himself acutely felt the interrelationship between these two fields, writing, “I know no difference between tears and music” and speaking of “the strings of my soul, invisibly moved.” Krücker’s recording of Nietzsche’s piano music make a fascinating companion to the philosopher’s writings.

     Sa Chen takes listeners to much more familiar territory with her new recording of Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff. Fourth-place winner in the 2000 International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition and third-place finisher in the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the 30-year-old performer is one of a number of impressive young pianists to emerge from China in recent years. She has the strengths and weaknesses that seem to typify this group of rising young stars: superb control, technique to spare, but a tendency to miss out on interpretative niceties and to play very different pieces of music in much the same way. As it happens, this potential defect is of little importance in her new recording, which emphasizes sweep and technique in music that generally does not call for considerable subtlety. Chen’s Pictures at an Exhibition is the colorful tour de force that Mussorgsky intended it to be, with the contrasts among its movements particularly well displayed and with plenty of power when needed, as in the final portrait of the heroes’ gate at Kiev. A Night on Bald Mountain is a bit of an oddity, being a piano transcription by Konstantin N. Chernov of Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s original. Chen plays it well and rather flashily, although it is hard not to miss the familiar delicacy of orchestration that Rimsky-Korsakov brought to his version of Mussorgsky’s work. Chen tends toward the flashy in the six Rachmaninoff Etudes as well: Op. 33, Nos. 2, 3 and 5, and Op. 39, Nos. 4, 5 and 6. Five of these six are in minor keys, inviting thoughtfulness as well as virtuosity, but Chen’s focus is mostly on the works’ intensity and their potential for sheer display – not the most sensitive possible approach to the music, but one that generally works well in pieces with more than their share of the showy.

     “Showy” is scarcely a word to apply to Idil Biret’s handling of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, the fifth volume of which is now available as the 10^th release in Biret’s 19-volume Beethoven Edition. Biret brings a light touch and classically poised elegance to the two Op. 14 sonatas (No. 9 in E and No. 10 in G). For the two from Op. 27 (No. 13 in E-flat and the famous “Moonlight” in C-sharp minor), Biret seems particularly focused on Beethoven’s designation “Sonata quasi una fantasia” – which he applied to both works. There is rhythmic freedom in these performances, and an expressivity that gives them feelings of tenderness and near-improvisatory flexibility, with Biret’s tone in No. 13’s Adagio con espressione and No. 14’s opening Adagio sostenuto especially lovely. These are among Biret’s most recent recordings in her Beethoven sonata series, having been made in May 2008 (Nos. 9 and 10 were recorded in 2004). The Op. 27 performances are also among her most thoughtful, showing just how effective even familiar piano works can be when presented by a performer both technically skilled and closely attuned to the music.

(++++) A MASTER’S MANY MOODS

Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 60 (“Il Distratto”), 88 and 96 (“Miracle”). Mozarteumorchester Salzburg conducted by Ivor Bolton. Oehms. $16.99.

Haydn: Eight Concertos for Harpsichord, Fortepiano and Organ. Christine Schornsheim, harpsichord, fortepiano and organ; Neue Düsseldorfer Hofmusik. Capriccio. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Haydn: Five Sonatas for Violin and Fortepiano. Alberto Bologni, violin; Giuseppe F. Modugno, fortepiano. Concerto. $16.99.

     Haydn was, in retrospect, more of a symphonic composer than anything else – although his contribution to the string quartet, which he essentially created, should not be minimized. Surprisingly, until recent years, only a relatively few of his 106 symphonies (including the early ones designated “A” and “B”) were frequently performed, and those were mostly the ones with jovial titles that Haydn did not necessarily assign to them (“Clock,” “London,” “Drum Roll,” and so on). Recent re-exploration of Haydn has led to a greater willingness to perform his less-known symphonic works, and that in turn has led to some outstanding releases, including Ivor Bolton’s version of Nos. 60, 88 and 96. These are bright, bouncy, thoroughly idiomatic performances that do an especially good job of capturing Haydn’s wit and elegance. No. 60, “Il Distratto,” is a six-movement gem assembled by Haydn from incidental music he wrote for the play that gives the symphony its title. It is full of theatricality, including unexpected pianissimo passages, a required retuning by the strings during one movement, and an accelerando written before that term had found its way into music and which may be the first of its kind. No. 88, despite its lack of a title, is well known and is one of Haydn’s most typical mature creations, full of lovely melodies, with a peasant rhythm in its Menuetto and a genuinely creative contrapuntal finale. No. 96 is called the “Miracle” because it was thought to have been played at a concert where a falling chandelier miraculously caused no injuries – and the title has stuck even since the discovery that the symphony actually played at that event was No. 102 (which remains without a title). In any case, No. 96 is a wonderful example of Haydn’s “London” writing, more elaborate and on a larger scale than much of what he had composed before.

     The latter part of the Andante of No. 96 sounds a great deal like a solo concerto, but in fact Haydn composed far less in concerto format than in other musical forms, perhaps because he was not himself a virtuoso on any particular instrument. A few examples of his comparatively modest output have become deservedly popular, and now there is a recording that effectively argues that more of them deserve to be heard with greater frequency. It is Christine Schornsheim’s remarkable performance of eight keyboard concertos (Nos. 1-5, 8, 10 and 11) on three different instruments: harpsichord (Nos. 2, 3 and 5), organ (Nos. 1, 8 and 10), and fortepiano (Nos. 4 and 11). Schornsheim is not only amazingly adaptable to the very different demands of these three solo instruments, but also very skilled in Haydn’s style with all of them. The correct instrument to use in a particular concerto is not always clear and must often be inferred based on the work’s technical demands (a piece unplayable on the organs of Haydn’s time was clearly not written for them). Haydn himself seems to have had different thoughts on the works at different times: No. 1, for example, is noted as being for organ on the autograph copy, but when Haydn made his own catalogue of works some years later, he designated it for “clavicembalo” (harpsichord). The lack of certainty gives performers quite a few choices about handling these works; the quality of Schornsheim’s playing argues strongly for the selections she has made. And the accompaniment by the players of Neue Düsseldorfer Hofmusik is exemplary.

     Even less known than Haydn’s concertos are his violin-and-piano sonatas – in fact, in the standard catalogue of Haydn’s works (known as the Hoboken catalogue), not a single one appears. But there are in fact five authentic Haydn violin-and-piano sonatas, two of which (Hob.XV: 31 and 32) have been catalogued as Trios (because in Haydn’s time, a cello would sometimes be used as an added instrument) and three of which (Hob. XVa: 1, 2 and 3) are in Baroque style but with a clear Haydn flavor. Historical issues aside, all five works are minor but interesting Haydn, showing him moving past Baroque forms harmonically and rhythmically while still adhering to an older structure for the works as a whole. This is a particularly intriguing recording for Haydn fanciers seeking something off the beaten path, since the works are quite unfamiliar. And they are beautifully played on instruments dating to or close to Haydn’s time: Alberto Bologni uses a 1734 Santo Serafino violin, while Giuseppe F. Modugno performs on an 1815 fortepiano by Johann Schantz.

(++++) GRAND ADVENTURES

Bone: Rose. By Jeff Smith. Illustrated by Charles Vess. Graphix/Scholastic. $21.99.

Ragtag. By Karl Wolf-Morgenländer. Clarion. $16.

     Jeff Smith’s wonderful Bone graphic-novel series has been reissued in nine volumes by the Graphix division of Scholastic; but like all great adventures, it will leave readers wondering both what happened afterwards and what happened before – that is, how things got to the point where they were when the three Bone cousins accidentally ended up in the Valley at the beginning of the first volume, Out from Boneville. Some “before” questions are answered by Smith in Rose, the story of the princess much later known as Gran’ma Ben. Here Smith explains the importance of balance in the Dreaming; the original betrayal of the world by the evil Locust; the different paths taken by Rose and her sister, Briar; and the terrible choice that Rose makes, which allows evil to gain a near-fatal foothold in the world. That is quite a lot to pack into a 138-page graphic novel, and Rose lacks some of the subtlety and all of the humor of the Bone series itself. It is an action-adventure book above all, with the excellent illustrations by Charles Vess helping carry the story along at a headlong pace quite different from the more relaxed speed shown in the basic Bone saga. Except for the Great Red Dragon, who looks much the same here as in Smith’s own illustrations, the characters Vess draws are more fine-boned and sinewy than in the main sequence, thinner and more strongly articulated in their movements. The result is a book that stylistically diverges quite a bit from the primary Bone saga while clearly inhabiting the same fantasy universe. The cross-currents of this story are many, including Rose’s close relationship with her two dogs, Euclid and Cleo, who call Briar (who cannot hear them as Rose can) the “Ice Queen”; Rose’s attraction to the young Lucius, and the way Briar steals his affection; the first attack of the Rat Creatures on humans in what will be a long war; and Rose’s unwitting and nearly fatal empowerment of the river dragon Balsaad, whose fate is inextricably intertwined with that of Rose and all the people of the Valley. Rose is a standalone book, but its resonance requires familiarity with the greater Bone series. It actually reveals little that careful readers of that saga will not already know, but it fills in some missing elements of the back story effectively and offers outstanding art that, although different from Smith’s own, is every bit as valid. The result is a prequel that, although not necessary for the understanding and enjoyment of Bone, is exciting from start to finish and a welcome return to the saga’s world.

     Ragtag, the first novel by Karl Wolf-Morgenländer, is an altogether more conventional adventure, but it is exciting and well-written enough for a (+++) rating. It is the classic tale of an underestimated youngster who becomes a hero, saving the very society that originally spurned him. In Ragtag, that is a society of birds – the title character is a swallow. The story is set in Boston and is precipitated by human errors upsetting the balance of avian power: “‘Before I came to this city,’ Hoogol [a great horned owl and city-bird leader] offered when the silence had grown uncomfortable, ‘I had heard stories of the Talon Empire. I had always assumed that they were just legends and myths. Now I realize they were true.” The Talon Empire consists of deadly raptors with a simple motivation: “They want to conquer us, to force us to do their bidding.” Why? “The humans and their machines have been cutting down the great woods to the west that were home to the empire. That is why they are now advancing.” This is, in truth, a very conventional setup for a fantasy-adventure (“Stupid humans!” one bird opines); but what is of real interest in Ragtag is the character of the hero and the way in which he becomes the key to the survival of the Boston birds’ group, known as the Feathered Alliance. There is some politics at work here: for one thing, the crows, outcasts among the city birds, have no problem joining the invaders. But what spurs Ragtag to eventual heroism is not politics but bravery that he had not known he possessed. The raptors are painted as vaguely Germanic invaders: their leader is called Bergelmir, and others of their number are Hugin, Gunlad, Surt and Mugin. Feathered Alliance members have altogether gentler names: Blue Feather, Bobtail, Tattler, Gini. There is never any doubt who the good guys are. Ragtag finds some bravery in himself early on, then discovers that “his anger gave him strength” as he accomplishes one great deed – after which he needs to leaven his power by listening to Hoogol’s wisdom: “I believe all of us can be redeemed.” Again, this is wholly conventional in heroic-fantasy stories, but Wolf-Morgenländer makes the tale seem more original than it is through effective characterization of some (if not all) of the birds and excellent scene-setting (the author certainly knows Boston well). Ragtag eventually has leadership of the city birds thrust upon him even though he protests, “I’m nothing more than a symbol.” The answer to that is swift in coming, from Ragtag’s mother, Blue Feather: “They want you, Ragtag, exactly because you’re a symbol.” Ragtag becomes more than that, of course, and the treacherous crows see the error of their ways and become helpful, and humans get involved in the whole mess without (of course) knowing just where they fit into things. Eagles play an important role in the book’s climax, as they do in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with both of which Wolf-Morgenländer is surely familiar (one eagle bears the distinctly Tolkienian name of the Norse god Baldur). But in the end, it is the small swallow rather than the grand eagles whose heroism is triumphant – a satisfying ending to a novel that transcends its own conventional elements.