(+++) WELL PLAYED, ODDLY PRESENTED

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 22 and 24. David Greilsammer, piano and conducting the Suedama Ensemble. Naïve. $16.99.

Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp; Andante for Flute and Orchestra, K315; Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, K107/1. Pirmin Grehl, flute; Maria Graf, harp; Bayerisches Kammerorchester Bad Brückenau conducted by Gernot Schulz. Profil. $16.99.

     Mozart’s music has so many meanings and so many levels of appeal that it can survive interpretative extravagances that would sink the works of lesser composers. Unfortunately, this fact sometimes invites performers to try a little too hard to make their Mozart stand out. That seems to be the case with David Greilsammer, whose first CD of Mozart piano concertos focused on early works and presented them with a light and pleasant touch – but whose second, which includes two great works of the composer’s maturity, never quite gets off the ground. It may be that Greilsammer tries to do too much here. He plays piano; leads the Suedama (“Amadeus” spelled backward) Ensemble, which he founded; writes booklet notes; and takes part in an interview included with those notes. But it is the musical interpretation that matters most, and it does not quite work. The chamber group plays beautifully, and the musicians – including Greilsammer himself – even allow themselves a bit of extemporaneous decoration during the performance, which is not canonic but is refreshingly effective. However, Greilsammer could have used a conductor to rein in his enthusiasm a bit. The outer movements of both concertos are so fast-paced that it seems he is in a hurry to get them over with. The notes are right, but the feeling is often wrong. In the deeply felt C minor concerto (No. 24), Greilsammer creates such an anti-Romantic interpretation that he strips away the emotional depth, especially in the finale. In the E-flat concerto (No. 22), when the headlong finale pauses so Mozart can indulge in a slow section that is one of his most gorgeous inspirations, Greilsammer seems to want to get the slow stuff over with so he can plunge back into speed. It is not that Greilsammer cannot play slowly – the Larghetto of No. 24 is quite lovely – but his overall approach here is one of brightness and gaiety that simply does not sit well in these particular works (although it would in other Mozart concertos – No. 15, for example). Greilsammer has some interesting ideas about Mozart, but on this CD he seems somewhat too self-indulgent to present them effectively.

     The presentation of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp by Pirmin Grehl and Maria Graf, on the other hand, is effective. The soloists are well balanced and their tones well matched, and they have considerable sensitivity to each other’s phrasing and pacing – although Graf tends to dominate Grehl through her sheer sense of style. Gernot Schulz leads the Bayerisches Kammerorchester Bad Brückenau in a subdued, supportive manner that does not intrude on the delicacy of the soloists’ roles, and the result is a lovely rendition of this very unusual double concerto. The oddity here is in the rest of the CD. The entire disc runs less than 47 minutes – less than the length of many LP records in the pre-CD days. And the filler material is peculiar. Instead of one of Mozart’s flute concertos – there is plenty of room for one – the CD includes the Andante that Mozart wrote as an alternative movement for his flute concerto in G, K313. This gives Grehl a brief chance to shine as a soloist on his own, but musically, this is a strange little encore. Graf’s solo work is more extensive and more impressive, but also a real oddity: it is her own transcription for harp of the first of Mozart’s early K107 harpsichord concertos, which are actually his arrangements of sonatas by Johann Christian Bach. So this is an arrangement of an arrangement – and it happens to sound quite lovely as a work for harp and orchestra, although it would be hard to argue that the arrangement will have mass appeal to listeners and Mozart lovers. The oddities of this CD actually extend beyond the music and the disc’s length into the accompanying booklet, whose notes (in their English version) devote three pages to Mozart but three-and-a-half to the orchestra, including a mysterious and never-explained reference to the ensemble’s “involuntary move to Bad Brückenau in 2003 and the associated change of name.” There are a number of fine performances of the Concerto for Flute and Harp, which is the work for which listeners are most likely to want this CD. The disc will bring the most pleasure to fans of Graf, who is a top-notch player; more casual or less focused listeners may feel a bit cheated by the short length of the disc and its other peculiarities.

(++++) LITTLE THINGS THAT MEAN A LOT

Lawn to Lawn. By Dan Yaccarino. Knopf. $17.99.

Kiss Kiss. By Selma Mandine. Golden Books. $12.99.

You’re Lovable to Me. By Kat Yeh. Illustrated by Sue Anderson. Random House. $15.99.

     Non-lovers of tacky little lawn ornaments can turn their backs on Lawn to Lawn, but everyone else will be charmed by it – starting with the cover, which features Dan Yaccarino’s portrayal of the four heroes of the book: a pink flamingo, garden gnome, lamp-bearing jockey and decorative fawn. In fact, it is the pictures that make this book so delightful: the story serves them rather than being served by them. The plot is simply that a family moves from one home to another, leaving its lawn ornaments behind, and the ornaments decide to find the new house because the family’s little girl, Pearl, is so fond of them. That’s it. The book unfolds as an adventure in travel – during which each “starring” lawn ornament is tempted to abandon the quest, but perseveres. The fawn, for example, is enchanted by a “brave moose statue” that chases away some gargoyles, while the jockey is tempted to stay at a racetrack. But the four ornaments keep going, encountering fountains and restaurant mascots and even a couple of “snooty lion” guards – and always watching for trash trucks, which they know will sometimes pick up lawn ornaments and take them away forever. In a neat twist, a trash truck turns out to help the seekers, whose eventual reuniting with Pearl is no less heartfelt for being inevitable. “The journey had been worth it,” the lawn ornaments conclude – and young readers (ages 5-9) will surely agree.

     Kiss Kiss is for even younger children – ages 3-7 – and is equally sweet. Again, the plot is simple and the illustrations wonderful. The story, such as it is, has a teddy bear asking his owner what an apparently little thing – a kiss – is like. The answer, it turns out, takes many forms. When “a kiss is supersoft, like cuddly wool,” Selma Mandine’s illustration is all pink and cloudlike. For a prickly kiss from scratchy-faced Daddy, the color palette is green, with cacti. For grandpa’s kiss, which is “just like cotton candy,” two pages are covered with pink candy swirls from which hearts peek out. And so the story goes, even including wet kisses (with water drops shaped like hearts) from the dog, Rex. But the teddy bear never quite understands what a kiss is, so a demonstration is called for, proving that a kiss is “soft and warm and fresh – It’s delicious!” And so is Kiss Kiss.

     The six little bunnies featured in You’re Lovable to Me have been getting into some not-so-little mischief, throwing food and pulling toilet paper everywhere in the bathroom and squeezing out all the toothpaste and generally creating chaos, in scenes that will be quite familiar to kids ages 2-6 – the book’s target audience. By bedtime, the bunnies are concerned, as young children would be, too, about causing their mother so much trouble. Worried about mama’s reaction, they apologize – but instead of getting scolded, they get a lesson in love. Mama tells them that whether they are sad, frightened, lonely, worried, mad or even “plain exhausted,” she loves them – simply because “I’m your mama. You’re my bunnies. And you’re lovable to me.” Kat Yeh’s story could end there – but what makes this book so special is that it doesn’t. For all her words of appreciation, the bunnies’ mother is exhausted, and still has so much cleaning up and rearranging to do that she eventually falls asleep sitting on the sofa. And then her father – the little bunnies’ grandpa – stops by “for evening tea” and finds his little girl, now all grown up, all worn out. And that sets him to thinking about what love means: “When a papa loves a bunny, he still lives her when she’s grown.” And he remembers his little bunny’s growing-up years, and all that was special about them, and he covers tired mama with a blanket and holds her gently as her little bunnies, who apparently have not fallen asleep just yet, peek down on mama and grandpa from the staircase. This is a wonderful message about the cross-generational power and importance of love, and Sue Anderson’s beautifully sentimental illustrations bring it home as clearly as do Yeh’s words. Love itself is, after all, a little word – but as this book shows, it is scarcely a little thing.

(++++) OH, YUCK!

100 Most Disgusting Things on the Planet. By Anna Claybourne. Scholastic. $7.99.

Fly Guy #8: Fly Guy Meets Fly Girl! By Tedd Arnold. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $5.99.

     Admit it – there’s something inherently fascinating about really gross stuff. Maybe not to adults (although that’s arguable), but certainly to a lot of kids. And it’s that fascination with the weird and truly unpleasant things in life to which Anna Claybourne plays in 100 Most Disgusting Things on the Planet. Now, it’s important to realize that the “disgusting” stuff here seems that way from a perceptual standpoint, not an analytical one. That is, there is nothing here about heart disease, advanced cancer, mistreatment of children or animals, or anything along those lines. These “disgusting” things (rated from one to five “yuck faces,” which are green emoticons with tongues sticking out) come in two sections: “Disgusting Nature” and “Disgusting Humans.” The first includes, for example, the tarantula – which gets a yuck factor of only two, because “they look hairy and scary, but only some people find them revolting – others keep them as pets!” Want something with a yuck factor of five? That would be the snakelike hagfish, scavengers whose bodies are completely covered with large quantities of extremely slippery slime. The vampire bat gets a yuck factor of four, which seems a trifle unfair – but the botfly, which lives inside living animals and feeds on them, rates a five, which seems about right. Each page of 100 Most Disgusting Things on the Planet shows a photo of whatever is described, gives information about it, and provides an occasional warning or “top tip.” Some of these are pretty obvious: “If you see one of these giant [tarantula hawk] wasps, keep away.” Others are useful: “If your dog or cat bites a cane toad [a poison-skinned amphibian that gets a yuck factor of two], rinse the pet’s mouth out with water and take it to a vet as soon as you can.” So where do “Disgusting Humans” fit into all this? There are the predictable pages about pee, poo, sneezing, spit and vomit, but there are also some genuinely interesting items in this section: ants that are used to stitch up wounds (yuck factor of three, which seems high); tripe as food (yuck factor of two); chocolate-covered ants (three); household dust (three); black mold (four); and germs in cheese (three, with a note that the holes in Swiss cheese “are made by gas bubbles that are released by bacteria”). Not everything here is truly disgusting – many things are a matter of taste or culture – but the chances are that kids fascinated by gross stuff will find a lot of items to like (if that’s the right word) in 100 Most Disgusting Things on the Planet.

     Take houseflies, for example (yuck factor: four). In Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy series, they are endearing rather than filthy; or maybe that’s endearing and filthy. The latest book in the series doubles the fun – or disgusting-ness, if you prefer – by having Buzz and his pet fly (that would be Fly Guy) meet a girl named Liz and her pet fly, Fly Girl. Each fly can say its owner’s name (“buzz” and “lizzz,” that is), and both flies have delightfully similar habits: “‘Fly Guy eats gross stuff,’ said Buzz. ‘Fly Girl eats grosser stuff,’ said the girl.” Arnold gets away with all the grossness not only because fans of this series expect it, but also because his drawings are silly/funny as well as…well…gross. So what happens here? Disaster, almost, because while Buzz and Liz play together, Fly Guy and Fly Girl discover that they really, really like each other, and they start imagining a future together – which Arnold shows in terms of the two of them living in a thrown-away food can with lots of little flies flitting about (no maggots here!). But then what would happen to Buzz and Liz? (And what would happen to the Fly Guy series, for that matter?) Anyway, everything turns out just fine, because the two flies decide to be “just friends,” since they can’t bear the thought of leaving their humans. Whew! Close call! So don’t worry – there are sure to be more Fly Guy books to come, because Arnold may not himself be a fly guy, but he’s certainly a sly guy.

(+++) THE PROBLEM WITH BEING SUPERNATURAL

Beyond the Night. By Joss Ware. Avon. $7.99.

Green. By Laura Peyton Roberts. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

     The thing about zombies is that there is just no way to make them romantic. All that shambling, brain-sucking, mentally vacant, limbs-falling-off lurching about just isn’t attractive in any way, shape, or form. Not that vampires – which zombies are in the process of supplanting in popular literature – were always particularly erotic. John Polidori’s The Vampyre has a much more brutal and less attractive title character than does Bram Stoker’s later Dracula. But ever since Stoker – who brought a frisson of suppressed eroticism to vampire lore – there has been something steamy, implied or overt, about bloodsuckers. Now, though, they seem to be fading from overexposure – not to sunlight but to the popular imagination. And zombies are in the ascendant. But they are just so unpleasant. So writers such as Joss Ware have to figure out how to create zombie-populated paranormal tales – in Ware’s case, a paranormal romance – without grossing out all would-be readers. Ware’s solution is simple enough: include zombies in her book, but not as its central focus, and let the romance flower between zombie killers rather than among the undead themselves. Good plan. But in implementing it in Beyond the Night, Ware goes a bit overboard. This is one of those books in which the author throws out all the plot elements she can think up in the hope that some of them will stick. So we have immortality; a mysterious 50-year sleep; the end of the world as we know it; evildoers keeping women as slaves; unexplained development of supernatural powers; Nevada ending up on the Pacific coast after California’s disappearance beneath the waves; a fight with a huge snake; a “with great power comes great responsibility” theme; and of course – this being a romance – a couple of damaged-goods people who are nevertheless extraordinarily attractive and destined eventually to confront their pasts, to couple and to become a couple. A lot of Ware’s writing is straight out of romance-genre cliché: “She sounded like sex and promises.” A lot of her plot points are, too: somehow, even after utter worldwide disaster and the near-destruction of the human race, the one-man-one-woman model has remained a glorious ideal. Nevertheless, if you do not take Beyond the Night too seriously – and it sometimes seems not to take itself too seriously – it is fun to read, not so much to find out why the world was destroyed, who the immortal Strangers are or just when Elliott and Jade will give in to their desires (“raging hormones under control,” Ware writes at one point), but to figure out what’s going on with the ganga (this book’s zombies) and how Ware is going to pull all her themes together. Readers won’t actually find everything out in Beyond the Night – two follow-ups are in the works – but this book is still a heady thrill ride if you can ignore its frequently earnest silliness.

     On the whole, leprechauns are easier to enjoy than zombies, which may be why Green – which is intended for girls ages 10 and up rather than for adults – makes the little people its supernatural focus. Laura Peyton Roberts’ heroine, Lily, has just turned 13 when she meets the leprechauns rather explosively (a birthday gift actually blows up shortly before three leprechauns appear in her bedroom). These wee folk are certainly not as scary as, say, zombies, but they are not entirely benign, either: “You guys are mean, and you made me miss my party.” That’s not the worst of things, though, after Lily is taken to the leprechauns’ world – where she, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, is due to be put in charge of all the gold of the Clan of Green. For Lily must pass three tests to prove herself worthy to be the clan’s “keeper” – and if she fails, she may never see her home again. Lily herself has leprechaun blood – the result of some leprechauns’ wish that went awry “hundreds o’ years ago…during a Rendezvous” – and that explains why both Lily and her grandmother before her are connected to the Clan of Green. Indeed, early in her adventures, Lily finds a note from her grandmother, filled with the sort of typically unhelpful advice that protagonists of tales like this always seem to get: “The only way back is forward. Be what you’d become.” And so forth. Of course, also as usual in stories like this, the advice turns out to be just what Lily needs – including the apparently irrelevant comment that leprechauns don’t swim. Indeed, Lily learns several surprising things about leprechauns, including that “scarce one or two of us in a generation is born with the [magic] touch,” but that the wee folk are mighty good cobblers. She also learns about creatures called piskies and their “wild magic,” and about the dangers of a “clover swear,” and (of course) about her own inner strength – and she gets to take luck with her when she eventually comes through all her trials. Furthermore, she finds out that “the desire to possess [gold] wasn’t about need,” and that knowledge gives her a most satisfying final act before she returns to the world of humans. Green is never too serious, never too threatening, but is not quite a romp, either – it is often so frothy that it is barely there, but it ends up as a nice bit of light entertainment for preteens wanting a temporary escape from humdrum daily life.

(++++) UNHEARD BEETHOVEN

Beethoven: Egmont—Incidental Music; Marches Nos. 1 and 2; Ah! Perfido. Madeleine Pierard, soprano; Claus Obalski, narrator; New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Judd. Naxos. $8.99.

Beethoven and Mendelssohn: Organ Works. Wolfgang Kleber, organ. Genuin. $18.99.

     The music of Beethoven is so often played – indeed, so often over-played – that it is natural to assume that most listeners have heard just about everything he wrote. But this is far from the case: among the composer’s 100-plus opus numbers and many additional unnumbered works (WoO), there are quite a few that are performed very rarely indeed. This is a real shame, because the less-known works often show sides of Beethoven that the better-known ones do not. There is, for example, more to Beethoven the vocal composer than the ninth symphony, Fidelio, the Missa Solemnis and the Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra – the last of these itself being a rarity until a couple of decades ago, when its forward-looking structure and musical interest finally became more widely apparent. Take Beethoven’s music for Goethe’s tragedy, Egmont, for example. The Egmont Overture is a marvelously evocative piece that shows up frequently in the concert hall and in recorded form. But Beethoven also wrote a series of entr’actes and vocal works for Egmont, and if none of them is at the level of the overture (which encapsulates the entire drama in less than 10 minutes), the same may be said of Fidelio and the Leonore Overture No. 3 – a fact that does not render the opera any less interesting. James Judd offers a nuanced, balanced and finely proportioned reading of the Egmont incidental music, with Madeleine Pierard highly affecting in the role of the doomed Clärchen (whose death music, which is wholly instrumental, is especially effective) and Claus Obalski presenting strong narration in an extended Melodrama that occurs in the play’s final act. True, the music is less effective in the form given here than in the context of Goethe’s entire play; but the same can be said, for instance, of Grieg’s music for Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, and that has not prevented Grieg’s miniatures from achieving a concert-hall life of their own. Similarly, Beethoven’s Egmont is worth knowing for more than its overture, even if that opening piece remains the best music associated with the play. Judd complements the Egmont music of 1810 with two marches in F major, from 1809 and 1810, which are slight but pleasant enough, and with the extended concert aria Ah! Perfido – which dates to 1795-6 and fits rather uneasily with the rest of this CD from a thematic standpoint, although it certainly gives Pierard an excellent additional opportunity to display her fine soprano.

     Even less known than Egmont are Beethoven’s Three Pieces for Mechanical Organ, which Wolfgang Kleber includes on a new Beethoven/Mendelssohn CD. These works, like the better-known (but also infrequently played) Wellington’s Victory, are evidence of Beethoven’s fascination with new ways of making music. The first of them, an Adagio, shows that Beethoven expected expressiveness even from mechanical instruments. Also heard on this CD is another Beethoven rarity: Two Preludes through All the Major Keys, op. 39. Playable on either organ or piano, these works start in C and pass throughout the major keys to return to C at the end – evidence of the strong formal underpinnings of Beethoven’s music, which was later to move so far in new directions.

     Mendelssohn moved in new directions, too, and the balance of Kleber’s excellently played CD focuses on some of his less-known works: Three Preludes and Fugues, op. 37, and two of the six sonatas from op. 65 – No. 1 in F minor and No. 5 in D major. Op. 37 finds Mendelssohn in tribute-to-Bach mode – it dates to the same period in the 1830s as op. 35, the Six Preludes and Fugues for piano, written in homage to The Well-Tempered Clavier. The rather strict fugues in op. 37 stand in contrast to the freer preludes, which are more expressive. As for the op. 65 sonatas, they are late Mendelssohn works, dating to 1844-5, and explore a variety of movement sequences as well as various emotions. Indeed, it would be good to hear all six of these sonatas performed by Kleber, who handles the two here with great sensitivity and fine balance between formal structure and emotive communication. These works do not sound much like the light and spirited Mendelssohn with whom most listeners are familiar – and, as a result, they broaden the understanding of their composer’s abilities, concerns and very wide-ranging musical interests.

(++++) BEYOND THE BAROQUE

Michael Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 14, 17, 19, 24, 29, 33, 40 and 41; Symphony in F; Three Marches. Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss conducted by Frank Beermann and Johannes Goritzki. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Avner Dorman: Mandolin Concerto (2006); Piccolo Concerto (2001); Concerto Grosso (2003); Piano Concerto (1995). Avi Avital, mandolin; Mindy Kaufman, piccolo; Eliran Avni, piano; Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr. Naxos. $8.99.

     It is Michael Haydn’s posthumous misfortune to be perpetually overshadowed, both by his older brother, Joseph, and by his younger contemporary, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In his own era, Michael Haydn (1737-1806) was considerably better thought of than in subsequent times. A number of his 40-plus symphonies were for many years attributed to Joseph, and one symphony was long thought to be by Mozart – which explains the mysterious absence of a “No. 37” from Mozart’s symphonic catalogue. Mozart actually wrote the introduction to that symphony’s first movement, thus confusing matters further; and indeed, in his earlier musical life, Mozart took Michael Haydn as a model and copied a number of his works – thus leading to considerable confusion about original authorship. All of this would be no more than a set of curiosities of musical history if it were not for the fact that Michael Haydn composed a great deal of music, much of it of very considerable interest, that is indisputably his own – not only symphonies but also string quartets and quintets, dances, marches, ballets, serenades, concertos, and lots of vocal music, both sacred and secular (but only one opera, Andromeda e Perseo – although he did write a number of Singspiels). Frank Beermann and the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss do a great deal to show just how effective Michael Haydn’s orchestral music can be in their new two-CD set of some of his symphonies. Many of these works tie more closely to Baroque models than did those of Joseph Haydn and Mozart; indeed, the appellation Sinfonia tends to fit them better than does that of Symphony. The works certainly sound more like throwbacks than do better-known ones of the same time. For example, No. 41 in A, the composer’s last numbered symphony, dates to 1789 – but is worlds distant from Mozart’s No. 41 in C, written a year earlier. Michael Haydn’s work includes a fugato and sixteenth-note runs that are effective but scarcely forward-looking, although it does have some interesting sonorities, notably the use of bassoon with violins in the first movement. The other works here all have elements of considerable interest without ever becoming compelling as full-scale pieces. No. 33 in B-flat, for example, is attention-getting, with trumpets and drums, but harks back to Italian opera overtures (this work’s minuet was added later to its original three-movement structure). No. 17 in E, assembled by the composer from earlier stage music, has effective folklike elements and a rather eerie Trio to its minuet. No. 40 in F balances strings and winds with considerable skill. The Andante of No. 24 in A features attractive variations in which the winds play against muted strings. No 29 in D minor, the sole minor-key symphony that Michael Haydn wrote, offers an odd combination of minor-key tonality with festive scoring and bright themes. No single symphony here stands out as being completely effective from start to finish, but all contain commendable elements that show Michael Haydn’s skill at musical construction and instrumentation. And the three short marches that fill out the recording – from 1786, 1787 and 1790 – are full of verve and spirit, with one of them, surprisingly, scored for strings alone.

     The Baroque flavor that remained in Michael Haydn’s works never completely disappeared from music in the centuries that followed, although it was much transformed (in Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, to cite just one example). Even in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, Baroque music and Baroque forms have retained their power to inspire composers – such as Avner Dorman (born 1975), who has written concertos that draw on Baroque models for formal structure and even sometimes for harmony, but use the rhythms of jazz, ethnic music and rock ‘n roll for their communicative effects. This can be an uneasy combination, and Dorman’s music will not strike all listeners as having managed it effectively – this CD gets a (+++) rating. But in Dorman as in Michael Haydn, there is a great deal worth hearing even if the totality of the works seems less effective than some of their individual parts. The Mandolin Concerto – performed by Avi Avital, who commissioned it – is a particularly interesting throwback, although Dorman never quite lets this old instrument be itself: he gives it Middle Eastern sounds that do not quite fit its timbre, includes pizzicato harmonics, and has the mandolin detuned at the work’s end. The concerto is a curiosity rather than a compelling piece, but it certainly has interesting sonic moments. The Piccolo Concerto is in traditional fast-slow-fast form and shows closer ties to Baroque and Classical times, although it also features prominent polytonality. Dorman’s Concerto Grosso – a Baroque form if there ever was one – actually includes a harpsichord and a little of Handel’s Concerto Grosso, op. 6, no. 4, but it is more driven rhythmically than a work of the Baroque era. The Piano Concerto, written when Dorman was 19, is inspired by Bach and dedicated to Vivaldi, and it is something of a mashup, including bits of jazz, pop, rock and other 20^th-century forms while maintaining some elements of Baroque style. All these pieces – all of which are very well played by soloists and ensemble alike – come across more as experiments than as works of heartfelt expressiveness; all have effective moments that give way, all too soon, to less-effective ones. Dorman has some interesting compositional ideas; but on the basis of these works he has yet to find a voice that is uniquely his rather than one that structures music by juxtaposing modern styles with much older ones.

(++++) BEASTLY LESSONS

The Grasshopper Hopped! By Elizabeth Alexander. Illustrated by Joung Un Kim. Golden Books. $8.99.

How Do Lions Say I Love You? By Diane Muldrow. Illustrated by David Walker. Golden Books. $7.99.

Ferocious Wild Beasts! By Chris Wormell. Knopf. $16.99.

     Each of these books fully deserves the special punctuation mark at the end of its title – two exclamation points and a question mark. The Grasshopper Hopped! and How Do Lions Say I Love You? are board books, and between them show just how many approaches this format can accommodate. Elizabeth Alexander’s book features a big-eyed grasshopper – charmingly drawn by Joung Un Kim – trying to figure out where he belongs. Kids help the grasshopper get into and out of various spots – there are tabs to pull or push – as he explores a soup pot simmering on a stove, the inside of a refrigerator, a grandfather clock, the ocean, and other unlikely locations, each time realizing that he doesn’t belong in those places. The illustrations change appropriately – the one of the grasshopper wearing ear muffs because the clock’s striking is too loud for him is especially amusing. Eventually, after a near-fatal encounter with one of the natural enemies of grasshoppers, the smiling insect figures out where he should be, and kids get to help him hop happily up and down. The book, intended for ages 3-6, is enjoyable throughout – and even offers a soft-pedaled lesson about insects and their enemies.

     How Do Lions Say I Love You? is a board book for even younger kids – up to age five, starting at any age at which a parent wants to read to an infant. Diane Muldrow’s simple text contains gently presented information on animals’ real-world courting habits, such as the facts that swans mate for life and peacocks display “feathers and flair” to their peahen mates. But love is the main subject here, as David Walker’s anthropomorphic illustrations show smiling giraffes with their necks wrapped around each other, cuddly lions rubbing fur, elephants with trunks intertwined, and more. Even the wolves – shown engaging in “a howl and a huddle” – are adorable. And the rhymes carry the simple text forward nicely: “Bears like to say it with a kiss on the muzzle. A mama cow says it with a lick and a nuzzle.” At the end, after reading about all the ways animals seem to express affection, a parent has a perfect opportunity to cuddle, nuzzle and hug the child who has been listening to and looking at this lovely little book.

     Ferocious Wild Beasts! is a more sophisticated book that will be great fun for children ages 5-8. The whole book is a put-on of sorts, because kids will quickly figure out what Jack, the little boy in the book, never quite realizes about the dark forest where he has become lost. Jack’s mother has warned him about the ferocious wild beasts in the woods, so Jack warns everyone he meets in the forest about the danger. Among those he cautions are a huge bear, an elephant, a full-grown lion, a gigantic crocodile, a wolf and a python. That’s right: Jack is warning the ferocious wild beasts about the ferocious wild beasts! And he is mighty effective at it, too. For example, he tells the lion that the beasts “have sharp claws and big teeth and can bite your head off in a second” and “like eating lions the best.” The result is that all the animals stay close to Jack, casting worried glances around and behind themselves, until finally they do see something in the dark – and hear a frightening sound. And as all the creatures stampede back to the safety of the forest, Jack, “who was the bravest,” continues onward to discover something “much worse” than a beast – and gets to go home safely, in a highly amusing twist ending. This book may not teach anything about animal behavior, but it certainly shows young readers the pleasures of a good sense of humor.

(++++) BOARD, NOT BORING

Rock & Roll Shapes. By Salina Yoon. Scholastic. $7.99.

How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? By Jane Yolen. Illustrations by Mark Teague. Blue Sky Press/Scholastic. $6.99.

How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? By Jane Yolen. Illustrations by Mark Teague. Blue Sky Press/Scholastic. $6.99.

     The amount of creativity lavished on books for the youngest children – pre-readers as well as beginning readers – is truly amazing. What a great concept Rock & Roll Shapes is! An elongated, very sturdy board book with an easy-to-grab handle at the bottom, it introduces infants to five shapes – square, circle, triangle, star and diamond – through bright colors and very clever illustrations that produce the “rock & roll” title. Each two-page sequence gives the name of the shape on the left and five examples of it on the right. The examples are multicolored, with central cutouts. And each right-hand page contains a shiny silver object that rolls from left to right and back again, passing through the cutouts of all five examples and turning their centers silver. The rolling object is a circle – that’s why it rolls so easily – but kids never actually see its shape, since it is too big to fit through the cutouts. It simply rolls along, back and forth, as children (or parents) tilt the pages, creating an extra visual attraction and a great memory aid to be associated with each shape. Very simple; very ingenious; very well done.

     The How Do Dinosaurs… series is for slightly older kids – it tells stories, after all – but Jane Yolen and Mark Teague keep the board books in the series easy to understand and delightfully offbeat. The idea is always the same: give real-world information to kids, but make believe that family members are dinosaurs, and show (in Teague’s wonderfully expressive drawings) just how dinosaurs do the things they ought to do in everyday (modern) life. But first, show what dinosaurs (and people) should not do, by giving amusing bad examples of the wrong behavior. To show their love for cats, for example, do dinosaurs throw pillows at kitty or toss the cat itself when it complains – or ignore it after school? No! These dinos know to cuddle and pet their cats, give them food and fresh water, change their litter boxes, and play nicely with them. In a similar vein, do dinos with dogs forget to give them food, jump on them and neglect their walks? Of course not! Right-thinking (and right-acting) dinosaurs feed, walk and play with their dogs and stroke them gently and lovingly. The simple lessons here would seem preachy if delivered in a straightforward narrative, but as Yolen and Teague present them, they are much more easily absorbed – which is, of course, the whole idea of these books. Even kids who laugh at the dinosaurs’ initially rough (but not too rough) treatment of their pets will quickly realize what is wrong – and hopefully internalize the lessons about proper, loving treatment of the animals who share the family cave…err, swamp…that is, home.

(+++) THE USES OF (RECENT) HISTORY

Shake Rattle & Turn That Noise Down: How Elvis Shook Up Music, Me and Mom. By Mark Alan Stamaty. Knopf. $17.99.

Child of the Civil Rights Movement. By Paula Young Shelton. Illustrated by Raul Colón. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.

     The grand lessons of the past are not what these books for ages 4-8 are all about. Yes, there are major trends and occurrences invoked here – in music and in human rights – but both books take those big societal matters down to a personal level, in attempts to forge a stronger connection with young readers in the 21^st century. Mark Alan Stamaty’s Shake Rattle & Turn That Noise Down is done in comic-strip style, taking readers back to the long-ago days of 1955, the year the author turned eight, when “lots of things we now take for granted did not even exist” and “television was black-and-white.” Stamaty talks about the music education he got in school and the way his birthday present – a radio of his very own – thoroughly upset the care and order of his life: “A howling thunder of sound exploded in my room, engulfing me in a hurricane of excitement.” In lovingly detailed drawings with text that runs all around the panels, in multiple sizes and colors, Stamaty goes on to show the influence that Elvis Presley and his music had on him, his friends and family, his school, his Cub Scout den, and even on his adult life: at the end of the book, he includes photos taken when we did an Elvis impersonation for then-President Clinton in 1993. Stamaty’s explanations of historical details, even though they are incidental to the story, are especially well done – for example, his drawing of a 45-rpm record and his discussion of how those vinyl disks had “the ‘good’ song, the one they played on the radio,” on one side, and “a crummy song just to fill up space” on the other side. There are also some wonderful illustrations of pop singers from and after Elvis’ early years, and of some musicians whose influence on rock ‘n’ roll was significant. And yet, despite the undoubted quality of the art and the sincerity of the narrative, Shake Rattle & Turn That Noise Down is more a period piece than anything else. It does not fully communicate to today’s young people just how revolutionary Elvis and his music were to an earlier generation – and perhaps there is no way to show that effectively, given the state of music today. This is a book that, despite its official target age range, may actually appeal more to adults of Stamaty’s own generation than to their children and (gasp!) grandchildren.

     Sincerity practically oozes from another period piece, Child of the Civil Rights Movement, whose author, Paula Young Shelton, is the daughter of civil-rights leader (and former United Nations ambassador) Andrew Young. The story opens in New York, where Shelton was born, and continues in short chapters as she and her family move to Atlanta to help with the civil-rights protests of the 1960s. There is a great deal here about “Uncle Martin” – Martin Luther King, Jr. – and his influence on the Youngs as well as on the civil-rights movement as a whole. Raul Colón provides carefully drawn, elegant illustrations of King, the Youngs, and many other leaders of the time: Hosea Williams, Ralph Abernathy, Dorothy Cotton, et al. And then comes the story of the Selma-to-Montgomery march and the momentous Voting Rights Act of 1965, the latter being handled almost dismissively: “we’d won just one battle and there were many more to come.” The entire book is about passing the torch of civil rights to a new generation – in fact, Shelton writes that “the baton would pass to us and we would march on.” Shelton now teaches first grade in Washington, D.C., and her book is clearly intended to have a specific educational purpose. Everyone she portrays in it is one-dimensional: the civil-rights marchers 100% good, the whites of the South 100% bad. This is perhaps understandable in a story for six-year-olds, but it does an injustice to the civil-rights struggle itself and to those real, three-dimensional human beings who pursued it. There is more to be learned from the successes of fallible and imperfect human beings than from the triumphs of godlike heroes. By making the civil-rights story such a straightforward tale of good vs. evil, Shelton limits its value to the children of today, who – even as first-graders – can surely handle more ambiguity and complexity than this enormously well-intentioned book provides.

(++++) CELEBRATIONS OF THE PIANO

Mendelssohn: Concertos for Two Pianos. The Silver Garburg Piano Duo (Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg); Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Christopher Hogwood. Oehms. $16.99.

Idil Biret Archive Edition, Volume 1: Ravel—Sérénade grotesque; Gaspard de la nuit; Stravinsky—Les cinq doigts; Valse pour les enfants; Pétrouchka—3 scènes. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $8.99.

     Lyricism, flow and beauty, the hallmarks of so much of Mendelssohn’s music, are as integral to his two two-piano concertos as they are to his two concertos for solo piano. But the two-piano works are far less frequently performed, perhaps because they require the duo-pianists to subsume individual virtuosity into uniformity of sound and approach. These are not “display pieces,” but they are wonderful music – and when pianists are as comfortable with them (and apparently with each other) as are Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg, the results are exemplary. These two teachers from the Academy of Music in Hanover present readings of the concertos in E (1823) and A-flat (1824) that effectively balance the works’ classical poise with their Romantic emotions. They are beautifully complemented by the chamber-size Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie, which Christopher Hogwood directs with the clarity and balance that have long been trademarks of his musical approach. The brighter (if not really frothier) Concerto in E comes across particularly well, being more strongly immersed in classicism than its slightly later companion. The Concerto in A-flat is more symphonic and has more of a Romantic temperament; it is less straightforward in both style and harmony. A larger ensemble would have worked well here, but the considerable clarity that Hogwood brings to this work makes an effective argument for keeping the accompaniment modest. Silver and Garburg also have a fine understanding of the differing scales of these two works, handling the one in E with positively Mozartean finesse while allowing the one in A-flat to emerge in larger scale and with greater scope. This CD is about as effective an argument as possible for more-frequent performances of these unfairly neglected and thoroughly winning works.

     Idil Biret’s first CD in yet another series from Idil Biret Archives is winning, too. In addition to the Beethoven Edition and Concerto Edition, both of which are still in progress, IBA is now releasing an Archive Edition of Biret’s solo non-Beethoven performances. The first CD, of Ravel and Stravinsky, was recorded in 1975 and originally released in 1976 on the short-lived Finnadar label. In many ways, it shows Biret at her best. Her Beethoven and concerto series are variable in quality and impact, always informed by her obviously strong intellect and fine technique, but sometimes overmastered (from a purely musical point of view) by performances that seem to have been over-thought and that therefore lack a certain spark of apparent spontaneity. Not so here. Biret surely thought about the music on this CD as carefully as she thought about other works she played, but there is a flow here, a sense of excitement and involvement, that is more winning than her illuminating but sometimes slow (even stodgy) performances in the other IBA series. The character of the music may well have something to do with this. Gaspard de la nuit is a display piece and a fascinating bit of grotesquerie, and Biret certainly perceives this, producing an especially eerie Le Gibet. The Sérénade grotesque, Ravel’s very first piano piece (dating to 1893, when the composer was 18), ties interestingly to the later work, especially to Scarbo. The Stravinsky pieces are studies in contrast, with the Pétrouchka excerpts giving Biret plenty of virtuoso opportunities, while Les cinq doigts requires (and receives) considerable subtlety and Valse pour les enfants is a thoroughly charming trifle. If the other releases in the Idil Biret Archive Edition prove as convivial as this first one, the series will be a winner all the way.

(+++) TOUCHES OF RUSSIA

Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2; Vocalise. Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Naxos. $8.99.

Harris: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 (“Gettysburg”); Acceleration. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $8.99.

     Detroit may have been down and nearly out as a manufacturing center in 2009, but you would never know it from the sound of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under its new music director, Leonard Slatkin. For Slatkin – who built his reputation in St. Louis, then became conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., before moving to Detroit – the orchestra sounds warm, committed and well balanced, with especially strong strings. The sound of its September 2009 live recording of Rachmaninoff emphasizes warmth as well: Orchestra Hall in Detroit has long had excellent acoustics, and they are well captured here. But it is hard to be completely enthusiastic about this new CD, partly because of the repertoire and partly because of the way Slatkin approaches it. This is a kind of “Rachmaninoff’s greatest orchestral hits” CD; it is questionable how many of those a listener needs. Even more questionable is Slatkin’s form of conductorial enthusiasm here. Rachmaninoff was the last of the unashamed Romantic composers (Rued Langgaard outlived him by nearly a decade and stayed true to the Romantic style, but often seemed to do so ruefully in his later works). Slatkin gives this music such an unashamedly Romantic interpretation that the works expand almost to the point of popping, like gigantic, beautiful but fragile soap bubbles. Vocalise, orchestrated by the composer after starting out as the final (wordless) song in a set of 14 songs, opens the CD and sets a tone of expressiveness to the point of swooning. Yes, Rachmaninoff’s music invites this, but a conductor’s challenge is to decide how to manage the expansiveness – lest it manage him. The latter is more or less what happens with Slatkin here. Symphony No. 2 certainly sprawls – especially the first movement – and Slatkin wallows in it, letting it grow and glow with such sumptuousness that it crosses the line between the portentous and the pretentious. Again, Rachmaninoff’s music invites this, but a conductor who accepts the invitation as enthusiastically as Slatkin does here ends up with more than a touch of bloat. So thoroughly is Slatkin steeped in Rachmaninoff’s post-Romantic ultra-Romanticism that he makes some speedy sections sound almost perfunctory – the opening of the scherzo, for example – because he is in a hurry to dwell on the contrasting slow and indulgent parts of the music. This is not to say that Slatkin’s tempos are slow – the start of the finale, for example, is quick and ebullient – but there is a feeling here of getting most of the fast-paced material out of the way in order to allow more time for the broad themes and swooning that pervade Rachmaninoff’s music. This is a CD for listeners who admire Rachmaninoff’s many influences on movie scores and pop-music love songs, not one for listeners seeking some of the balance and proportion that are present in Rachmaninoff’s music – although not always obviously.

     Rachmaninoff’s warmth, expressiveness and death obsession (all those Dies Irae quotations) are temperamentally quite Russian. But there is also a strong – and surprising – Russian connection in American composer Roy Harris’ Symphony No. 5. More properly, it is a Soviet connection: this is a war symphony, written in 1942, and it is dedicated (without a shred of irony, except in retrospect) to “the heroic and freedom-loving people of our great ally, the Union of Soviet Republics.” There is nothing sinister in this: the USSR was a crucial member of the Allies in World War II, bore the brunt of some of Hitler’s most brutal campaigns, suffered enormous casualties, and in triumphantly breaking the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) gave the Allies an early foretaste of eventual victory. That the nation’s own brutal dictator, Stalin, killed more people than Hitler did was not fully understood until well after the war. And so Harris produced a dedication that was patriotic in its time for a three-movement symphony that has no apparent musical connection to the circumstances in which it was written. This fifth of Harris’ 16 symphonies is absolute music, its outer movements both growing organically from basic material presented at their openings. If there is a “war” element here, it is in the middle movement, which includes portions of a funeral march. The symphony also includes material from Acceleration, a single movement written a year earlier (1941) that Harris reworked when putting the symphony together.

     A very different and wholly American war is the foundation of Harris’ Symphony No. 6, “Gettysburg.” The work, although entirely instrumental, was inspired by quotations from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Its four movements bear titles relating to that famous speech: Awakening, Conflict, Dedication and Affirmation. But, as in his previous symphony, Harris delivers absolute rather than program music in Symphony No. 6. There is some tone painting of war in the second movement, but this is more a filmmaker’s idea of war than Lincoln’s: the movement starts as a march and builds steadily, featuring fragmentary brass themes and yawps before it ends abruptly. More obvious and less emotive than the other three movements, it seems oddly discordant – not in musical terms but in the way it communicates. The other movements have more of the Harris sound and structure, with the third movement’s quiet ending being especially effective and the coda of the finale wrapping things up colorfully. Marin Alsop, a champion of 20^th-century American music (and generally a more effective conductor of it than of the standard repertoire), approaches these Harris pieces with a sure hand, building them effectively and maintaining a clear sense of their structure throughout. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra plays well and idiomatically, showing Harris to be, if not a great composer, one with a strong sense of style and considerable skill in orchestration.

(+++) THE LURE OF THE IRISH

Magic Tree House #43: Leprechaun in Late Winter. By Mary Pope Osborne. Random House. $12.99.

Magic Tree House Research Guide: Leprechauns and Irish Folklore. By Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Random House. $4.99.

Betraying Season. By Marissa Doyle. Henry Holt. $16.99.

     The Emerald Isle has importance in literature and legend far beyond its small size and long-impoverished people. From Jonathan Swift to William Butler Yeats, it has produced far more than its share of great writers and poets – and from the banshee (originally, in Irish, bean sídhe) to the aes sídhe or aos sí (sometimes wrongly called the sidhe), it has produced more than its share of supernatural beings. One standout among those is the leprechaun (spelled leipreachán in Irish), a solitary fairy rather than one preferring life in a group. Leprechauns spend most of their time mending shoes, and they enjoy practical jokes – and there is some of the latter interest, if not the former, in the latest Magic Tree House book, which has Jack and Annie travel to Ireland in 1862 to meet a literary figure who is more obscure than many of the people they have encountered during earlier adventures. Leprechaun in Late Winter is the third of four books in which the young travelers, at magician Merlin’s behest, are helping inspire creative people. There is less derring-do and a lower adventure component in these books than in many of the earlier Magic Tree House entries, and there is a certain sameness to the stories that may become tedious even for young readers (the books are intended for ages 7-12, but a more likely age range is 6-10). Still, Jack and Annie’s time with a rather dull young girl named Augusta is enlivened by their encounter with a leprechaun and, later, with a whole host of the fairies that Osborne calls Shee (which is how sí is pronounced). It is thanks to the fairies that Augusta develops an interest in preserving Irish heritage – and that sets her on the path that will eventually lead her, as Lady Augusta Gregory, to co-found the Abbey Theatre with Yeats and to write 40 plays of her own. There is no major “revelation” of Jack and Annie’s importance in this book – nothing comparable to Jack’s comment, “We put the smile on the Mona Lisa’s face, remember?” But there is some pleasant interaction here with Irish mythology.

     The accompanying Magic Tree House Research Guide discusses that mythology in greater depth and, as usual, makes a nice companion to the fictional volume for readers interested in learning a little more. This is the first Research Guide that does not bear a number: it is actually No. 21, but at this point those numbers are rather confusing, since they do not match the numbers of the books (the Research Guide series started long after the fictional one was well under way). Leprechauns and Irish Folklore is especially interesting for exploring some less-known supernatural creatures, such as clurichauns – relatives of leprechauns who like to dress up and, unlike their more famous cousins, hate to work. Pookas, dullahans (the Irish version of headless horsemen), grogochs, ballybogs and other fairies are here, along with suggestions on how to protect yourself against them. And there is some history, too – plus information on the people who helped preserve Irish heritage.

     There is magic in Ireland in Betraying Season as well, and this story too is set in the 19^th century, but this teen-oriented tale is a complications-of-love story as well as a complications-of-magic one. The central character is Penelope Leland, witch and twin sister of Persy – who, in Marissa Doyle’s previous book, Bewitching Season, proved to be the more adept of the two at magic. Penelope (Pen) sets out to prove herself in this companion novel, and along the way meets and falls in love with Niall Keating, to whom she feels she must reveal her magical abilities to be sure they will not scare him away: “Well, it’s just that…I’m a witch. …and I decided that I had to tell you now, even though as a rule witches never tell anyone, because last year my sister and her husband – well, before he was her husband – she was afraid he wouldn’t love her if he knew she was a witch, and I didn’t want to ever have the same problem. So I’m telling you now, because I – because I do love you.” But to that breathless confession, Niall reacts not with horror but with considerable equanimity, telling Pen that “Ireland is not like the rest of the world” when it comes to magic. It turns out that he should know: he has been courting Pen on orders from his mother, a sorceress with evil plans of her own. But then Niall really does fall in love with Pen, and now, instead of betraying her, he needs to betray his mother; and all the while, Pen’s less-potent magic is growing in strength. And thus the plot thickens, with never a shred of believability but with plenty of heartthrobs and heartaches: “Why did he still have to be so good-looking even when disheveled? Even worse, why did she still notice?” Of course, Pen and Niall do get together – in matrimony before anything else, this being the Victorian age – and Pen’s mother’s nefarious scheme is thwarted, and so on and so forth. This is all harmless fun that, if it does nothing to elucidate Irish lore, does little to make it any less interesting.

(+++) FAIRY-TALE VARIATIONS

The Ever Breath. By Julianna Baggott. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

The Giant-Slayer. By Iain Lawrence. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

     Fairy-tale novels for preteens are a dime a dozen these days – well, actually more expensive, but certainly as plentiful as the cliché indicates. Many of the stories are reasonably well written, but have little to recommend them other than the chance of a brief escape from the everyday world – without having to resort to videogames or Web surfing. These two books, though, try to go beyond standard fairy-tale models and involve young readers in some real-world thinking as well. The Ever Breath does this by combining a fairly straightforward fantasy world with the mystery of a father’s disappearance. The central characters, twin brother and sister Truman and Camille, are sent to stay with their grandmother after their dad just seems to vanish. They soon find her to be as strange and mysterious as the house in which she lives. The old woman tells the twins a story about an amber orb called the Ever Breath that maintains the real world in balance with one of imagination – within which great evil lurks. Not unexpectedly, Truman and Camille soon learn the truth of the apparently fanciful tale, finding themselves in the Breath World amid battles and deceit and all sorts of peculiar goings-on. It turns out that the Ever Breath has been stolen – and the twins are the key to saving both the Breath World and their own, hopefully while finding out what happened to their father and rescuing him into the bargain. As one character tells Camille, “We’ll have to find your brother, hope for some communication from your father, and, of course, hope that your father’s had luck locating the Ever Breath.” For of course the twins’ father’s disappearance is connected – must be connected – with the Breath World and the mysterious orb. “Nothing here was quite what it seemed to be,” writes Julianna Baggott, and of course that’s the whole point – nothing in either world is quite as it appears. And “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” comments one character – and if all this sounds a bit obvious and a big clichéd, that is in fact what it is. Some of the characters in The Ever Breath are lively and interesting – there’s a memorable mouse, for example – but a lot of the plot seems recycled from other fairy stories, despite the attempt to connect the everyday and fantasy worlds. And the ending is a bit of a cheat: it points directly toward an upcoming sequel, to be called The Ever Cure.

     The interconnection of real and fantasy worlds is handled much more adroitly in Iain Lawrence’s The Giant-Slayer. Indeed, it is almost too well done: the book can be genuinely depressing if young readers understand what it is about. That is its biggest flaw: it is set in 1955, and the primary real-world scourge it deals with is polio, a horrid and now-extinguished disease whose existence will be of little or no moment to most modern young readers. This book will have its full effect only for readers who understand not only what polio was but also just how awful its effects were. The fairy-tale title of the book belies its structure. Its protagonist is Laurie Valentine, a young girl whose best friend, Dickie, develops polio and is placed in an iron lung (again, readers must know what that is and feel its constrictions to get the full effect of Lawrence’s writing). Laurie visits Dickie in the hospital and meets two other polio-stricken kids, Carolyn and Chip, who have troubles of their own in addition to the disease. Dickie begs Laurie to tell all three of them a story, so she comes up with the tale of a giant named Collosso and a tiny boy named Jimmy – kept small by his father’s unfortunate wish – who is destined to be a giant-killer. The polio patients add to and comment on the story as Laurie spins it out, and there are parallels between the fairy tale and what goes on in the real world; it could even be argued that polio, the disease, is the real-world giant comparable to Collosso in the world of make-believe. Laurie’s story has many of the expected elements of fairy tale: good and evil, curses, Gypsies, charms, and so on. But they are used carefully, and when the characters diverge from their usual fairy-tale portrayal – as, for example, gnomes do in Laurie’s story – it is easy to believe that this results from the imagination of a young girl in the mid-1950s. The Giant-Slayer is ultimately more a period piece than a fairy tale – and is more effective as historical fiction than as pure make-believe. The polio story tends to overwhelm the fairy-tale elements – it certainly does so when Lawrence produces a frightening twist two-thirds of the way through – so readers looking for lighthearted escapism (perhaps lured by the book’s cover) will be disappointed. Those unfamiliar with the history behind the real-world aspects of the story will not get the book’s full effect, either. Thus, The Giant-Slayer is a book that will have very considerable appeal – but not to a very considerable number of the young people for whom it was written.

(++++) CHANGING SOUNDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC

Dvořák: Piano Quartets. Helena Suchárová-Weiser, piano; members of the Vlach Quartet Prague (Jana Vlachová, violin; Karel Stadtherr, viola; Mikael Ericsson, cello). Naxos. $8.99.

Gade: Sonatas Nos. 1-3 for Violin and Piano. Hasse Borup, violin; Heather Conner, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Ligeti: String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2; Andante and Allegretto. Parker Quartet (Daniel Chong and Karen Kim, violins; Jessica Bodner, viola; Kee-Hyun Kim, cello). Naxos. $8.99.

     The works on these three CDs, all of them nominally chamber music, exist in very different sound worlds – but all of them reflect, in their own ways, the compositional progress of the men who wrote them. The first Dvořák piano quartet, op. 23, is one of his earlier works, dating to 1875, and is strongly imbued with Czech melodies and inflections. The second of its three movements, an andantino with variations, is especially interesting, notably when the final variation moves from two-beat meter to three-beat (actually – and unusually – 6/16). Piano and strings are more or less equal partners in this work, with the cello lending particular weight to the music. The second quartet, op. 87, dates to 1889 and is significantly more emphatic and intense, with less overt nationalistic influence – although the finale has a characteristic Bohemian rhythm. There is drama and mystery here, especially in the first of the four movements, although the third movement – a lyrical and lovely waltz – lightens things considerably. The performers, all Czech by training, handle both the grand sweep and the small details of this music with ease and understanding, producing a CD that argues effectively for Dvořák’s importance as a composer of piano quartets, even though he wrote but two of them. And the players do a top-notch job of contrasting the earlier, somewhat more superficial work with the later and deeper one.

     The playing is less effective on the new CD of Gade’s Violin Sonatas, which gets a (+++) rating. These sonatas, like the Dvořák piano quartets, are essentially Romantic in sound; and like them, they span a large part of their composer’s lifetime. But here the progress from lighter work to deeper is by no means clear. Gade’s first sonata, op. 6, dates to 1842 (when the composer was only 25) and is dedicated to Clara Schumann – but, despite the dedicatee’s fame as a virtuoso, there is nothing grand about it. Its challenges lie in complexity rather than boldness, and are shared between the two instruments – making the piece a tad curious to hear, since its character is one of simplicity despite the difficulties involved in performing it. Hasse Borup and Heather Conner both play quite well, but neither is especially subtle here, and Borup in particular seems at times to overwhelm the music. The performers are more comfortable with the second sonata, op. 21, which dates to 1849 and is dedicated to Robert Schumann. This is Gade’s only violin sonata in a minor key (D minor), but the storms of the first movement are swept away in the D major finale, and the middle movement – which alternates slow and fast sections – has a fine sense of balance. As for the third sonata, op. 67, it dates to 1885, just five years before Gade’s death, but there is nothing autumnal about it: it has considerable substance in its four movements, but in many ways looks backward through its almost Mendelssohnian scherzo and the full-fledged Romanticism of its lovely and moving Romanze. Borup and Conner seem at times a trifle impatient with this work’s heart-on-its-sleeve emotionalism, but for the most part they do a fine job of exploring the music.

     By the time György Ligeti wrote his two string quartets, though, chamber-music language had changed considerably. Ligeti’s first quartet, called “Métamorphoses nocturnes,” dates to 1953-4 and shows a heavy sonic debt to Bartók. Although it has some interesting formal elements – it is in a single long movement that, however, can be heard as being in anywhere from four to eight sections – it is not especially distinctive music for its time; nor is it atypical of the rather formulaic musical approach that Ligeti took at this point in his career. By the same token, the Andante and Allegretto, from 1950, has little that is identifiable as Ligeti’s style in it – although, interestingly, it is the piece on this CD that is closest to the sound world of Dvořák and Gade, and is most readily accessible for listeners not already familiar with Ligeti’s work. Those who are familiar with the composer will be most interested in the second quartet (1968), which falls firmly into Ligeti’s “electronic” period even though it is written for traditional instruments. The five movements here bear such titles as “Allegro nervosa” and “Come un meccanismo di precision,” and the piece is, from start to finish, a study in contrasts: abrupt pizzicato vs. gentle, wavelike rhythms; near-complete stillness vs. near-frantic activity; and so on. This is a work that is more interesting than involving – there is something distancing about its insistence on contrasting elements of presentation. Certainly the Parker Quartet plays it, and the other pieces here, with attentiveness and considerable skill; but the performers do not really pull listeners into the sonic environment of these Ligeti works – they simply perform within Ligeti’s boundaries. Those interested in Ligeti’s changing approach to chamber music will find this CD quite valuable, but it gets a (+++) rating for the general listener.

(+++) THE FRENCH TOUCH

Rossini: Péchés de vieillesse, Volume 3—Volume V, “Album pour les enfants adolescents.” Alessandro Marangoni, piano. Naxos. $8.99.

Roussel: Symphony No. 1, “Le poème de la forêt”; Résurrection—Symphonic Prelude; Le marchand de sable qui passe—Incidental Music. Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Stéphane Denève. Naxos. $8.99.

     Gioachino Rossini’s name sounds as Italian as can be, and the composer was indeed Italian. But France and the French language played a huge role in his opera career – think only of Guillaume Tell, which brought that career to an end, and its immediate predecessor, Le comte Ory. Indeed, all of the last six Rossini operas were first performed in Paris. And after he summarily retired from opera composition in 1829, Rossini’s fate became ever more French, to the point that the variegated piano works of his final decade, collected as Péchés de vieillesse (“Sins of Old Age”), are all French, composed in Paris and Rossini’s villa at Passy. This is not to say that there is anything particularly French about the music itself, apart from the works’ titles. This music transcends national boundaries and shows Rossini in some of his most creative moods – and some of his most lighthearted. Alessandro Marangoni is a fine pianist who is recording all Rossini’s piano music for Naxos, but unfortunately, his one shortcoming is in the area of lightness and humor; and that is becoming an increasing source of disappointment as the Rossini series continues (the new release is the third). The fifth volume of Rossini’s Péchés de vieillesse, whose title translates as “Album for Adolescent Children,” is a companion to the sixth, “Album for Smart Children,” most of which has already been released in an earlier Marangoni recording. Here, the pianist does a lovely job with legato and warmth, as in “Thème naïf et variations, idem…” And he brings out the contrasts in “L’innocence italienne: La candeur française” effectively. But he makes “Valse lugubre” a little too serious and “Prélude convulsif” too intense. And the two food-related pieces in this album – “Ouf! Les petit pois” and “Un sauté” – must be said to lack…well…spice. Marangoni is proving to be a better player of these “sins” than an interpreter of them: his virtuosity is impressive, but his involvement in the music’s nuances is somewhat less than complete.

     Stéphane Denève, on the other hand, is thoroughly enmeshed in nuance in the work of Albert Roussel, to the point that he surprisingly obtains a rather French sound from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Indeed, nuance is much of what Denève must rely on in his latest Roussel CD, because a great deal of the music here is rather bland – sounding a bit, in some ways, like some of Delius. Unlike Rossini, Roussel wrote music with a strong French flavor, specifically the flavor of French Impressionism; and there is a certain Romantic naïveté to these works as well. Roussel’s Symphony No. 1 is a four-movement, four-season work that opens in winter and moves predictably through spring, summer and autumn, at the end of which it returns to its initial mood. There is much effective tone-painting here, and some of the brass touches are particularly nice, but the music as a whole sounds a great deal like much other Impressionist-era music (the symphony dates to 1904-6). Résurrection is even earlier (1903) and is supposed to be related to Tolstoy’s 1899 novel of the same name, which was controversial and much censored for its unceasing attack on society as no more than a means for the rich to oppress the poor. There is little of this theme in Roussel’s music, however; in fact, the work is rather pale. The 1908 music for the play Le marchand de sable qui passe (“The Sandman”), on the other hand, is not so much without color as it is monochromatic. It is not quite soporific, but it is languorous throughout, perhaps reflecting the theme of George Jean-Aubry’s play, but not being especially interesting to listen to from a strictly musical standpoint. Denève conducts all these works lovingly and with fine attention to detail, but this CD as a whole has a somewhat static feel to it, as if these early orchestral pieces by Roussel are firmly stuck in a time long past.

(++++) HAUNTS WITH SOMETHING EXTRA

A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts. By Ying Chang Compestine. Illustrations by Coleman Polhemus. Henry Holt. $16.99.

Demon Chick. By Marilyn Kaye. Henry Holt. $16.99.

     Had enough of the same old ghost-and-demon stories? Try these – they’re different. A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts is a most unusual compendium of ghost stories (some of which are far scarier than is the norm in books for preteens), Chinese history lessons – and recipes. Ying Chang Compestine, author of Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party, explains the longstanding importance of food in Chinese culture as well as the belief that people who die in certain ways or with unfinished business, and return as angry ghosts, can be appeased with offerings of food. She also tells a bit about Chinese numerology – the number eight is particularly lucky – and then offers eight stories in which food plays a greater or lesser part. Two involve appetizers, four include main courses, and two are about desserts. After each tale, Compestine provides a very good recipe for the dish that is central to (or at least mentioned in) the story. About the only thing wrong with that is that some of the stories are gruesome enough so that readers might not want to eat the food associated with them. These are not garden-variety frights: there is cannibalism, burial alive (of a young girl), gruesome murders of various kinds, innocent people executed, and more. A story that turns on the penchant of some Chinese for eating still-living animal flesh – in this case, monkey brains – is especially stomach-churning (and no, the recipe has nothing to do with that theme: it is for tofu with chili-garlic sauce, which plays a lesser role in the tale). The recipes are quite good – the jasmine almond cookies are a particular treat. And Compestine’s short post-story explanations of the historical and cultural background of the tales are fascinating, dealing with such subjects as school factories during the Cultural Revolution, organ harvesting, the board game mahjong, controversial treatments for mental illness, and more. A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts is a highly intriguing book – equally readable for chills, for some fascinating cultural and historical insights, and for recipes for delicious food. And the black-and-white illustrations by Coleman Polhemus are a fine touch, capturing the mood of each chapter and heightening the intensity of some of the tales’ more outré moments.

     Demon Chick is unusual, too – often hilariously so. It’s the simple story of the daughter of an aspiring presidential candidate – an ordinary enough teenage girl whose soul just happens to have been sold to the devil to further her mother’s ambitions. Hmm…not so simple. And Jessica Hunsucker is not about to take the arrangement lying down, especially when she finds out that the part of Hell to which she is consigned consists of dull suburban neighborhoods – and includes living with a demon named Brad (although he does seem like a nice enough guy). This setup leads to some often-hilarious dialogue, as when Jessica discovers that she and Brad both really like the movie Grease, which Brad is watching on the TV in their house: “I looked away and focused on the screen. ‘How did you get this? They don’t have video stores in Hell, do they?’ ‘I was surfing and just came across someone watching it on TV. And I fiddled with the controls and got their TV screen to fill our screen. So we don’t have to watch the other people watching our movie.’” And almost before you can figure out what all that means, something new happens – like finding out that “sexual orientation doesn’t count for anything down here,” and the suburban-style kitchen equipment works but is just messed-up enough to keep things uncomfortable, and Jessica’s mother has some grand evil plans that go well beyond what she has already done to her daughter. And that becomes a problem of its own: “‘Damn,’ I muttered in frustration. ‘Doesn’t anyone care? A maniac bitch is trying to take over the world, and they’re worried about global warming.’” Even when supposedly serious stuff is going on, Marilyn Kaye keeps the bright and offbeat writing flowing: “I was only human, sort of.” And the way she ties everything together by the end of the book is really neat. Teens who have had enough of traditional young-adult romances will find a lot to like in Demon Chick. It’s devilishly entertaining.