(+++) COMICS OF MANY KINDS

Tundra: Nature’s Favorite Comic Strip. By Chad Carpenter. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

Stone Rabbit #3: Deep-Space Disco. By Erik Craddock. Random House. $5.99.

Kit Feeny: #1, On the Move; #2, The Ugly Necklace. By Michael Townsend. Knopf. $5.99 each.

I Spy Fly Guy! By Tedd Arnold. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

     Comic-strip-style characters get used in all sorts of ways these days, in books for people of all ages. Tundra is one of the longer-lasting strips of which most people have never heard. It has been around since 1991, with Chad Carpenter using his single-panel format in an attempt to emulate The Far Side in a much colder setting. Carpenter was raised in Alaska and now lives in Wasilla, the town better known for its association with Sarah Palin – who makes no appearances in these strips, which are determinedly apolitical. Carpenter has no recurring characters per se, but he peoples (if that’s the right word) his strip with the same themes again and again: overly fussy scavengers feasting on roadkill, offbeat talking snowpeople, and characters from fairy tales and old legends. Paul Bunyan (once seen to be wearing very large women’s shoes) and his blue ox, Babe (sometimes turned into a blue steak) show up repeatedly; moose of all kinds (but mostly dumb) appear again and again; one snowman appears in a car’s passenger seat in the car-pool lane, while another drinks a hot beverage and complains of “brain-thaw,” and a gossipy third one is “always poking her carrot into everyone’s business.” Then there are animal-vs.-animal jokes, such as chickens eating takeout and saying “tastes like Bob” and two deer putting a “tick me” sign on a third. And the dish that ran away with the spoon takes up with a ladle, and an unfaithful gingerbread man has frosting on his collar, and Tinkerbell flies into a bug light, and so forth. Some of these jokes are old; some are funny the first time, but not in their second, third or fourth variations. Carpenter’s far-north settings sometimes provide offbeat humor – involving hunters, spawning salmon, etc. – but in book form, his panels start to drag a bit after a while.

     Nothing drags in the fast-paced Stone Rabbit series. Both it and Kit Feeny are preteen-oriented sequences featuring cartoon characters handling life with varying levels of absurdity. Stone Rabbit’s usual nemesis, Henri the turtle, takes a back seat in Deep-Space Disco, because here the real menace is Melvin the Plutarkian, who looks just enough like Stone Rabbit to switch places with him and try to conquer Earth while Stone Rabbit gets tried by an intergalactic court for Melvin’s crimes. This is all silly (and fairly standard) stuff, but Erik Craddock’s drawings whirl and swirl enjoyably across the pages as Stone Rabbit is repeatedly put into impossible situations that force him to exclaim, “Crudmonkeys.” He does escape, of course, and Melvin is brought to justice, of course; and Henri, of course, comes out on top in the end. The best pages here are the ones with no story at all – just lots of weapons and spaceships zipping back and forth in great swirls of color.

     Craddock’s art resembles that of Michael Townsend in some significant ways – perhaps not a surprise, since both attended New York’s School of Visual Arts. But Townsend’s Kit Feeny is decidedly more down-to-earth than Craddock’s Stone Rabbit. Kit is a bear (more or less) living in a standard family in a standard suburban setting, having adventures along the lines of those in the Babymouse books – but oriented more toward boys. Kit and the other characters – including his friends, his parents and his younger twin sisters, April and Bonnie – are pleasantly enough drawn, and some of the ideas are good. For instance, in On the Move, Kit and his family move to a new neighborhood, and Kit is so distraught at leaving his best friend behind that he decides to become a “lonesome hobo.” And in The Ugly Necklace, Kit and his new best friend, Hoff, try to figure out how to pose as rich adults so Kit can get his mother a super-fancy birthday gift. The writing, unfortunately, tends to be uninspired, so the stories end up being a bit too commonplace. And there is nothing like the snippy narrator in the Babymouse books to make the Kit Feeny tales a tad more pointed. On the other hand, they do rely on characters – rather than the action/adventure of the Stone Rabbit series.

     Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy series is more simply plotted and aimed at even younger readers. The latest installment in the story of a boy named Buzz and his pet fly (who can say Buzz’s name) is perhaps not the cleverest, but it is amusing, and the characters are drawn as exaggeratedly as usual. The plot is simply that Fly Guy gets carried to the dump after hiding in a trash can during a game of hide-and-seek that occurs just as the garbage truck comes along. Buzz gets his father to drive to the dump so Buzz can recover Fly Guy – but there are flies everywhere at the dump, so Buzz has to come up with a clever way to figure out which one is his fly. Fans of the characters and the series will enjoy this latest entry, which may be slight but manages to be endearing as well – no small feat for a story that shows Fly Guy eating garbage and features trash everywhere.

(+++) MAKING BIG TOPICS ACCESSIBLE

Really, Really Big Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. By Stephen Law. Illustrated by Nishant Choksi. Kingfisher. $16.99.

Life Story: The Story of Life on Our Earth from Its Beginning Up to Now. By Virginia Lee Burton. Houghton Mifflin. $22.

The We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids. By Michael Ungar, Ph.D. Da Capo. $15.95.

     Making big topics understandable to young readers and their families is a noble endeavor even when it is not a wholly successful one. So Stephen Law, a British philosophy professor and journal editor, deserves praise for Really, Really Big Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, even though the book tends to tread too lightly to make the impression Law obviously seeks. There are four chapters here: “The Great Big Universe Puzzle,” “Mysterious Minds and Robots That Think,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and “Seeing and Believing.” Each contains a series of questions: “What is nothing?” “What is it like to be a bat?” “How important is happiness?” “Does astrology really work?” Law tends to dance around many of the questions, apparently hoping readers ages 9-12 will get to the answers themselves, but often conveying the notion that there are no right or wrong answers – a noble thought in philosophical terms but less so in scientific ones. For example, “Did someone design the universe?” meanders from the blithe comment, “If a designer designed the universe, who designed the designer?” to a quotation about a puddle from Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who here seems to be something of an ultimate authority. Indeed, although the work for which Adams is most famous is not mentioned, it is clearly a big influence on Law, since the third volume of Adams’ five-volume SF trek is called Life, the Universe and Everything. But to return to Law’s book: “What makes stealing wrong?” explains that a successful bike theft may make the thief happy, but it makes the victim less happy and also worries or frightens other people, so “there is less happiness overall.” Well, yes, but why, exactly, should the successful and happy thief care? It is unfair to fault Law for offering better questions than answers – that is what philosophers and many other people do all the time – but there is a “well, maybe” tone to this book that becomes wearing after a while. And Nishant Choksi’s cute illustrations do little to clarify the underlying seriousness of purpose – although they are often fun to look at in their own right.

     Life Story takes on an even bigger subject – the entire history of life on our planet – but Virginia Lee Burton’s 1962 book does not hold up very well, even in its new, updated edition. Burton, best known for Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House, casts Life Story as a play in a prologue, five acts and epilogue, using left-hand pages for simple narrative and right-hand ones to show the events on a stage. The narration tends to be a bit coy for modern tastes: “Way back in time when our Earth was young no Life could have lived on it.” And the need for compression leads to writing that seems dismissive of vast ages of Earth’s development, such as the single sentence, “Fish, which first appeared in Cambrian oceans, grew more abundant,” to cover one of the major developments of the entire Ordovician period. There is an underlying perkiness to the narrative that is rather ill at ease with the subject matter: “Some [dinosaurs] had developed armor for protection from their meat-eating cousins.” And the “play” conceit wears thin quickly. On the other hand, the basic science here is sound. Left-hand pages, in addition to narrative, show fossils of specific animals and give their names and the names’ pronunciations. And there have certainly been updates, such as the reference to “our Sun’s family of eight planets” now that Pluto has been demoted from planetary status. But some narrative that could have been changed has been left intact: “Historians tell the story of the rise and fall of the great civilizations of the Old World and the discovery of the New World” could easily have been altered to “and their discovery of what they called the New World,” which would be more in line with contemporary sensibilities. Life Story is probably too simplistic for many modern families, but it does offer some accurate skim-the-surface science and a certain period charm in its illustrations.

     It is to the young members of The We Generation that books such as Burton’s are least likely to appeal. Dalhousie University School of Social Work research professor Michael Ungar believes that today’s children – he has two of his own – gravitate increasingly toward “we” thinking and away from the “me” orientation of their parents (presumably including Ungar himself). Ungar believes it is incumbent on today’s parents not only to learn from their children (about electronic social interconnection, for example) but also to guide them into realms of compassion and community interest. Ungar’s book is a template for a certain form of social and political liberalism – the kind that encourages attending religious and cultural events of people of other beliefs so as to celebrate and foster diversity. A good deal of what Ungar urges is plain and simple unselfishness and cooperation, which are certainly worthy goals: family cooperation to make holiday dinners a success, for instance, or making carefully thought-out gifts for others instead of rushing to the store to buy something mass-produced. But much of The We Generation assumes a certain idyllic lifestyle that has definite political undertones: constantly asking children how their actions make others feel, for example, or arranging play dates with kids of many ages so your children can help younger ones while being assisted by older ones (all of whom presumably share the same social values). The basic idea here – and it is a good one – is to avoid providing children so much that asks nothing of them that they become focused entirely on themselves. Ask more of kids, and expect more of them, and they will deliver more, writes Ungar – from toddlers learning to say thanks for birthday gifts to preteens looking after pets and teenagers planning school events and helping pay for their own clothing. This is essentially a continuation of the argument that Ungar made previously in Too Safe for Their Own Good, and it is an entirely reasonable one: “Helping our children learn to feel compassion for others and to act responsibly is an old-fashioned idea that needs revisiting.” Parents who share Ungar’s worldview will surely find The We Generation uplifting, with its positive viewpoint, “tips lists” of behavior, and such chapter titles as “Monster Homes Make Monstrous Children.” But there is a certain smug certainty underlying Ungar’s prescriptions that will likely be off-putting to readers who are not predisposed to accept his recommendations even before he presents them.

(++++) WINDOWS 7: BEYOND THE HYPE, SOLIDITY

Windows 7. Microsoft. Home Premium upgrade, $119.99; Professional upgrade, $199.99; Ultimate upgrade, $219.99.

     Don’t buy Microsoft’s hype about Windows 7. Don’t buy any of the hype. But do buy the operating system: it’s a very worthwhile upgrade from either XP or Vista. In fact, Windows 7 is in many ways what Vista ought to have been: it retains the advances of that little-loved OS while subduing many of its most egregious faults, such as extremely long boot times.

     There is little that is game-changing in Windows 7, and that is part of what makes it so good. Whether you replace XP or Vista with this new OS, you will be able to adapt fairly quickly and will get a boost in productivity and (especially if you have been running XP) security and networking capability.

     The problems that led many XP users to refuse Vista upgrades – constant and overdone security warnings, compatibility issues affecting both hardware and software, plus the aforementioned glacial boot and reboot pace – are solved in Windows 7. True, there are some new irritations, such as the absence of integrated E-mail, video editing and calendar programs; but in fairness, this is not Microsoft’s fault – its bundling of functional programs with its operating systems has cost it many years of lawsuits and many billions of dollars. And all the programs that are no longer included can be downloaded for free.

     What Windows 7 does is make a user’s interface with the computer more pleasant, easier and speedier. The new, taller taskbar now lets you pin icons of often-used programs anywhere you like, and move them around as you wish. Then, hovering over a taskbar icon brings up a small preview showing the program in miniature view – a refinement of a similar Vista feature, since now every open window in the program shows up separately in the preview screen and can be brought to full size simply by moving the mouse over it. If you do that, all other desktop windows become transparent in a neat appearance trick called “Aero Peek.” Being able to close windows within the preview screens is another refinement.

     Actually, taskbar icons do even more – maybe too much for some people’s tastes – by providing popup menus listing recent files used or frequent actions taken. This feature takes some getting used to, but can really speed work along – or be ignored if you don’t care for it.

     Microsoft went for some cuteness as well as practicality in Windows 7, for the first time. The “Snap” feature lets you turn windows into full-screen size by dragging them to the top of the screen, or half-screen size by dragging them to the left or right edge; and “Shake,” a feature that sounds silly but is actually great fun to use, lets you make your current window the only operating one by simply grabbing its title bar with the mouse and shaking – at which point all other windows disappear. Very neat.

     Among other improvements in Windows 7 is a “Libraries” feature that pulls together all files of a specific type, such as Documents or Pictures, no matter which folder or hard disk you keep them on – although this does take some getting used to and can be confusing until users adapt to it. There is also, thank goodness, a security-warning feature (“User Account Control”) that is easily adjustable, so you can decide how sensitive to changes you want your computer to be – a significant improvement over the intrusive Vista version, which was much harder to alter. Furthermore, hardware and third-party software generally run far more easily and better in Windows 7 than in Vista, although it’s a good idea to check out your programs’ compatibility by downloading and running Microsoft’s free Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor before trying to install the new OS.

     As for which version of Windows 7 to install: well, Microsoft really hasn’t made that decision much easier than in earlier operating systems. It continues to offer multiple flavors for this latest OS. They range from Starter, which comes preloaded on netbooks, to Ultimate, which packs in everything Microsoft could think up, such as the ability to switch among 35 different languages. The business-oriented Professional version is helpful if you need to access a company network remotely, but otherwise, it is overkill. Most users can and should opt for Home Premium, which is sufficiently full-featured under the vast majority of conditions.

     Upgrading, though, can be a chore – not if you are going from a version of Vista to the identical version of Windows 7, but very much so if you are changing versions or upgrading from XP. A same-version Vista upgrade is as close to a pleasure as any change in OS could ever be: you simply install Windows 7 over Vista and keep all your settings, programs and files, all in an hour or so. And the hardware requirements for Windows 7 are, thankfully, just about the same as they were for Vista (a welcome change from Microsoft’s previous habit of requiring ever-more-powerful hardware for each new OS). Unfortunately, an upgrade from XP is far from easy. It requires you to back up all your files, wipe your hard disk, install Windows 7, then reinstall all programs (including re-downloading and reinstalling any patches and upgrades) and files. This is extremely time-consuming and is not helped much by Microsoft’s Easy Transfer utility, which moves files but not programs. It is still worth doing – XP is, after all, eight years old, and was actually designed back in 1999, which makes it a real relic. But be prepared to invest considerable time and effort in the upgrade (or, of course, you can always stay with XP until you buy a new computer with Windows 7 preinstalled).

     Incidentally, upgraders should remember to stick to the same type of operating system they are used to when moving to Windows 7. The new OS comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and the 64-bit one can improve performance by letting computers use more random access memory (RAM). If you do buy a new computer with Windows 7 already installed, it will likely have the 64-bit version. And there are 64-bit Vista computers out there, and even a few 64-bit XP ones. However, the admirable compatibility of Windows 7 with existing applications – and, more significantly, with older hardware – has a greater chance of breaking down in the 64-bit world, since not all third-party hardware and software makers have created 64-bit drivers for all their products. What this means, in simple terms, is that if you are satisfied with the way your programs and peripherals run on your current computer, and you have the more-common 32-bit OS (either Vista or XP), then you should go to 32-bit Windows 7 and wait to buy a new machine for the 64-bit version.

     The increasing use of the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on new computers points to the fact that this OS seems poised to take advantage of some computer features that exist in only rudimentary form today – in other words, it is more forward-looking than earlier Microsoft operating systems. For example, Windows 7 has a touch-screen feature that lets users move windows, flip through photos and more – the sort of thing iPhone owners, for example, have come to expect. But the special screen required to use this feature is not yet widely available. Still, when it is, Windows 7 will show another of its strengths.

     This is not to say that this OS is all strengths. Its networking feature is improved – for one thing, you can now see all available networks by clicking a single taskbar icon – but it remains on the cumbersome side. Its “HomeGroups” feature, intended for easier sharing of files among home-network PCs running Windows 7, does not work particularly well and requires the use of long, complex and irritating passwords. And because Microsoft continues to dominate the OS world and is therefore highly attractive to spammers and scammers, users still need third-party antivirus and other self-protection programs to keep malware away and defend their computers (Microsoft’s own efforts at protective software are not robust enough to keep up with the bad apples out there). This need for protection is not a flaw in Windows 7, but it is a fact of life for users of any Microsoft OS – and, it should be said, would become a factor for Apple users if that company’s computers ever took over enough market share to make attacks on them sufficiently profitable for botnet creators and other thieves.

     In effect, what Windows 7 does, in addition to adding a few nice-to-have features, is to take all the good things that Microsoft built into Vista – and there were many of them, despite that operating system’s bad reputation – and make them easier to use and less intrusive. One good example of this (among many) is the Start menu, whose improved layout and instant search capability build on what Vista had (although – fair warning – it can still get cluttered as you install third-party software) and make the menu significantly more enjoyable to use. Yes, the word is “enjoyable.” Windows 7 does not make any huge strides in the OS world, but the small ones it makes almost all work well, giving users a relatively clean, uncluttered interface with improved usability, better speed, easier access to whatever they want, and a generally more pleasant working and playing environment. It’s a very, very fine operating system – to which users of Vista and XP should seriously consider upgrading.

(++++) KEYBOARD SUBTLETIES

Idil Biret Beethoven Edition, Volume 12: Piano Sonatas Nos.4, 8 (“Pathétique”) and 27. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

Schumann: Kinderszenen; Brahms: Paganini Variations. Claudio Arrau, piano. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Liszt: Organ Works, Volume 3. Martin Haselböck, organ. NCA. $24.99 (SACD).

     There are interesting contrasts between the interpretations of a distinguished pianist taught by some of the grand masters of the earlier 20^th century – and those of one of those masters himself. The latest Idil Biret Archives issue – 12^th in her Beethoven Edition and sixth in her cycle of the piano sonatas – includes recordings of Sonata No. 4 from 2002, No. 8 from 2006 and No. 27 from 2004. As in all her more-recent recordings appearing on the IBA label, Biret shows considerable sensitivity and lyricism in these readings, allowing herself rubato (but not to excess) while letting the structural underpinnings of the music come through clearly. The first two movements of No. 4, which are dark and brooding, come off particularly well here; the lighter third and fourth movements are a touch less impressive, as if Biret cannot quite let go of the solemnity of the earlier part of this sonata – but they are certainly well played. In the “Pathétique” (whose name, unlike those of several other famous Beethoven sonatas, was chosen by the composer himself), Biret plays for depth and drama throughout, but at the same time highlights the work’s careful structure (for instance, the compressed dynamics of the finale prior to the return of the first subject). Thus, she melds emotion to intellect – a common approach for her, and one that works particularly well here. It does not come across quite so well in Sonata No. 27, a proto-Romantic work in which Biret’s focus on control is insufficiently leavened by emotional expressiveness. This two-movement work is a difficult sonata to interpret and not an especially popular one with listeners. Biret handles it with skill and with sensitivity to, among other things, the first movement’s key changes and the second’s decorative flourishes; but it feels almost as if she dissects the music rather than allowing it a natural flow.

     Biret is a disciple of Alfred Corot and Wilhelm Kempff, not Claudio Arrau, but it is nevertheless interesting to contrast her Beethoven with Arrau’s 1974 recordings of Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Brahms’ Paganini Variations. Arrau is all suppleness and flow on Pentagon’s SACD re-release. The Schumann is comparatively easy to play, and some pianists tend to overwhelm it as a result. Not Arrau. He takes these small childhood scenes – remembrances, really, by a composer who wrote them when he was not yet 30 – and plays each with straightforward simplicity that nevertheless hints at subtleties just beneath the surface. Arrau makes it possible to enjoy the 13-movement suite entirely at face value, as a divertissement, and then return for another hearing in which it seems there is more going on than appeared at first. The delicacy and balance here are quite special. And for out-and-out virtuosity, there is the contrast with Brahms’ very theatrical handling of a Paganini theme – in a work whose première the composer himself performed. These variations are all about technique, and are very tough to play indeed, but Arrau makes their difficulties subservient to their excitement as he builds each of the work’s two “books” (which contain 14 variations apiece) toward breathless climaxes. There is something unassuming rather than flashy in Arrau’s pianism, which in these two works he puts so clearly at the service of the composers’ very different intentions. The result is a disc that is simply a delight to hear.

     Virtuosity is subservient to content as well in Martin Haselböck’s remarkable cycle of Liszt’s organ music. The provenance of these works is frequently complex – Liszt would often tweak others’ organ arrangements of his music, or sometimes alter them substantially, instead of creating them himself from the start – but the historical details are of less interest than the works themselves. The longest of the 11 pieces included in the third volume of this series is Prelude, Fugue and Magnificat from the Symphony to Dante’s “Divina Commedia” (1856-60), begun by Liszt’s assistant, Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, then substantially altered by Liszt himself. This is, in fact, Liszt’s largest individual arrangement for the organ, and it is a work of towering strength – with an especially impressive fugue (the portion on which Liszt did the most work). Also here are the 1859 version of “Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,” whose 1862 version Haselböck played in Volume 2 of this series, and Ora Pro Nobis (1865), a work of comparative simplicity and delicacy that makes an effective contrast. Two Wagner-focused pieces appear as well: Pilgrim’s Chorus from “Tannhäuser” (second version, 1862), whose surface simplicity conceals a very artful arrangement, and Am Grabe Richard Wagners (At the Grave of Richard Wagner) (1883), a heartfelt and intimate work whose expressiveness is heightened by inclusion of some Wagnerian motifs. The other works on this disc – whose somewhat disconnected arrangement is its only significant failing – are “A Magyarok Istene” (Hungary’s God) (1881), one of several arrangements Liszt made of a revolutionary poem; Excelsior! – Preludio (1874), one of whose themes Wagner used in Parsifal in 1882; Resignazione (1877), one of several late works in which Liszt seems to express failure or asceticism; Angelus! – Prière aux Anges Gardiens (also 1877), a somewhat less downbeat piece from the same time period; Agnus Dei from Verdi’s Requiem (another 1877 work), a lovely and simple adaptation; and Der Choral “Nun Danket Alle Gott” (1883), a piece considered inferior to Liszt’s earlier organ works when it was first heard, but one whose incorporation of old church music gives it a certain elegance. Haselböck’s playing is sensitive and involved throughout: this is clearly music that he not only understands well but also cares about very deeply.

(++++) THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF STRINGS

Dvořák: Violin Concerto; Romance in F minor; Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No. 1. Arabella Steinbacher, violin; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Marek Janowski. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Chants d’Est/Songs from Slavic Lands: Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ernö Dohnányi, Alexander Tcherepnin, Franck Krawczyk, Sergei Prokofiev, Bohuslav Martinů and Gustav Mahler, plus two Jewish traditional songs. Sonia Wieder-Atherton, cello; Sinfonia Varsovia conducted by Christophe Mangou. Naïve. $16.99.

     Programs of variety, sensitivity and subtlety distinguish these two well-played disks, although Arabella Steinbacher’s SACD has more depth and is more nuanced than Sonia Wieder-Atherton’s CD. Steinbacher offers a contrast between the high Romantic art of Dvořák and one of the first violin concertos to move past it: Karol Szymanowski’s one-movement Violin Concerto No. 1 (1916), which manages to be highly expressive while going beyond traditional Romantic esthetics and traditional tonality. The Szymanowski, which is played first on this SACD, sounds straightforward and even tame from the vantage point of almost a century later, but Steinbacher makes no attempt to hide its modernity (1916-style) as she attacks the work with both care and gusto, especially notably in the cadenza (written by Paweł Kochański, who helped Szymanowski understand the intricacies of the violin and to whom the composer dedicated the concerto – although Kochański was not the first to play it). Just how far Szymanowski had moved beyond the Romantic ideal is clear in the contrast between his concerto and Dvořák’s Romance in F minor, which the composer reworked for violin and orchestra from a movement of one of his string quartets. Steinbacher nicely controls what can be a level of swooning sentimentalism here, although she plays the work with care and emotion – and is well supported by Marek Janowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, whose sound here is lusher than in the Szymanowski. And then comes Dvořák’s only Violin Concerto, written for Joseph Joachim – who, however, did not care for it and never played it in public. Today it is easy to dismiss Joachim’s objections to the structural liberties that Dvořák took in the work, but in the Romantic era, the composer’s ideas – notably the abrupt shortening of several parts of the first movement and its attacca progression into the second – would have seemed to deny the work (and the soloist) a full measure of expansiveness. Steinbacher plays here with a full, even elegant sound that maximizes the concerto’s effectiveness while showing how firmly it sits in the great Romantic expressive tradition.

     Expressiveness is a major focus of Sonia Wieder-Atherton’s CD of folk, religious and traditional music drawn mostly from the parts and peoples of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wieder-Atherton’s program looks wonderful on paper, and her cello playing is sumptuous and lovely, but somehow the juxtaposition of these various short pieces does not quite work – with the result that this CD gets a (+++) rating. There is a sense that Wieder-Atherton is trying too hard to make a point that never quite gets made. An excerpt from Rachmaninoff’s Vespers is followed by parts of Dohnányi’s Ruralia Hungarica, after which there is a Jewish traditional “Song in Remembrance of Schubert” and then the Tatar Dance from Tcherepnin’s Songs and Dances. The underlying musical traditions of these works bear some resemblance to each other, but the pieces coexist rather uneasily here, in a disconnected fashion. And after the Tcherepnin, Wieder-Atherton plays Jeux d’enfants by Franck Krawczyk (born 1969), which is avowedly based on Janácek’s Moravian Folksongs but draws on a much-changed musical language. Then we return to Russia for a short piece from Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, followed by Martinů’s Variations on a Slovak Folk Song and an instrumental version of Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen from his Rückert songs – and then, at the end, there is another Jewish traditional piece, this time a dance. The emotions skitter helter-skelter throughout this CD, which ultimately is united mostly by Wieder-Atherton’s style and her sensibility. The individual pieces on the disc are a pleasure to hear, and Wieder-Atherton plays them well (and gets good backup from Sinfonia Varsovia under Christophe Mangou, which in this case means the orchestra stays mostly in the background so the limelight remains on the cellist). But as a totality, the CD does not quite hang together, for all the beauty of the playing.

(++++) ANIMALS IMAGINED AND REAL

The Bog Baby. By Jeanne Willis. Illustrated by Gwen Millward. Schwartz & Wade. $16.99.

A Book of Sleep. By Il Sung Na. Knopf. $15.99.

Black Beauty. Retold by Sharon Lerner. Illustrated by Susan Jeffers. Random House. $16.99.

Winter’s Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again. By Juliana Hatkoff, Isabella Hatkoff, and Craig Hatkoff. Scholastic. $16.99.

     For joy and for life lessons, animals – real ones and made-up ones – are unsurpassed in books for young readers. The Bog Baby, for ages 3-7, has an old and simple message: “If you love it, let it go.” But it is here framed in ecological awareness and shown in an exceptionally charmingly drawn woodland setting. Jeanne Willis tells of two sisters who, instead of going to a friend’s house, go fishing in a magic pond in Bluebell Wood. What they catch is a wonderfully adorable, frog-sized blue creature called a Bog Baby, with “boggly eyes and a spiky tail and…ears like a mouse.” Soft as jelly, the Bog Baby has wings “no bigger than daisy petals” but cannot fly. The girls take the Bog Baby home, make him a beautiful place to stay in a bucket, play with him and feed him and don’t tell their mother about him, since they caught him when they went somewhere they weren’t supposed to go. But then the Bog Baby gets sick, and the girls have to tell their mom, because they love him so much. And Mom isn’t angry – but she knows that “the Bog Baby is a wild thing. He doesn’t belong here.” And the girls learn the hard lesson that “if we really loved the Bog Baby, we had to do what was best for him.” So they let him go – and then, a generation later, in a surprise ending that isn’t really surprising at all, not one but hundreds of Bog Babies reappear in a truly delightful final illustration by Gwen Millward. Every one of the creatures in this picture has its own pose and its own expression, and the illustration is simply priceless – but no better than Millward’s other marvelous ones, which make this book as much a delight to the eye as it is to the heart.

     A Book of Sleep features calming pictures of real animals and a story arc that starts with a watchful owl at night and ends with a tired one as day dawns. Il Sung Na’s simple story shows quiet sleepers (koalas), noisy ones (an elephant), standing ones and moving ones, all observed by the owl, whether they sleep alone (giraffe) or all together (penguins). That’s all there is to the narrative – but it is plenty for a nighttime book for ages 1-5, offering warmly envisioned animals resting comfortably in a wide variety of environments. A Book of Sleep may be just the thing to read to a young child who can’t quite settle down at bedtime.

     Sharon Lerner’s retelling of Anna Sewell’s classic, Black Beauty, is not a book for bedtime at all. Intended for slightly older readers, ages 6-8, this 40-page illustrated version of Sewell’s novel retains much of the drama and cruelty of the original, with Susan Jeffers’ illustrations giving a realistic picture of Black Beauty’s many misfortunes and his eventual rescue and happiness. Parents familiar with Sewell’s book will find Lerner’s adaptation an accurate (if highly compressed) retelling and, perhaps, an entry point to the longer work for children who may be reluctant to tackle it in its original form. Jeffers beautifully portrays Black Beauty’s days as a happy colt – warned by his mother that “there are many kinds of people in this world: some are kind, some are cruel, and some are just careless.” And readers watch Black Beauty encounter people of all those kinds, from the caring Gordon family to people who whip and abuse him to drivers of London horse cabs to, eventually, a young boy whose grandfather, Mr. Thoroughgood, helps restore the horse’s faith in human kindness. Black Beauty is a meaningful story for children of all ages, its lessons communicated firmly but gently; this illustrated version should open up its joys and sorrows to a whole new group of young readers.

     Black Beauty, although realistic, is a fictional story. Winter’s Tail could well be the stuff of fiction, but it is the true story of a real animal: an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin that became so badly caught in the ropes holding a crab trap that its tail was seriously damaged and eventually fell off. The Hatkoff family members – who have previously chronicled the real-life struggles and triumphs of orphaned hippo Owen, giant tortoise Mzee, polar-bear cub Knut and a family of mountain gorillas – have again fastened on a marvelous, uplifting chronicle that, remarkably, includes the actual photos of Winter’s rescue as well as the ones of her rehabilitation. Winter proves amazingly adaptable: after her tail falls off, she figures out how to swim by moving her body side to side – although dolphins normally swim with an up-and-down motion. But Winter’s solution begins to cause spinal problems for her, and her caretakers at Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida realize she needs further human help. The solution turns out to be a custom-designed prosthesis that eventually allows Winter to swim in normal dolphin fashion – a happy ending toward which the book builds fascinatingly, step by step. Four back-of-book pages of more-detailed information on dolphins, Clearwater Marine Aquarium and the prosthetics manufacturer provide additional depth to the story – and a fascinating look at some ways in which the work of helping Winter is now helping humans as well. The result is a wonderful tale of a wonderful tail.

(++++) WELCOME 2010, AGAIN AND AGAIN

2010 Calendars: Day-to-Day—Get Fuzzy; Cul de Sac: This Exit; Liō: Monster under the Bed; Joy of Cooking; The Office; Australia. Desk—Dilbert; Peanuts. Andrews McMeel. $13.99 each (Get Fuzzy; Cul de Sac; Liō; Joy of Cooking; The Office; Dilbert desk; Peanuts desk); $8.99 (Australia).

2010 Calendar: Wall—Little Nemo in Slumberland. Sunday Press Books. $14.95.

     That sound you hear faintly, tripping along the corridors and hiding just out of sight in the distance, is the approaching new year, the final one of the first decade of this century. But fear not, for 2010 is sure to bring amusement, enjoyment, escapism and even (if you like) a bit of education, thanks to the many wonderful calendars that will help you get through the year one day (or one month) at a time.

     Andrews McMeel always offers a plethora of wonderful comic-strip amusements in calendar form, and the coming year is no exception. Just as there are cartoons for all tastes – indeed, many strips nowadays are targeted for specific tastes – there are day-to-day calendars that will keep you amused all year with the antics and/or wry comments of your favorite characters. Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley’s increasingly pointed chronicle of the life of feckless human Rob with put-upon mixed-breed dog Satchel and über-self-centered Siamese cat Bucky, features the one-fanged cat’s daily conceited utterances and ever-failing moneymaking schemes, as well as Bucky’s plots against monkeys and ferrets, Satchel’s constant (usually unsuccessful) attempts to stay out of the way of feline abusiveness, and Rob’s ineffective attempts to find a way in which all species can just get along. Cul de Sac, one of the most inventive comics of recent vintage, follows four-year-old Alice Otterloop (“outer loop,” as in the outer lanes of a highway ringing a major city) and her older brother, Petey, in suburban adventures that manage to be both almost-real and entirely surreal. From the thoroughly appropriate education at Blisshaven Preschool Academy to the antics of Alice’s father, Peter, whose tiny car seems to be smaller than he is, life in the suburbs is not so much skewered by Richard Thompson as it is dissected – not only with telling dialogue but also with art that is actually worth looking at every day.

     One comic whose art is the point is Liō, a pantomime strip in which words sometimes occur but are never spoken by the boy with the odd name after whom the strip is named. This is a dark strip, but in an amusing way, and if that seems hard to imagine – well, it is hard to imagine, although apparently not for Mark Tatulli, the strip’s creator. Liō’s friends include swamp beasts, cephalopods, Death (who in one strip delivers sweet treats marked “Death by Chocolate”), under-bed monsters, space aliens of all shapes and sizes, and the occasional zombie. How much of this is in the boy’s imagination, and how much is in his “real” world, is one of those questions you can enjoy asking yourself all year with this calendar.

     At the opposite extreme of wholesomeness and verbiage is Joy of Cooking, where all you get is words, and they’re suitably delicious. Every page of this calendar includes recipes and kitchen tips, tricks and hints, with material taken specifically from the 75^th-anniversray edition of this highly popular cookbook. The step-by-step instructions make the recipes easy to follow, and since all of them are short enough to fit on a tear-off calendar page, they should be simple enough for even a busy cook to try once in a while.

     But what’s keeping you busy? If it’s the office, you might enjoy the silly-to-sparkling dialogue from the fifth season of The Office, offered daily in calendar form. No scenes from the NBC show here, true, but this is a program driven by verbal punches and plots rather than by intense action sequences. In fact, strictly speaking, the action at Dunder Mifflin isn’t much different from the action at real-world offices – and that, of course, is what gives The Office its charm. Well, that plus the fact that the characters speak more pithily and amusingly than most people do most of the time in most real offices. From promotional schemes to office romances, The Office takes everyday work life and dresses it up in snappy dialogue that fans will enjoy day after day – assuming, of course, that they want to be reminded of the contrast between the office in the show and the one in which they work.

     But suppose you want to get away from it all each day of the year, not be immersed in an alternative office reality – and are not a “foodie.” What if you just want a calendar to give you a daily peek at somewhere beautiful and exotic? One good choice could be the Australia mini day-to-day calendar for 2010: this island continent is far enough away so most North Americans have not seen it in person, and it has extraordinary beauty – ranging from the world-famous wave-shaped Sydney Opera House to the bleak, red, otherworldly landscape of the Nullarbor Plain. From Australia’s magnificent beaches to its bustling cities and amazing natural wonders, this little calendar is filled with wonderful sights. And it really is a little calendar, so take that into account: it is small enough to hang on a metal cubicle wall or a refrigerator door (a task made easy by the magnets on its back), and that is a plus; but at times the calendar seems too small to contain a place as expansive as Australia. Of course, you could always pay a visit and see everything life-sized….

     Day-to-day calendars have retained buyers’ interest despite the increasing use of electronic organizers; but the once-ubiquitous desk calendars (or “daily planners,” if you prefer) have become less popular. That’s too bad, because there is still something useful about seeing an entire week of work and appointments at a glance when you look away from your computer screen (which, for your eyes’ sake, you need to do occasionally!). And there are some wonderful comic-strip-based desk calendars available, too, such as the Dilbert and Peanuts versions for 2010. In fact, although these two calendars are the same size – 8½ inches in one dimension, 7¼ in the other – and are both spiral-bound so they lie flat, their execution is as different as the comics that appear on every left-hand page. The Dilbert calendar is vertical in layout, and each day of the week gets a long, narrow, unlined space in which you can take notes (Saturday and Sunday are half-size). Peanuts is laid out horizontally, and each day gets a vertical, lined block of space (again, half-size for weekend days). The result is that Dilbert is more useful for making notes or writing sentences across a page, while Peanuts is better for listing appointments or things to do. And anyone who likes the work of Scott Adams and Charles Schulz equally won’t go wrong by buying both.

     But if you really want a dose of magnificent comic-strip art – art that has never been equaled and, given the shrinkage of newspapers, likely never will be – you may want to treat yourself to a truly wonderful wall calendar showing scenes from Winsor McKay’s astonishing Little Nemo in Slumberland. One of the greatest comic strips of all time, this surrealistic strip from the early 20^th century pushed the boundaries of comic-strip art in ways that are still beyond almost anything ever done in the medium. The full-color Sunday strips gorgeously reproduced in the 2010 calendar include some in which Nemo’s dreams are really surpassingly strange. One has him sliding down an apparently endless banister until he eventually slides right out of bed and wakes up (each strip ends with Nemo awakening). Another has him dreaming that his bed comes to life – and as its legs grow and it starts walking, the panels themselves become more and more elongated. Another features mermaids and takes place half on land and half in the water. And McKay’s truly bizarre version of the old year giving way to the new has to be seen (and marveled at) to be believed. The 2010 Little Nemo calendar may whet your appetite for more of McKay’s superb art and storytelling – and in fact its dozen strips are taken from two collections of McKay’s Sunday strips published, like the calendar itself, by Sunday Press Books. There has never been cartooning quite like McKay’s, so don’t be surprised if even a full year of his images is not enough. Luckily, the publisher has a way for you to get more – a bit of good news for any time of year.

(++++) AND THE DISC KEEPS SPINNING

Unseen Academicals. By Terry Pratchett. Harper. $25.99.

     Let us now praise Terry Pratchett. Or rather Sir Terry Pratchett, the author having been knighted early this year under circumstances that would call into question his inheritance of the mantle of arch-satirist Jonathan Swift if there were any way to call that into question. Pratchett is quite thoroughly British, and Swift was Irish, but Pratchett still seems a most unlikely knight of the realm. After all, he spends much of his time undermining everything on which the realm and its former colonies, such as the United States, are built.

     Unseen Academicals is Pratchett’s most thoroughly British book in some time, and that may give pause to some readers on the western side of the pond, who will wonder what in heaven’s name Pratchett means by passing references to scouse (a kind of meat and vegetable stew) and characters called bledlows (perhaps having to do with a village in Buckinghamshire, although the author never quite makes that clear). More importantly, Americans will be bewildered by the alleged subject of Unseen Academicals, which is football – none of your bleedin’ American-style “game” with padded uniforms on refrigerator-sized slabs of human meat and with endless time-outs, but real football, with hooligans and no stopping the game unless somewhat gets killed and maybe not even then, and almost no scoring at all (the greatest player of all time scored four points in his entire career, we learn early on). This is real football, not to be demeaned by being called “soccer,” especially since it has some of the daintiness of rugby thrown in.

     But because this novel is set on Discworld, which of course is not Earth, not at all (“There are more things in Heaven and Disc than are dreamed of in our philosophy,” one sage character sagely observes), it is inevitable that this book about football is not about football, or at least not wholly, and maybe not very much after all, although to be the judge of that, you will have to read it, which is a remarkably exhilarating and laugh-and-thought-producing experience. The book’s title refers to Unseen University, good old UU, the centerpiece of Discworld wizardry, except that much of the magic therein appears to have gone rogue and an obscure provision in a long-ago bequest turns out to require the occasional playing of a football game lest the wizards be deprived of their preferred choice of many dozens of different types of cheese.

     Obviously this is a Romeo and Juliet story (that’s obvious, isn’t it?), and it just so happens that there are two violently, virulently opposed football clubs, one of them supported by the son of the aforementioned highest scorer of all time (who, however, works at UU and does not intend to play football and come to the same bad end as his father), and the other supported by perhaps the most beautiful and empty-headed model ever to grace the front page of a Discworld newspaper while wearing a beard. And her name is actually Juliet – of course it’s a Romeo-and-Juliet story.

     Never assume. It’s not. Or rather it is, but that’s no more the main point than is football. Or cheese. What is so astonishing about Pratchett’s peculiar genius – and it is genius, but only with the qualifying adjective – is the way he casually throws in oblique references to earlier Discworld books and recurring characters while taking a new novel such as Unseen Academicals in entirely different directions that eventually tie into all that has gone before. So Lord Vetinari, tyrannical and perfectly Machiavellian ruler of the city of Ankh-Morpork, plays the other characters here like the game pieces they turn out to be. Rincewind and his walkabout luggage show up, and Death has a bit part, too, being as pithy and self-aware as usual. And there are passing references, which indeed pass very quickly, to dwarfs digging ever deeper beneath the city, to the game of Thud, to the Assassin’s Guild, and so on. Interwoven with these are offhand comments that Pratchett appears to make for no better (or worse) reason than that he can get away with them. Thus, “as an eyewitness the average person is as reliable as a meringue lifejacket.” And, she “met the gaze, which was quite difficult, of Mr. Wobble, the three-eyed transcendental teddy bear.” And, “It was like listening to two ancient dragons talking to each other with the help of an even older book of etiquette written by nuns.” And by the way, please note that in Ankh-Morpork, a trolley bus is really a troll-ey bus, which means a troll with seats upon his back, suitable transport for the reasonably well-to-do.

     Now, all the aforesaid relates only tangentially (or perhaps subliminally) to the tale of Juliet and her Romeo (whose name is actually Trev); and no mention has yet been made of Juliet’s steadfast and much smarter (if homelier) friend, Glenda, who learns to listen to sherry and for whom a character named Nutt may be a beau. Nutt may in fact be the most important character here, his origin mysterious, his appearance peculiar, his knowledge and strength both prodigious despite his meek and mild and near-starved appearance. His ability to un-die may turn out to be important. Or maybe not, in the grand scheme of things, where the overriding question is whether UU can not only field a football team but actually win a game without using magic. Or maybe there is some other overriding question. It’s all quite wonderfully confused and confusing, and thoroughly satisfying. Or, as UU’s Archchancellor Ridcully says at one point to Glenda, “I see there are a great many things we don’t yet understand.” To which Glenda replies, “Yes, sir. Everything.”

     Praise be to Pratchett.

(++++) PUNS AND OTHER AMUSEMENTS

From Russia with Lunch: A Chet Gecko Mystery. By Bruce Hale. Harcourt. $15.

Dial M for Mongoose: A Chet Gecko Mystery. By Bruce Hale. Harcourt. $15.

Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t As Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel about Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out. Edited by Ted Thompson, with Eli Horowitz. Delacorte Press. $12.99.

     Silliness knows no bounds – certainly none of age. Preteens who graduate from the pun-filled world of Bruce Hale’s tales of Emerson Hicky Elementary School will find plenty of somewhat more grown-up nuttiness in Noisy Outlaws (and so forth), originally brought out by the publisher McSweeney’s in 2005 and now available in paperback.

     But first, back to Emerson Hicky. The 14^th and 15^th adventures “from the tattered casebook of Chet Gecko, Private Eye,” move right along in the well-worn path of the first 13 – a path that Gecko fans will enjoy continuing to travel. From Russia with Lunch (its title itself a pun, or at least a variant, on a famous adventure/mystery movie – as are all the titles of Chet Gecko books) features the usual amusements in chapter titles: “Stu Pigeon,” “Witch and Famous,” “Nobody Does It Badger,” and so on. And it has a typical topsy-turvy plot: machines are taking over school functions usually done by humans (courtesy of a mysterious Russian inventor, Dr. Tanya Lightov), and students are going through personality reversals (teachers’ pets talking back – that sort of thing). Intrepid and sticky-footed Chet needs to get to the bottom of the intertwined happenings without running afoul of what may turn out to be witchery. And speaking of “afoul,” Chet’s partner, the mockingbird Natalie Attired, turn from a fowl friend to a foul fiend here, abandoning him just when he most needs her help. “I went down hard, like a steel-belted birthday cake,” remarks Chet at one point. But of course he eventually picks himself up (which, as it happens, requires him to crawl) and solves the case.

     And that brings Chet, and readers, to Dial M for Mongoose, in which the nefarious doings stink. Really stink, as in “stink bomb.” And that is only the first of many indignities visited upon Emerson Hicky and its students and teachers, as the school gets messier and messier while the principal decides janitor Maureen DeBree (as in “more debris,” of course) has lost her cleanliness touch and needs to go. Chet knows that can’t be so – there’s dirty work afoot. Or under foot, as it turns out. And as the chapters roll by – “Jerry Dooty,” “Clues Blues,” “Cold Hard Crash” and the rest – Chet (with Natalie’s help and the occasional lice-cream sandwich) manages to misconstrue all the clues until the mystery more or less solves itself. Which is just fine.

     But when young readers outgrow Hale and his Chet-ventures – and they will – where can they turn for offbeat stories for slightly older (and perhaps slightly more mature) readers? Noisy Outlaws… is one place – the title alone is so long that it tells you a great deal about the anthology’s approach. What you have here is a profusely illustrated volume of short stories (and a comic strip and a crossword puzzle), plus one-and-a-half offerings by Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler). The complete offering by unfortunate-events expert Snicket is the book’s introduction, which he promises readers will find tedious; the partial one is the last entry, which runs just over one page, breaks off in the middle of a sentence, and is followed by seven blank pages that readers can use to complete the story, or at which they can simply marvel, having paid for their blankness. Anyway, Noisy Outlaws… includes works by Nick Hornby, George Saunders, Kelly Link (a genuinely scary story about whether a monster is genuinely scary), Jon Scieszka, Sam Swope (a variation on the three-wishes fairy tale, including a mother who is a real ogre, not just a human with the personality of one), Clement Freud, James Kochalka (a tale in postmodern comic-strip form), Neil Gaiman (a story of epicureans whose ultimate exotic meal proves too hot to handle, much less swallow), Jeanne DuPrau, and Jonathan Safran Foer (a fantasy about a part of New York City that has mysteriously disappeared, if it ever existed). There is also a self-described ““excessively difficult crossword” by David Levinson Wilk (answer key provided). As in any anthology, some items are more successful than others, but this story grouping is considerably better than most, showcasing a wide variety of styles, sensibilities and subjects. The illustrations are in a large number of different styles, too, and give Noisy Outlaws… a freewheeling appearance as well as a decidedly odd one. It’s the sort of thing Chet Gecko might come up with if he actually ate the lunchroom’s broccoli-and-lima-bean pie – and found it had spoiled.

(++++) WHEN VIRTUOSI COMPOSE

Joachim: Violin Concerto in One Movement, Op. 3; Violin Concerto in the Hungarian Style, Op. 11. Suyoen Kim, violin; Staatskapelle Weimar conducted by Michael Halász. Naxos. $8.99.

Sarasate: Music for Violin and Orchestra, Volume 1—Zigeunerweisen; Airs espagnols; Miramar—Zortzico; Peteneras—Capriccio espagnol; Nocturne-sérénade; Viva Sevilla!; Fantasie sur “La Dame Blanche.” Tianwa Yang, violin; Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra conducted by Ernest Martínez Izquierdo. Naxos. $8.99.

     It makes sense for brilliant instrumentalists to compose music for themselves, and there is a longstanding tradition of their doing just that – dating back, in the case of violinists, to Vivaldi, who wrote at least some of his hundreds of concertos for himself to play (and, incidentally, may well have written the words to the poems that accompany his four most famous ones, The Four Seasons). Not everyone cared for Vivaldi’s playing – apparently some contemporaries found it a touch on the showy side and therefore unseemly, especially for a priest – but it certainly attracted attention. And attracting attention is one thing that violin superstars do exceptionally well. In the 19^th century, the ultimate violin virtuoso was Niccolò Paganini – who, not surprisingly, created a series of concertos that would let him display his technical prowess, and also wrote (among other things) a set of 24 caprices that remain a pinnacle for every modern would-be virtuoso to scale.

     But Paganini may not have been the most influential performer among 19^th-century violinists, for his main interest was in displaying his own talents. Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) was expert not only at showcasing his own abilities but also at bringing out the best in some of the Romantic era’s greatest composers. Joachim established Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, previously deemed nearly unplayable, as a mainstay in the concert hall. He was instrumental in reviving interest in Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin. Schumann and Dvořák wrote their violin concertos for him, although he never played either of them. He advised Bruch, who also wrote works for him, and Joachim’s close friend Brahms composed his Violin Concerto for him – although Joachim played it only six times. The F-A-E Sonata by Brahms, Schumann and Albert Dietrich was written for Joachim as well. In addition, Joachim wrote a small number of works himself – about two dozen – including three violin concertos. The first two, played by Suyoen Kim on a new Naxos CD, are a study in contrasts. Violin Concerto in One Movement is strongly influenced by (and dedicated to) Liszt, who was an important influence on the young Joachim but from whom Joachim later broke, allying himself with the more-conservative musical approach epitomized by Brahms. This is a youthful and exuberant work, with two cadenzas in its single extended movement, and with plenty of opportunities for virtuoso display. Joachim’s second concerto, Violin Concerto in the Hungarian Style, was published after Joachim’s break with Liszt, but it handles its Hungarian inflections with Lisztian panache, especially in the finale. Joachim was himself Hungarian, and the multiple thematic elements reflecting Hungary in this concerto are impressively managed as well as atmospheric. These are good concertos for top-notch young violinists such as 22-year-old Kim to play, demanding excellent technique without requiring great emotional depth. These Joachim concertos, especially the second, have considerable flair, and Kim tosses them off very effectively, receiving fine backup from Staatskapelle Weimar under Michael Halász.

     Another 22-year-old virtuoso, Tianwa Yang, brings plenty of fire and spirit to the compositions of another great 19^th-century violinist, Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908). Sarasate was more in the tradition of Paganini – a superb player whose technique was highly influential – than in that of Joachim, whose tremendous abilities were placed at the service of some of the great composers of his and earlier times. Sarasate’s use of vibrato and emphasis on his instrument’s tone are just two of his areas of influence on other violinists. His music, written in various folklike styles, has a fairly narrow emotional range (languorous to flighty) and tends to sounds a bit repetitious when heard in large quantities. But many of his works, when listened to individually, are gems – notably including Zigeunerweisen, perhaps his best-known display piece. The distinct Hungarianisms of this work (which uses the same concluding melody that Liszt chose for one of his Hungarian Rhapsodies) make an interesting contrast to the more typical Spanish and Basque music heard in most of the other works on this CD. Among the disc’s highlights are the lovely Nocturne-sérénade, which is graceful and more subtle than most of Sarasate’s music; and Fantasie sur “La Dame Blanche,” based on François-Adrien Boieldieu’s 1825 opera, which combines considerable lyricism with plenty of fireworks. Ernest Martínez Izquierdo and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra (which was founded by Sarasate in 1879) give Yang excellent accompaniment throughout these works – and since Naxos has designated this CD as Volume 1 of a series, there should be considerably more of Sarasate’s music, and his approach to the violin, still to come.

(+++) TRIBUTES

El Sistema: Music to Change Life. A film by Paul Smaczny and Maria Stodtmeier. EuroArts DVD. $24.99.

Within a Dream: A Celebration of the Artistry of Richard Hickox. Chandos. $18.99 (2 CDs).

     Overtly celebratory productions are, in a sense, quite beyond criticism. They are generally of interest only to people who already know what is being celebrated, and those people need not be told if the person or event is wonderful (they believe that already) and will not listen if things seem to fall short (they will not believe that to be possible). So releases like these two inevitably have the flavor of “preaching to the converted,” a fact that their sheer exuberance underlines. This in no way means they are uninteresting or poorly produced: both the film El Sistema and the two-CD Richard Hickox set contain a great deal of worthy material. But too much adulation comes to seem as if those delivering it are trying a little too hard – not that fans of El Sistema or Hickox would ever feel that way.

     The Paul Smaczny/Maria Stodtmeier film is essentially an affirmation of a well-conceived program that has produced one international musical superstar – conductor Gustavo Dudamel – and has pulled hundreds of thousands of poor children into choirs and orchestras. This is El Sistema, brainchild of Venezuelan musician/politician José Antonio Abreu; and the documentary follows a number of wonderful stories (including Dudamel’s) in showing how the music-education program has brought many, many children out of the violence and hopelessness of the barrios and into a world filled with hope and opportunity. It is almost too uplifting for words – although there are plenty of words here, including some from Abreu himself. But there is a problem: El Sistema is essentially a political creation, and as such is now firmly under the control of Venezuelan caudillo and self-proclaimed “Bolivarian revolutionary” Hugo Chávez. Filmmakers get no access to El Sistema or to anything else in Venezuela without the approval of Chávez, and Chávez is not known for approving in-depth studies that show him, his policies or his nation in an unfavorable light. This situation throws something of a pall over El Sistema, which does not address its dependency on Chávez at all and remains focused on heartwarming stories. And the stories are heartwarming, with children as young as age two taken off the “mean streets” of the nation, taught the basics of music, provided with instruments and lessons in the hundreds of núcleos throughout the community, and given the chance to become part of an ensemble. The youngsters make music six days a week for four hours a day, and the film emphasizes that this time gives them respite from otherwise difficult lives, providing safety and a supportive environment. But consider: if this were occurring in, say, Fascist Italy or Communist Romania, questions would surely be raised about regimentation, about using the approach to generate support for the government and specifically for its leader, about the whole arrangement being a method of control and a tool for solidifying power. These are not questions that are present in El Sistema, and perhaps they could not have been asked while still allowing the filmmakers such extensive access to the program and its participants. Yet one wonders, in listening to Dudamel and others speak of the marvels of El Sistema, how much freedom they have to say anything less than adulatory, and how free the filmmakers would have been to include criticism if it had been given. This is not to take anything away from El Sistema as a film (it is a well-made documentary), from the music education it chronicles (which has clearly had remarkable successes), or from Abreu himself (who comes across as a dedicated and farsighted man). But hagiography, whether of a person or of a system, is always (almost by definition) overdone. In today’s Venezuela, it seems particularly out of place.

     The issues with the two-CD tribute to Richard Hickox are somewhat different. When a respected musical figure dies unexpectedly, as Hickox did in November 2008 at the age of 60, outpourings of affection are to be expected; and it only makes sense for Chandos, for which Hickox made some 280 recordings, to create a memorial tribute such as this one. The fact that royalties from Within a Dream are being donated to The Richard Hickox Foundation is a plus: the foundation promotes British music and composers and helps boost the careers of young British singers and conductors – worthy causes all. Furthermore, the two CDs contain more than 153 minutes of music – close to the medium’s 160-minute capacity – and so deserve to be called generous. But they are, for all that, a very limited look at Hickox, one of whose distinguishing characteristics was the ability to carry an overall concept of a lengthy work through the entire piece, even while effectively bringing out details of individual sections. There is, of course, no room for anything very long in a “tribute” production, and what Chandos offers here is 22 tracks of very well-played music not only by British composers (Bridge, Britten, Elgar, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and others) but also by Dvořák, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Verdi and more. The result is a set that proves that Hickox was versatile and had a fine ear for musical detail in shorter formats; but this is certainly not an in-depth exploration of the conductor. And fans of Hickox will likely have much of this material in their libraries already. This set is a lovely gesture and a money-raiser for a good cause, and certainly lets part of the Hickox style come through to listeners – but only part of it, and not necessarily the most distinguished or important elements.

(++++) NEW YORKERISMS

The New Yorker: On the Money—The Economy in Cartoons, 1925-2009. Edited by Robert Mankoff. Andrews McMeel. $24.99.

Old Farts Are Forever. By Lee Lorenz. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     There are some very special things about The New Yorker, not the least of which is how determined it is to have people regard it as special. To that end, the magazine has developed a unique sense of humor in its cartoons – some of which are haughty but not particularly funny, others of which are in-jokes of one sort or another, and still others of which are hilarious in a sophisticatedly offbeat way. One topic that the magazine does not cover particularly well is finance, so it may come as a surprise that so many of its cartoons have dealt with matters monetary over the years. Still, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his introduction to The New Yorker: On the Money, these are not really the cartoons of people who understand financial matters or Wall Street (even though that famous center of capitalism is, after all, in New York). These cartoons are mostly those of bemused characters who just can’t quite figure out what all that financial fuss is about and how the “money business” works. And yet many of these offerings are extremely funny. There is the well-dressed man walking into the IRS holdings his hands up in surrender. There is the husband ruefully telling his wife that they are now living beyond their second income. There are the Wall Street traders looking up at the display board to see the start of the Biblical phrase of doom, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.” There is the IRS bureaucrat telling the irritated (and presumably under-audit) businessman, “Maybe we do bungle the spending of your tax dollar, but you’ll have to admit we do a bang-up job of collecting it.” There is the down-at-the-heels miner who pans a large gold nugget from a stream and says, “Damn it! Now I’ve got to revise my estimated income.” There’s a megastore in which men and women with shopping carts roam aisles adorned with signs such as “Mutual Funds,” “REITs,” “Tax Exempt Municipals” and “U.S. Treasury Notes.” And there is one down-at-the-heels man saying to another, “There, there it is again – the invisible hand of the marketplace giving us the finger.” The cartoons are arranged by decade – a very few from the 1920s and a good selection thereafter – but the best ideas transcend their times, poking fun at (and a few holes in) the whole notion of prosperity for its own sake and the people who pursue it. The New Yorker is often a touch too snooty for its own good (although many of its readers think that is their own good), and the frequent disdain for the monied class in these cartoons melds uneasily with the fact that the magazines’ subscribers are scarcely downscale. But even if this creates some dissonance and ambivalence within the cartoons, it also helps give them a kind of wry effectiveness – and an impact quite different from that of the cartoons in, say, The Wall Street Journal.

     But it must be said that The New Yorker seems more at ease with cartoons about relationships than with ones about dollars and cents. Lee Lorenz, longtime cartoon editor of the magazine (before Robert Mankoff, editor of On the Money, took over) and a contributor of more than 1,700 drawings to it, offers some samples of his work in the small but delightful Old Farts Are Forever. The title comes from a panel that could have gone into On the Money. It shows three older businessmen sitting together, apparently at a club, with one saying, “Wunderkinden come and go, but old farts are forever.” Most of the Lorenz drawings here, though, are about interpersonal relationships. Young woman to older man, at a party: “It's certainly refreshing to meet someone sixty years old who looks sixty years old.” Long-suffering wife to her husband: “Of course I still love you – it’s called the Stockholm syndrome.” Woman lying in a bed with two men, one on each side of her, both of them reading books, as she turns to the one on her left: “Howard, I’m seeing someone else.” Wife to husband when Death shows up at the door: “It’s the closure fairy.” Thoroughly bored dog’s thought as his owner pets his head: “Mr. Dennison is survived by his long-time companion, Rusty.” Futuristic scene with sweet and busty young woman talking to grizzled man: “Gee whiz, Mr. Collins – two hundred and six isn’t old!” Old Farts Are Forever offers more chuckles than guffaws, but there are plenty of them to be had, and Lorenz – who says he has become an “old fart” himself – is a fine companion in and chronicler of this age group’s amusingly skewed world.