(+++) MULTIPLE MODERNS

Kamran Ince: Symphony No. 5 (“Galatasaray”); Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant; Requiem without Words; Before Infrared. Soloists, Turkish Ministry of Culture Choir and Bilkent Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kamran Ince. Naxos. $9.99.

David Gompper: Violin Concerto; Ikon; Flip; Spirals. Wolfgang David, violin; Peter Zazofsky, violin; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Emmanuel Siffert. Naxos. $9.99.

Lawrence Dillon: Violin Music. Danielle Belén, violin; David Fung, piano; Juan-Miguel Hernandez, viola; Stan Muncy, marimba. Naxos. $9.99.

Sebastian Currier: Piano Music. Laura Melton, piano. Naxos. $9.99.

Jefferson Friedman: String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3. Chiara String Quartet. New Amsterdam. $11.99.

Judith Lang Zaimont: String Quartet (“The Figure­”); Piano Trio No. 2 (“Zones”); Astral; Serenade. Harlem Quartet; Awadagin Pratt, piano. Navona. $16.99.

John Rutter: Gloria; Magnificat; Te Deum. Elizabeth Cragg, soprano; Tom Winpenny, organ; Choirs of St. Albans Cathedral and Ensemble DeChorum conducted by Andrew Lucas. Naxos. $9.99.

It Is Time: Music by David Shapiro, Kile Smith, Paul Fowler, Frank Havrøy, Erhard Karkoschka and Kristen Broberg. The Crossing conducted by Donald Nally. Navona. $16.99.

Awake: Music by Judd Greenstein, Sean Friar, Missy Mazzoli, Mark Dancigers, David Crowell and Patrick Burke. NOW Ensemble. New Amsterdam. $11.99.

Brian Eno: Music for Airports (Live). Bang on a Can All-Stars. Cantaloupe Music. $9.99.

Federico Mompou: Música Callada; Secreto, from Impresiones intimas. Jenny Lin, piano. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

     The proliferation of recordings of music by less-known modern composers is a vastly under-reported story amid all the media coverage of the supposed dearth of interest in classical music. To be sure, not all modern music that is supposedly classical sounds particularly “classical” to many listeners; some does not even sound like music by traditional definitions. But the fact that so many composers are now having a chance to be heard, and heard repeatedly – a rarity in concert halls, where even if a modern work is played once, it is often not heard again for many years, if then – indicates that classical music, however defined, is in better shape than many reports of its near-demise would indicate. Naxos continues to lead the way in producing top-quality CDs, very well performed, of modern works that are available nowhere else. And even with its recent price hike to the $10 range per disc, Naxos remains at the low-cost end of CD producers, making it possible for listeners interested in a bit of experimentation to undertake it without feeling they have to sink an unreasonable amount of money into works that they can hear in advance, at best, only in snippets through online excerpts. Naxos is bringing out works of all types. The new CD of music by Turkish composer Kamran Ince is orchestral and choral, and impressive on many levels. Ince’s Symphony No. 5 was written in 2005 for the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Turkey’s most successful football (soccer) club, Galatasaray, and this work is celebratory indeed, with soloists, chorus and large orchestra combining for an appropriately outgoing and rather raucous piece. Requiem without Words is at the opposite end of the musical spectrum: it mourns a 2003 terrorist bombing in Istanbul that indiscriminately killed Muslims, Christians and Jews. Ince’s range is apparent throughout this disc, which opens with the intense drive of Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant and concludes with the sonic smash of Before Infrared, a work that shows Ince’s ability to hurl sound in great gobs toward the audience.

     Naxos’ new David Gompper CD is also in the orchestral realm, but Gompper is a more constrained composer: there is a single basic technique that he employs in all the works heard here. Fortunately, it is a technique that makes much of the music quite interesting – a sort of free flow within careful organization. The main piece here, the Violin Concerto, dates to 2009 and is in the traditional three movements, with a cadenza in the second, moderately slow one (marked Andante) and a very quick conclusion. Ikon (2008) was written out of Gompper’s interest in old Russian icons, while Flip (1993) and Spirals (2007, with two violin soloists) are supposed to be reflective of Gompper’s interest in popular culture. Whether that is how the music sounds will depend on the listener, but certainly the echo effects, the modified classical forms and the attempts to portray or comment on a wide variety of experiences make these works interesting to hear, at least once in a while.

     The violin is also at the center of Naxos’ new CD of Lawrence Dillon’s music. Like Gompper, Dillon connects his works in some ways with classical models, but in Dillon’s case many of the connections are in titles (Bacchus Chaconne, 1991) rather than in musical content. The 2008 Violin Sonata, for example, does have three movements, as would be expected from traditional classical style, but the sonata is called “Motion” and the movements are labeled “Motion/Emotion,” “Emotion/Commotion” and “Commotion/Motion.” The other works here range from the lyrical to the slightly pointed (although never really sardonic). They are Mister Blister (2006), Façade (1983), Spring Passing (1997), The Voice (2008), and a piece called Fifteen Minutes (2006) that in fact runs about that long and contains such sections as “Runaway,” “Contained,” “Clubbed” and “Self Absorption.”

     The piano is front and center on the new Naxos CD of music by Sebastian Currier, and the playing by Laura Melton is very fine. Like Gompper and Dillon, Currier draws considerable inspiration from classical models, but is by no means slavishly devoted to them. Scarlatti Cadences (1996), for example, is inspired by that composer’s famous 18^th-century harpsichord sonatas but certainly does not sound like them. Currier’s 1988 Piano Sonata draws on Bach, Beethoven and even Hindemith, but again interprets (or manages) their influences loosely. Departures and Arrivals (2007) is something of a navel-gazing exercise, as Currier spends 20 minutes accepting, discarding and modifying various forms of composition. The most straightforwardly enjoyable work here is also the shortest, at four-and-a-half minutes: Brainstorm (1994), which sounds as you would expect from its title and includes a feeling of light satire and deviltry.

     Naxos is, of course, not the only label promoting new music; and some of the music, even when created using classical forms, really does not sound classical at all. Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 (1999 and 2005, respectively) are structured in fairly traditional three-movement form, but the movements’ labels and the overall arcs of the quartets are unusual. No. 3, for example, begins with a short “Introduction,” continues with a very extended “Act,” then concludes with a moderate-length “Epilogue/Lullaby.” The Chiara String Quartet plays the works passionately and well, but for some listeners, the more interesting part of the disc may be the two remixes of Friedman’s music created by the Baltimore-based experimental-music duo known as Matmos. Extending Friedman’s works in every possible way (rhythmically, sonically, harmonically, you name it), the remixes show how sound manipulation can take works that do not really fit comfortably within the traditional classical-music mold and turn them into something whose musical provenance is almost impossible to identify. Emphatically not for all tastes, the remixes show just how far experimentation – with classical or other music – can be taken.

     The quartet by Judith Lang Zaimont is experimental, too, but in a less extreme way. Filled with tempo and rhythm changes, the quartet goes through many moods and many attitudes in its two movements. Zaimont’s Piano Trio No. 2 is somewhat more conventional in structure, although not harmonically; and here the movements’ labels make a great deal of sense in showing the progress of the music from “Cold” to “Warm” to “Temperate.” The warmth is considerable in Astral, an interesting and very virtuosic work for solo viola, while Serenade has considerable intimacy and emotion despite the modernity of Zaimont’s compositional techniques.

     Modern composers do not work only in instrumental forms, of course. John Rutter’s Gloria has been around for quite a while by modern standards – it dates to 1974 – and it is an impressive work, celebratory and dramatic and altogether joyful. Rutter’s Te Deum (1988) is forthright and joyous as well, while his 1990 Magnificat (which contain a movement called “Of a Rose, a Lovely Rose” amid the Latin ones) comes across as genuinely festive. The new Naxos CD of these pieces has bright, attractive sound that complements the music quite well; the disc shows that even overtly religious music is being handled in some new and attractively surprising ways by some modern composers.

     Another vocal disc, called It Is Time, makes the composers secondary to what inspired them – in this case, German-language poetry by Romanian poet Paul Celan. To say that this is a highly rarefied offering is to state the obvious: it is hard to imagine the disc having widespread appeal, or being intended to. Celan is considered a major modern German-language poet, and his works are filled with dreamlike imagery that gives musicians wide scope for interpretation, so there is a fair amount of variety among the works on the CD (some of which are in German, some in English). But 68 minutes of Celan’s poetry set to music of varying intensity and varying levels of appeal will be at best a limited-interest item – nothing on the disc stands out for excellence of concept, although everything is performed tidily and with appropriate intensity.

     The CD called Awake is another example of a topic-focused rather than composer-focused release. Awake is actually the title of one piece here (by Patrick Burke), but the main attraction of the disc is the NOW Ensemble itself. It offers unusual instrumental combinations: the group comprises flute, clarinet, electric guitar, double bass and piano. The six works on the CD make use of the varying woodwind, string and percussion sounds to generally good effect, but none of the pieces lingers long in memory – at best, they are nicely constructed but largely forgettable works.

     Brian Eno’s Music for Airports is forgettable by design – Eno intends it to be played in an airport environment, where few people would be expected to pay much attention to it. It is, in fact, environmental music rather than anything that repays close listening, and 49 minutes of it is a bit much. Here as on the Awake CD, a significant part of the attraction lies in the instrumental combinations: the Bang on a Can All-Stars play cello, clarinets, guitar, percussion, piano, keyboards and bass. The live recording from 1998 is a good one, but there simply is not enough meat in Music for Airports to make the disc worthy of repeated hearings outside the context for which Eno composed his work in the first place.

     At something of an opposite extreme from Eno’s environmental music is Música Callada (“Silent Music”) by a composer who can barely be called modern: Federico Mompou was born in 1893. But Mompou, who was Catalan, lived a long life, dying as recently as 1987, and Música Callada is a late work, having been composed in four sections between 1959 and 1967. It is also a work that looks backward, not to the Romantic era but to French impressionism and the minimalism of Erik Satie. Quiet and reserved, it requires considerable nuance to play effectively, and receives just that from Jenny Lin. The sheer length of this CD (74 minutes, including the short Secreto from Mompou’s very early Impresiones intimas of 1911-14) creates either a calming effect or a wish that something more would happen – depending on the individual listener. Mompou may have been born 50 years or more before most of the other composers mentioned here, but like them, he had a highly personal compositional voice whose enjoyment, at least where Música Callada is concerned, is very much a matter of taste.

(++++) ALL-AGE ANIMAL ANTICS

Monkey & Elephant’s Worst Fight Ever! By Michael Townsend. Knopf. $15.99.

The Honeybee Man. By Lela Nargi. Illustrated by Kyrsten Brooker. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.

Animal Rescue Team #4: Show Time. By Sue Stauffacher. Illustrated by Priscilla Lamont. Knopf. $12.99.

Busy Elephants. By John Schindel. Photographs by Martin Harvey. Tricycle Press/Random House. $6.99.

The Poky Little Puppy. By Janette Sebring Lowrey. Illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Golden Books. $6.99.

Home for a Bunny. By Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Garth Williams. Golden Books. $6.99.

Baby Farm Animals. By Garth Williams. Golden Books. $6.99.

Baby’s First Book. By Garth Williams. Golden Books. $6.99.

     Animals of all kinds, all shapes, and all levels of realism (or nonrealism) show up in books for young readers of all ages – sometimes to help make a point, sometimes just for fun. Michael Townsend’s hilarious Monkey & Elephant’s Worst Fight Ever! is of the “make a point” book type, but kids ages 5-8 may miss the soft-pedaled lesson as they enjoy the hilarity of two best friends getting back at each other for an escalating series of real or imagined slights. Mutual fans of pro wrestling, Monkey and Elephant have always helped each other with their hobbies, including Monkey’s collection of pet rocks and Elephant’s of bottled smells. But when Monkey becomes offended at something Elephant does, he quickly goes from feeling sad to getting angry, and starts playing mean tricks that lead Elephant to do some mean things of his own. A bunny takeover of Monkey’s house, a face painted on Elephant’s rump, and other not-very-nice get-even tactics lead the other animals in the area to set Monkey and Elephant adrift in a small boat, with an order to cooperate and make up if they want to come home. How the two ex-friends become friends again, and how the misunderstanding at the heart of the mutual vendetta is straightened out, add up to a lesson learned in a telling and very humorous way. Townsend’s comic-book-like illustrations contribute to the fun of a thoroughly delightful story of silliness and friendship.

     The Honeybee Man, for roughly the same age group, features not only bees but also a very pleasant cat and dog. They are the animal companions of Fred, the apiarist of the book’s title, who charmingly inhales the scent of his rooftop beehives and contrasts it with the smell of the city all around him. Set in Brooklyn, New York, which might seem an odd place for beekeeping, the story has elements of reality (what the hives look like and how the bees live and work in them) mixed with ones of fantasy (Fred soaring along with the nectar-seeking bees in his imagination). Kyrsten Brooker illustrates both real and unreal elements charmingly, while Lela Nargi’s text manages to explain what beekeeping is all about without sounding pedantic in the least. The inside front and back covers show a series of illustrations of bees, beehives and flowers, while two pages at the back of the book provide additional, more in-depth information on what Fred and other apiarists do. The Honeybee Man is a lovely urban story – quite different from typical tales of the city – and at the same time an excellent basic science book about how bees live and how humans (some humans, anyway) interact with them.

     The Animal Rescue Team series, now in its fourth entry, is about animals in city life, too (small-city life, anyway), and it too combines real-world information with interesting made-up stories. Intended for slightly older readers, ages 8-10, Sue Stauffacher’s sequence focuses on Keisha Carter and her animal-rescuing family, interweaving animal-oriented elements with ones focused on human concerns. In Show Time, that means “squirrels are taking over the campus here at Mt. Mercy College,” as one character explains to the Carters to get the book started…while Keisha is getting ready for a jump-rope competition and is so nervous that she keeps messing up. Stauffacher tends to try a little too hard for heartwarming angles – here, Keisha is calmed down and helped in her practice by a man who is just learning to use his new prosthetic leg, and the main cheerleader is Grandma Alice in a tracksuit – but by and large, these books pleasantly combine human and animal elements. They are not hyper-realistic – Sarge, who lost his leg to an IED in Afghanistan, is 100% upbeat all the time – but there is enough realism to keep the characters likable and make it possible for young readers to relate to them. The squirrel solution (establishment of “the newly formed Mt. Mercy Squirrel-Feeding Club” to make sure the rodents stay away from the main part of the campus) is neatly intertwined with Keisha’s discovery of how much fun she can have jumping rope when she is not nervous about the competitive aspect of it. A good time is had by all, even the squirrels, and the back-of-book facts about squirrels heighten the educational component of the book to a pleasant degree.

     For the youngest children, education about animals comes through photos of real-world ones and stories about make-believe ones. The photos in the board book Busy Elephants show the huge animals eating, running, splashing, touching and more, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups. Very simple text (“Elephants meeting/Elephants greeting” on facing pages) explains in words what kids up to age three or four see in the pictures, providing interesting visuals and easy-to-understand words that combine to show an ordinary day in the life of some extraordinary animals.

     The animals in the new “Golden Baby” series are make-believe, but their adventures are extraordinary in their own ways – and are just right as narratives for kids of the same age range as those who will enjoy Busy Elephants. The first four “Golden Baby” books are classics that many parents and grandparents will likely remember from their own childhoods, all offered in smart new editions with soft, sturdy covers and board-book-strong inside pages. Janette Sebring Lowrey’s The Poky Little Puppy dates to 1942 and remains delightful, with the Gustav Tenggren illustrations of the five little puppies (including the one that is always late) as charming as ever. Tenggren’s pictures for Home for a Bunny are equally lovely, and if this 1956 work by Margaret Wise Brown is not nearly as well-known as her Goodnight Moon, it is a charmer nevertheless: the tale of a little bunny asking other animals about their homes while trying to find one for himself. And the two books written and illustrated by Garth Williams are delicious as well. Baby Farm Animals (1953) portrays all sorts of critters to be found on the farm, from ducklings to puppies to piglets, and shows their behavior with a mixture of realism and almost-human expressiveness. Baby’s First Book (1955) includes a real animal (a puppy) and a make-believe one (a teddy bear) among all the things that a baby might see around the house, from a cuckoo clock to a doll, mirror, ball and paintbox. All these “Golden Baby” books are ready, willing and able to entertain and enlighten a new generation in these new editions, and all their stories, of both animals and people, have stood the test of time very well indeed.

(++++) ECO-TIME

Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. By Alexis Madrigal. Da Capo. $27.50.

Teenie Greenies: Eco People on the Go!; The Little Composter. By Jan Gerardi. Random House. $6.99 each.

Chalk the Block. By the Editors of Klutz. Klutz. $12.99.

     Ever since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, spring has been bringing forth not only flowers but also books keyed to environmental matters (and printed on paper from trees that, hopefully, are harvested in a sustainable manner). One of the most interesting of this year’s crop is Powering the Dream, because Alexia Madrigal, a senior editor of The Atlantic, looks largely into the past rather than into some imagined cold-fusion-powered future in exploring what possibilities exist and have existed for some time in terms of green technology and energy – and therefore what we could learn from the past if we would only study it instead of attempting continuous reinvention as we move ahead. Madrigal’s book is partly depressing, so full is it of missed opportunities and failed experiments; but it is largely uplifting, because Madrigal seems to understand better than most writers on this topic that capitalism itself can be the great growth engine producing better and greener technology – rather than considering capitalist society the root of all evil and believing that the hyper-inefficiencies of government (which has never even embraced something as simple as telecommuting, because so many government managers want to see and physically be in control of workers) can somehow be harnessed to develop greener technology. Government money can, of course, be useful – and it is really money taken from people and companies anyway, as taxes, so plowing it back into innovation makes sense. But as Madrigal points out, historical efforts in green tech have generally bubbled up from the private sector rather than trickling down from the public one. Homemade windmills, geothermal pipelines (of which the oldest – in Boise, Idaho – dates to 1892 and remains in use), and especially solar cells come in for discussions that are pointed and often fascinating. Not everything is included, of course – it would have been interesting to hear Madrigal’s take on the external combustion engine, which powered cars built by Stanley (“Stanley Steamers”) from 1902 to 1924 before internal combustion eclipsed it. And not all barriers to widespread adoption of green technology are mentioned – the greatest, and the one least often discussed, being the worldwide population explosion and the huge increased energy demand that results because of more people being born, and because more countries are starting to develop middle-class lifestyles. Still, Madrigal’s willingness to consider the many green-tech attempts of the past, most of them failed but so many of them fascinating, is a refreshing change from the doomsday scenarios so common in alternative-energy writing. So is his understanding of the fact that we cannot simply wean the world from oil dependence – oil and its products are extremely efficient energy deliverers. What is needed is “environmentalism [that] is not nature, endangered species, or wilderness focused [but] is concerned, first and foremost, with humans” – and this too has existed in the past, Madrigal shows, but has fallen by the wayside today. He has no real solutions (as soon as companies turn to clean-energy projects, some interest group shows up to demand that the projects not be built where they would be practical – keeping solar projects out of deserts, for example); but his belief that solutions can be found, and that the past may hold the key to coming up with a better future, is salutary and most welcome.

     And if environmentalism begins at home, environmental awareness should also begin with children – the idea behind the Teenie Greenies series of board books. Teachy but not preachy, Eco People on the Go! and The Little Composter show children up to age four some ways in which they and their families can behave in an Earth-friendly manner. There is nothing political or dogmatic in either book, and the simple text and illustrations are just right for this age group. Eco People on the Go! simply shows a number of non-fossil-fuel methods of getting around: jogging, hiking, skating, etc. And for its two motor-vehicle examples, it shows people on a bus and sharing a car ride – both responsible ways of reducing fuel use. Every few pages, there is a flap for little hands to open; opening each one reveals the words of the book’s title and an additional illustration. The Little Composter is even cleverer. Here, Jan Gerardi (author and illustrator of both books) demonstrates in words and pictures just what compost is and how it works – at the very simplest, most basic level. The top of a flap shows a banana, for instance; lift the flap and there is the word “peel,” with a picture of the peel. Or lift the flap labeled “melon” and find the word and picture “rind.” One picture – with the flap cleverly opening downward, so it looks like a chute – shows a little boy tossing grass and leaves into the compost. Then smiling worms “do their thing,” and a couple of pages of simple instructions result in a very happy boy celebrating the growth of tomato plants. This is ecological awareness at its most basic and most attractive – a fine foundation for greater complexities to come.

     Chalk the Block isn’t exactly an eco-awareness book, except indirectly: it provides an alternative to the painted graffiti that mar so many areas, while still giving kids ages six and up a way to express themselves artistically outdoors. It also offers a level of fun that is too often missing from super-serious environmental tomes. Urging young people to “add humor to the neighborhood,” the book is packaged with four big colored chalk pieces (blue, orange, green and white) and a whole host of ideas of what to do with them. The really creative thing here is the suggestion to use any imperfections in everyday sidewalks as portions of works of art – a crack in the sidewalk becomes a crack in a hatching egg, for example, or a tightrope on which stick figures are balancing precariously. “Found objects” also work well with chalk drawings – a rock for the body of a spider with chalk-drawn legs and web strand, or two rocks as the eyes in a chalk-drawn face. Then there are ideas that are just out-and-out clever, such as coloring several bricks with yellow chalk and writing, in a contrasting color, “Yellow Brick Road – Coming Soon!” Puddles, planters, water pipes – all can be incorporated into chalk art, and the many illustrations here will likely inspire young artists to come up with many others of their own (and Klutz helpfully points out that any chalk can be used, not only the pieces provided with the book). As an ecologically aware amusement that does not permanently deface anything and will bring smiles to friends and passersby, Chalk the Block is all about fun – of which we should not lose sight as we celebrate Earth Day or any other day, no matter how serious the underlying issues.

(++++) DIFFICULT REALITIES

Pox: An American History. By Michael Willrich. Penguin. $27.95.

“What Will Happen to Me?” By Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz. Portraits by Howard Zehr. Good Books. $14.95.

     Anyone who thinks “Obamacare” is intrusive – and people of good will can disagree about this, and even about whether the “Obamacare” label is a fair one – could use a history lesson in really intrusive U.S. government healthcare. That is what Michael Willrich presents in Pox, and presents both so entertainingly (if that’s the right word) and so thoughtfully that this book ought to be required reading for all sides in the ongoing argument about the proper federal role in individual healthcare decisions. It is fair to say that all sides in the current debate would likely agree that the eradication of smallpox was a major public-health triumph, and that is what Willrich, an associate professor of history at Brandeis University, writes about here. But it is equally fair to say that 21^st-century opinions would splinter even more than they already have if today’s federal government tried to do anything remotely approaching what the government did in the early 20^th century. If the end justifies the means, the government did enormous public good – but if it does not, the harm was well-nigh irreparable, and resounds to the present day.

     The federal government was almost unimaginably smaller at the beginning of the 20^th century – the huge apparatus with which we are familiar today dates only to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time – and the notion of citizens’ rights was considerably less well defined: women could not yet vote, the “inferiority” of blacks was generally accepted, and the large immigrant population was looked down upon and frequently victimized. The U.S. was in some ways a more “tribal” nation then: Italians, Irish, Jews and other groups had their accepted “places” in society and rarely moved out of them (Irish policemen, for example). Furthermore, the Civil War was still very much a living memory – a fact of some importance in Willrich’s narrative, since a primary figure here is a passionate medical advocate of vaccination named Charles Poindexter Wertenbaker, who was born in 1860; and as was the case with “most Americans born before the Civil War, [his] first loyalties were to family, community, state, and God.” Wertenbaker became an expert in the diagnosis of smallpox, and became an advocate of the new smallpox vaccine in the 1890s, when he observed first-hand the effectiveness of the primitive vaccination system then in place – and the horrible effects of the disease on the unvaccinated. Furthermore, at this time in U.S. history, if “American jurists were certain about anything it was this: the states could take any action necessary to protect their citizens from the ‘present danger’ of a deadly infectious disease.” Thus, as smallpox spread and the efficacy of the vaccine seemed more and more apparent, Wertenbaker, as the federal government’s main point man implementing a universal-vaccination policy, became stronger and stronger in his advocacy of the vaccine, at one point insisting that the only people who should be permitted to neglect the “duty” of being vaccinated were those who had had smallpox already and “those who are dead.” People were vaccinated under duress, under threat, and sometimes only through threats and heavy-handed enforcement by police, Texas Rangers and the U.S. Cavalry. Predictably in a nation with a deep-seated suspicion, even at this time, of central control, Wertenbaker and the universal-vaccination policy became controversial, and resistance took shape in the form of an anti-vaccination movement. The unreliability of the smallpox vaccine and its occasionally severe side effects fed public worry and opposition, and the entire issue became so contentious that, eventually, a highly important Supreme Court case was needed to decide what the government could and could not do in the name of public health. This was Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, a 1905 decision that may well be cited when the “Obamacare” issue eventually reaches today’s Supreme Court. In his majority Jacobson opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan disagreed with Henning Jacobson’s assertion that it was “the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best.” Liberty in the United States is conditional liberty, Harlan wrote, because “there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.” Willrich’s account of this case is fascinating, although he tends to get into too much detail in relating the medical and societal issues throughout the book to the notion of the rise of the Progressive movement, even stating that “Harlan tellingly expressed [himself] in the political key words of progressivism.” This emphasis is not wrong, but it makes Pox unnecessarily diffuse and may make the sprawling book less appealing to some readers. Nevertheless, the decision that compulsory smallpox vaccination – even when mandated and carried out as heavy-handedly as it was in the U.S. at this time – was legitimate and served a constitutionally supportable public purpose, had immediate and far-reaching implications. For example, states seeking to justify their incursions into individual decision-making seized on it as justification whenever they could cite (or create) a public-health benefit for their laws. The decision was subsequently muddied and modified, but it is quite likely to be revisited sooner rather than later as our current arguments about individual vs. societal health-related rights wend their way through the legal system. Smallpox is gone. The societal issues raised by the method of its eradication are not – and will not likely be settled anytime soon.

     Nor are these by any means the only issues in which the legal system has to pick winners and losers. Sometimes the losers are the innocent – for example, the three million children who go to bed each night with a parent who is in prison or jail. “What Will Happen to Me?” (the quotation marks are part of the title) is a book of, as the authors put it, “restorative justice,” intended to balance the needs of “those who have offended, those who have been offended against, and their families.” Howard Zehr and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz devote most of the book to the faces and voices of children with incarcerated parents. Jalon: “When my mom was gone, I’d cry myself to sleep.” Jasmine: “It just made my head hurt, my brain hurt, my stomach hurt. It just got control of me.” Deedee: “I’ll probably have kids by the time [mama] gets out. Taking them to the jailhouse – that’s not where I want them to remember her from.” Taylor: “I want other kids to know that even though your parents are locked up, they’re not bad people. They just did something that they shouldn’t have done. And it really affects us, the kids. It really does.” Indeed it does, and it is impossible not to feel deeply for these children (some of them young adults) who have themselves done no wrong but are paying a high price for their parents’ misdeeds. Nevertheless, this book is too one-sided and simplistic to garner more than a (+++) rating, because it largely neglects the other innocents – the people victimized by the crimes of these kids’ parents. These children say nothing about that subject (or the authors have edited out their comments). Amnessia, for instance, says, “My grandma came to school and got us. She didn’t explain nothing. My dad went into prison not too much after that. That’s my stepdad. And then my auntie went in. They all went in on the same charges.” Which were what, exactly? We never find out. Would knowing what the parents did make the plight of these children any less? No – but it would help explain just how serious the parents’ crimes were, since (whatever they may have done) the parents damaged their kids and their victims. Indeed, their kids are themselves victims; but they are not the only ones, although that is what this book in effect implies. Zehr and Amstutz create a short but moving “for caregivers” section, but perhaps their greatest contribution is a five-page chapter called “Ten Questions Often Asked by Children Whose Parents Are in Prison.” These questions – from “Where is my mom or dad?” to “Is this my fault?” – are entirely reasonable, if heartbreaking, and the authors’ suggestions on answers are well considered. For example, regarding “Why is she or he in jail or prison?” they say, in part, “When a parent has done wrong, it is important that this wrongdoing is acknowledged. Children need to know that there are consequences when people do things that are against the law or harmful to others.” Other highly useful sections of “What Will Happen to Me?” deal with handling emotions (grief, loss, shame, etc.), staying in touch with incarcerated parents, and what to do when a parent is released and comes home. The book’s final section, “A Matter of Justice,” is a plea for a restorative rather than punitive system that will take into account what crime does to perpetrators, their families, and, yes, their victims. But it gives short shrift to victims’ rights – for example, it is fine to suggest a system in which we “acknowledge and repair the harm that has been done,” but how does a criminal repair long-lasting or permanent physical injury done to a victim, or the mental injury (such as a sense of never being safe again) created by a “simple” break-in or mugging? There is something noble in the attempt by Zehr and Amstutz to make it clear that children of criminals are additional victims of crime – but true restorative justice has to give the primary victims a great deal more than the authors here suggest.

(++++) JOURNEYS TO THE WILD WORLD

The Manatee Scientists: Saving Vulnerable Species. By Peter Lourie. Houghton Mifflin. $18.99.

The Secret Journeys of Jack London #1: The Wild. By Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon. Illustrated by Greg Ruth. Harper. $15.99.

Inside Out & Back Again. By Thanhha Lai. Harper. $15.99.

Purple Heart. By Patricia McCormick. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $8.99.

     One of the most interesting books in the always interesting series called Scientists in the Field, Peter Lourie’s The Manatee Scientists offers up-close-and-personal views of a genuinely strange animal that is both well studied and very little known: the manatee. This aquatic mammal, a distant relative of the elephant, has thick elephant-like skin (sometimes sparsely covered with hair) and only two limbs, which are generally tipped with nails (again, as in elephants). The limbs, toward the front of its ungainly body, propel the manatee through the water, usually at a slow pace (although the animals can swim quickly when they wish to) and usually with little regard for what is going on around or above them (manatees have few natural predators, although certain big cats, such as jaguars, are thought to hunt them from time to time). Because manatees are not so much fearless as fear-ignorant, and because their entirely aquatic life brings them into close proximity with humans using boats, collisions between manatees and human craft are common, with many manatees bearing scars and many others (at least in the past) having suffered fatal blows from propellers. Lourie not only studied manatees for this book but also photographed them, and the pictures are simply wonderful. There are three manatee species: West Indian (of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies), Amazonian and Antillean. The first type has been very extensively studied, and a great deal is known about it; it is also well protected by law and (increasingly) by custom in Florida, where it lives year-round. The other types, which live in more-remote locations and more-brackish water, are less well understood, although Lourie explain what is known about them and is able to show pictures of them as well. Lourie follows scientists who study manatees to remote and more-accessible locations alike, and discusses the way the marine mammals are regarded by natives of some of the areas where they live: “Some [West African] villagers believe the breath of the manatee can kill a person,” and a manatee hunter in the small village of N’Tutu knew a great deal “about their habitat use and their distribution in the area…[but] would never stop hunting [them].” Lourie concludes with a discussion of continuing controversies about manatees – for example, whether allowing people to swim with them puts a strain on them or helps them by giving people more knowledge of and respect for the animals. A thought-provoking, information-packed book, The Manatee Scientists reveals a great deal about a highly unusual creature – and, through its resource list, opens the door for interested readers to find out even more.

     A famous real-world adventurer and author, Jack London (real name: John Griffith Chaney) traveled from the South Pacific to the Klondike and wrote a considerable amount of fiction based on his wanderings (as well as a considerable amount of nonfiction in furtherance of the social causes in which he believed). London’s works have not all worn very well, but his life story has elements of the cinematic about it, and that is the basis of the new series, The Secret Journeys of Jack London. The idea is that London (1876-1916), in addition to the trips that he chronicled and on which he based his fiction, made others that were even more adventurous but that he could not or would not write about. The Wild, the first of these made-up adventures, is set in 1893, when 17-year-old London and his brother-in-law head for Alaska to join the gold rush (this is a variation on what really happened: London and his brother-in-law did indeed join the rush to the northern gold fields, but not until 1897). Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon tell a story in which the genuine roughness of the Klondike is made even more so by slavery, kidnapping and the supernatural. The creature from beyond here is the Wendigo, the malevolent Native American spirit that can inhabit humans and that is associated with wintry cold and cannibalism. Through chapters with titles ranging from “City of Hope and Greed” to “Unto the Hands of Beauty,” the authors follow Jack on an outward journey that – as usually happens in books for preteens and young teenagers, such as this one – is an inward journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge as well. The writing here is often self-conscious to the point of clunkiness: “He heard the wolf’s howl nearby but could not respond to the call of the wild. Not this time.” And the motivations tend to be clunky, too: “Simply being near the girl confused his thoughts. He wanted to build something, to hunt something, to defeat another man to win her affections.” An encounter with the Wendigo is inevitable, and a struggle with forces both internal and external equally so. There are other frightening events, too, although the prose is not always equal to describing them: “And now a little tremor of true fear was seeded in his heart.” The few illustrations, by Greg Ruth, are effectively atmospheric, but the book as a whole is rather tame, for all its attempts to horrify: “He fell from astride the shrinking corpse, reached out with his right hand, and cut a flap of bloody flesh and skin from the thing’s chest.” As a surface-level action/adventure novel, The Wild works well enough to earn a (+++) rating, but the tie-in to the real life of Jack London is a shaky one at best.

     Inside Out & Back Again, on the other hand, is a real-life story – the lightly fictionalized tale of author Thanhha Lai’s escape from Vietnam and relocation to Alabama. Intended for the same age range as The Wild, Lai’s debut novel is wild in a very different sense. Lai tells and dramatizes her own life through the story of 10-year-old Hà, who flees Saigon with her mother and three older brothers. Needing sponsorship to live in the United States, the family receives it from a car dealer whose interest is piqued because one brother, Quang, was studying to be a mechanic in Vietnam and is good at car repairs. A fairly straightforward adaptation-to-a-new-life and coming-of-age tale, the book gets a (+++) rating in large part because Lai tells it so interestingly – in free verse rather than prose. Thus, “Our Cowboy,” about the man who makes the family’s new life possible, reads, “Our sponsor/ looks just like/ an American should./ Tall and pig-bellied,/ black cowboy hat,/ tan cowboy boots,/ cigar smoking,/ teeth shining,/ red in face,/ golden in hair./ I love him/ immediately/ and imagine him/ to be good-hearted and loud/ and the owner of a horse.” Each poem bears a date (“Our Cowboy” is listed as “August 8”), and each advances the story a little bit. “Letter Home,” dated “August 25,” for example, begins, “As soon as we have an address/ Mother writes/ all the way to the North/ where Father’s brother/ anchors down the family line/ in their ancestral home.” And, as Hà learns English, “Spelling Rules” (dated September 30) begins, “Sometimes/ the spelling changes/ when adding an s./ Knife becomes knives.” Adaptation is hard; there are bullies at school; Hà shoulders responsibility for the family’s plight because she violated some superstitions back in Vietnam; but eventually, Hà does adapt, though with difficulty (“Ours is a silent/ Christmas Eve”). The final realization is: “Our lives/ will twist and twist,/ intermingling the old and the new/ until it doesn’t matter/ which is which.” Not a great revelation, perhaps, but certainly a very important one, especially in this context.

     Different war, different circumstances, but many similar issues: Patricia McCormick’s Purple Heart is about Iraq and a soldier named Matt Duffy, who wakes up brain-injured in a hospital to receive a Purple Heart and try to deal with a very disturbing memory of a small Iraqi boy named Ali, his friend, being shot in the chest. How? By whom? Under what circumstances? These questions become part of a puzzle: while Hà seeks to retain and absorb memories, Matt seeks to recapture and integrate them. Intended for an older group of readers, ages 12 and up, Purple Heart tackles some difficult political and moral issues, and McCormick does not feel obliged to give easy or pat answers. Matt returns to combat, seeking only to resume his life as a soldier, but finds himself with a whole batch of new worries, especially fear of not being able to shoot when he must – because he has a nagging suspicion that he had something to do with the boy’s death. McCormick writes well, but the plot of this (+++) book is a trifle too neatly poised to have the grittily realistic effect that is clearly intended. With elements of thriller interlaced with some from a war novel, Purple Heart needs to keep the reader guessing for its full effect; but that requires revealing only so much about what is going on, and not more – an approach that starts to seem a little manipulative after a while. Still, there is genuine feeling in the portrayal of Matt, and McCormick’s willingness to show how difficult questions of guilt and innocence are in wartime is admirable. “Matt was a fool. He’d thought he was a good guy, the kind of guy who handed out art supplies to little kids and played soccer with them. But it was his friendship with Ali that had gotten the boy killed. …[B]y befriending Ali, Matt had actually put the whole squad at risk.” There is no epiphany, and no strong pro-war or anti-war message, either. There is just a journey to a truly wild world, a world of pain and hurt and failed understanding, a world of abyssal differences between people more difficult to bridge than those between humans and animals.

(++++) MAKING A LISZT

Liszt: Années de Pèlerinage (complete). Louis Lortie, piano. Chandos. $18.99 (2 CDs).

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos. 1-6; Dante Symphonie; A la Chapelle Sixtine; Symphonic Poems—Les Préludes, Orpheus, Mazeppa, Hungaria; Rákoczy-Marsch for Orchestra; Rákoczy-Marsch (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 15) for Piano; Festmarsch zur Goethe-Jubiläumsfeier; Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. Budapest Symphony Orchestra conducted by András Kórodi (Rhapsodies); Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Hartmut Haenchen (Dante, Chapelle); Vienna Symphony conducted by Yuri Ahronovitch (Les Préludes); Ungarische Nationalphilharmonie conducted by János Ferencsik (Orpheus, Mazeppa, Hungaria, Tasso); Ungarische Nationalphilharmonie conducted by Gyula Németh (Rákoczy, Festmarsch); Jenö Jando, piano (Rákoczy/Rhapsody). Capriccio. $19.99 (4 CDs).

     It is a mistake to think of Franz Liszt as the greatest virtuoso pianist of the 19^th century – not because the characterization is wrong but because it is incomplete. To most listeners, and even to most of the public during his lifetime, Liszt was indeed the consummate virtuoso and consummate Romantic, dressing and looking the part of the intensely driven “poetic soul” and living a highly unconventional life in which he created and performed astonishingly virtuosic music – until, as he aged, he became more involved in religious matters and his compositional style became more transparent, significantly bleaker and so forward-looking that even today, many of his late works have a peculiar and very modern sound.

     It is in some of his less spectacular (although still spectacularly difficult) works that the true soul of Liszt the artist emerges – for example, in Années de Pèlerinage, a nearly three-hour pianistic odyssey with its origin in Album d’un Voyageur, written when the composer was in his mid-20s. Revisions over the next two decades led to the final version of the first two parts of Années de Pèlerinage, a cycle that Liszt himself said (in words referring to Album d’un Voyageur but even truer of the final work) was “written for the few rather than for the many.” So personal, so inward-looking are these works, yet so technically demanding, that it is easy to see why Liszt did not think of them as designed for a wide audience. Yet French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie clearly sees them as capable of reaching out: his remarkably well-knit performance of the complete cycle is filled with elegance, eloquence and nuance. The music soars and descends, speeds and slows, entrances and withdraws fluently under Lortie’s fingers, whether in the wistful homesickness of “Le mals du pays” or the highly dramatic tone poem of “Vallée d’Obermann,” both from the first year of the cycle. The emotional content of the three Petrarch Sonata movements of the second year is fully explored here, and the huge “Après une lecture du Dante” (“Dante Sonata”) that caps the year is fully explored both as sonata and as broad-ranging fantasy – its effect is dramatically overwhelming. The third year of pieces, written much later, when the composer was in his 60s, and in his very austere and difficult-to-hear late style, also comes across effectively in Lortie’s recording: this is neither easy nor lovable music, and it is deeply felt in a very different way from that of the earlier pieces in this sequence, but Lortie is as comfortable communicating the religious sentiments of several pieces as he is with the funeral march for Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. Chandos has accorded Lortie’s Années de Pèlerinage several distinctions, including pricing the two-CD set at the usual cost of a single CD and managing to get more than 80 minutes of music on each disc, even though 80 minutes is generally considered the outer limit of what a CD can accommodate. And the sound is bright, transparent and clear.

     Sonic quality is scarcely the main selling point for a new four-CD set of Liszt’s music: the value here is not only in the set’s very reasonable price but also in its revelation of yet other sides of Liszt beyond that of virtuoso pianist. Liszt was, after all, a considerable composer of orchestral works, including 13 symphonic poems. The Capriccio set re-releases recordings of many vintages – recording dates are not given, but the performances’ age may be judged by the fact that, for example, conductor János Ferencsik died in 1984. Everything here is workmanlike or better; Ferencsik and Hartmut Haenchen have a particularly strong grasp of the pieces they conduct. The set includes five of the symphonic poems as well as all six orchestral Hungarian Rhapsodies – which Liszt himself did not orchestrate, although he worked with Franz Doppler on five of them. The second CD, including the Dante Symphonie and A la Chapelle Sixtine, is musically the meatiest, although the Hungarian Rhapsodies have always been the biggest crowd pleasers for most audiences. The fourth CD includes the little-known Festmarsch zur Goethe-Jubiläumsfeier and an interesting contrast between the orchestral and piano works that are both known as Rákoczy-Marsch – the keyboard one fully justifying the usual vision of Liszt as pianist extraordinaire. Neither this set nor Lortie’s Années de Pèlerinage provides a full picture of Liszt the man and Liszt the composer, but taken together, the two go a long way toward showing why Liszt was such an extraordinarily important force in 19^th-century musical life – and, through the sheer weight of his personality and strength of his beliefs, in 19^th-century political life as well.

(++++) VOCALS AND STRINGS, COMMON AND UNCOMMON

Schubert: Winterreise. Konrad Jarnot, baritone; Alexander Schmalcz, piano. Oehms. $16.99.

The Vanishing Nordic Chorale: Music of Bach, Buxtehude, Charpentier, Crüger, Grieg, Hassler, Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Pachelbel, Pederson, Praetorius and Scheidt. Musik Ekklesia conducted by Philip Spray. Sono Luminus. $16.99.

Vita: Music of Monteverdi and Scelsi. Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Sarah Iancu and Matthieu Lejeune, cellos. Naïve. $16.99.

Brahms: Double Concerto; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto. Itzhak Perlman, violin; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Apex. $6.99.

Mendelssohn: Sonata for Viola and Piano; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Trio for Violin, Viola and Piano. Ana Chumachenco, violin; Hariolf Schlichtig, viola; Eduard Brunner, clarinet; Adrian Oetiker, piano. Tudor. $19.99.

Alessandro Rolla: Sonatas for Viola and Piano, Op. 3, Nos. 1 and 2; Duetto for Violin and Viola, Op. 18, No. 1; Sonata in C for Viola and Piano; Esercizios Nos. 1 and 2; Esercizio e Arpeggio. Jennifer Stumm, viola; Connie Shih, piano; Liza Ferschtman, violin. Naxos. $8.99.

     The admirable recording of Die Schöne Müllerin by Konrad Jarnot and Alexander Schmalcz now has its counterpart in an equally admirable – perhaps even better – disc of Winterreise. Written in 1827, four years after Schubert’s first song cycle on poems by Wilhelm Müller, “Winter Journey” is a darker work and a more mature one – not only in Schubert’s writing, which essentially gives the piano and voice equal weight in telling much of the story, but also in Müller’s poetry, which lacks the headiness of youthful exultation that appears early in Die Schöne Müllerin and is subsequently dashed. In Winterreise, all is bleak from start to finish – and it is precisely this bleakness at which Jarnot excels (his few weaknesses in the earlier recording were in the more exuberant songs). This is more a work of middle age, or at least maturity, than is the earlier cycle, which is clearly all about youth and young love (and loss). Schmalcz, whose contribution to the earlier recording was exemplary, comes fully into partnership here, as Schubert and the music demand, and Jarnot’s sensitive, nuanced singing blends beautifully with the piano to produce a heartfelt and heartbreaking performance of a work that, while well known, is understandably less popular with audiences than the brighter and more naïve story of the miller’s daughter. There are, however, some flaws in the production of this CD that undermine the excellence of the performance: there are no notes about the music included at all, and while the texts of all 24 songs are provided, they are offered only in German. Listeners deserve better.

     The curiously titled CD called The Vanishing Nordic Chorale combines vocal music that is quite well known (such as Bach’s Lobe den Herren) with some that is virtually unknown (Hassler’s Herzlich lieb) and some that is known only in certain circles (the traditional Swedish song Der mange skal komme, “Many Shall Come”). The objective here is to present chorale settings by a variety of northern European composers and perform them in Nordic Chorale tradition (although with American singers). The works are of widely varying quality and interest, and the arrangement of the CD is odd (for instance, there are three Nielsen pieces separated, between the second and third, by a Buxtehude setting). The interest of some of the music and the quality of the singing gain the disc a (+++) rating, but it is strictly a limited-interest disc that lacks cohesiveness or a clear reason to appeal to anyone other than those who simply love chorales.

     A similar oddity of arrangement appears on another (+++) CD, the very well played but programmatically odd cello disc called Vita. Here French cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, along with Sarah Iancu and Matthieu Lejeune, presents some music (much of it arranged for cello) by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), interlaced with works by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), whose music is separated from that of Monteverdi by more than the 300 years or so separating their lives. Scelsi generally wrote music based around a single pitch, altered by using microtonal oscillations and changes in timbre and dynamics. The relationship of this music to Monteverdi’s is far from apparent, and the reasons for interconnecting the composers are personal ones for Wieder-Atherton that, while intriguing, are not especially convincing from a strictly aural perspective. The CD is certainly well played, and the juxtaposition of very dissimilar composers is experimentally interesting, but this is really a specialty disc for fans of Wieder-Atherton who are interested in her arrangements of old music and her “take” on some unusual newer works.

     The cello came to the forefront neither in Monteverdi’s time (when it and its predecessors were primarily continuo instruments) nor in Scelsi’s, but in between, as for example in its pairing with the violin in Brahms’ large-scale and still-fascinating Double Concerto, which is heard in a (++++) live performance from 1997 on an exceptionally well-priced Apex CD. The grandeur and warmth of this concerto are fully in evidence in the partnership of Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, with neither of these superstars of strings insisting on overshadowing the other – and with Daniel Barenboim leading the Chicago Symphony with flair and understanding. The now-well-known work, which was quite innovative in its day, comes through with a wonderful combination of virtuosity and musicality. And so does Mendelssohn’s ultra-familiar Violin Concerto, here in a Perlman/Barenboim performance recorded live in 1993. This concerto has been famously described as easy for a virtuoso to play, but extremely difficult to play well, and this recording shows why: the concerto requires far more than getting the notes right – the performer most provide sweetness (but not too much), exuberance (but, again, not too much), and exceptional purity of tone, giving the work Classical-era size and balance with Romantic emotional sensibility. Perlman’s performance shows just why he is one of the world’s great violinists: he takes nothing for granted in this music and never gives it short shrift, performing it as if it is a newly discovered gem – with the result that it sounds like one.

     Other works by Mendelssohn are newly discovered gems, or will be for many listeners. A new (++++) Tudor chamber-music recording includes three of them – all wonderful and all very rarely performed. These are works by a very young Mendelssohn indeed: the Trio from 1820, when the composer was only 11, and the two sonatas from just a few years later (1823-24). Just as Mendelssohn’s String Symphonies, which date to this same time period, showed tremendous precocity and understanding of musical form – together with a remarkable gift for melody – so these early chamber works are well structured, tuneful and remarkably beautiful. Their formal design is not always as well-thought-out as the structure of Mendelssohn’s later works would be – the scherzo movement of the Trio is almost over before it begins, and the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata is far weightier than the other two – but the unfailing creativity, the sure understanding of the compass and special tonal attributes of the instruments, and the sheer pleasantry of the themes (including an extended theme-and-variations in the Viola Sonata) make for utterly delightful listening. And the performers here do an exemplary job of involving themselves in the music while avoiding overweighting it – they handle all the pieces with delicacy, fine balance and excellent instrumental interplay.

     Violists may be surprised to find out that Mendelssohn, at any age, wrote a viola sonata – many believe the instrument really came into its own for solo purposes only in the 20^th century. But anyone of that opinion, and anyone not expecting a sonata by Mendelssohn, may be even more surprised at an entire CD of still-earlier viola music – not arrangements, but works originally written for the instrument – by Alessandro Rolla (1757-1841). Rolla was a teacher of Paganini and performed with him in concert; but in addition to being a violinist (and conductor), he was a considerable virtuoso on the viola – an instrument that, it should be remembered, Paganini also favored (he commissioned Harold in Italy from Berlioz, then rejected it because there were too many sections in which the soloist stayed silent). Rolla’s viola works feature Classical-era poise and charm, as well as virtuoso demands in the faster movements and (in the case of the Duetto for Violin and Viola) a fine, idiomatic interplay of instruments. The three works called Esercizios are practice pieces as well as showpieces, somewhat in the manner of Paganini’s Caprices although not at the same level of difficulty. Jennifer Stumm is a wonderful advocate for this music, playing with a sure sense of rhythm, unfailingly warm and beautiful tone, and (where appropriate) a genuine sense of playfulness. None of these Rolla works can really be called “great” music, but this CD nevertheless fully merits its (++++) rating for its fine playing, its introduction of listeners to worthy and unfamiliar repertoire, and the overall pleasantness and skill of its presentation. Even non-violists will enjoy hearing it; violists may well want to track down the pieces and perform them.

(++++) STUFF TO DO – FOR MANY AGES

The Klutz Guide to the Galaxy. By Pat Murphy and the Scientists of Klutz Labs. Klutz. $19.99.

Clackers: Crocodile; Monkey. By Luana Rinaldo. Robin Corey Books. $5.99 each.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: A Counting Nursery Rhyme. By Salina Yoon. Robin Corey Books. $6.99.

Go, Dog. Go! Party Book. Random House. $6.99.

Go, Dog. Go! By P.D. Eastman. Random House. $8.99.

     There are books to read, and then there are books for more than reading. For older kids, ages eight and up, there is Klutz, which actually claims to create things for ages three to 103 (but why discriminate against 104-year-olds?). The Klutz Guide to the Galaxy would seem to be tailor-made for Klutz konstructions such as galactic maps and amusing aliens and parodies of Douglas Adams’ famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But in fact it is a pretty serious book, not counting the illustrations, which are Klutzily amusing. There really are star maps here, and there really is good, solid information on where Earth fits within the solar system, which fits within the galaxy, which fits within the universe, and so on (well, there’s no “and so on” beyond the universe, but you get the idea). There are also things to build here, and as usual with Klutz, pretty much everything needed for the building is built into the book itself. There’s a sundial, with all parts included except a pencil (Klutz assumes you can get one of those easily enough). There’s a night-sight flashlight, an object that not only has a rhyming name but also has genuine astronomical-observation value, since its dim red light makes it easy to see at nighttime – unlike white light, which interferes with night vision. Most intriguingly of all, there is a telescope – yes, a real, working one (albeit with hard plastic lenses rather than glass ones) that you assemble from the parts bound into the book, then use to look at heavenly bodies and other interesting stuff. Tabs in the book direct reader-participants to sections called “Sun Time,” “Tour the Moon,” “Explore the Planets,” “Steer by the Stars,” and “What’s Where When?” The last of these includes a “Lunatic Wheel” for figuring out when and where to see the moon, plus an age-on-other-planets page in which you look at your age in Earth years, then see how old you would be on other planets – based on the notion that a year always contains 52 weeks, but as a totality is the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit the sun (a 10-year-old would be three weeks old on Neptune and 16 years old on Venus, for example). The Klutzniks bury lots of legitimate science amid their Galactic Passport, Map of the Milky Way, Grand Tour of the Solar System postcard and other features – giving readers lots to do and lots to learn, all wrapped Klutzily together.

     For much younger kids, up to age three, the Clackers books offer participatory fun of a very different (and very age-appropriate) sort. These little 14-page books are a step beyond board books (or a step before them): the cardboard pages are attached to foam cores that make a not-too-loud clacking noise when you grab the books by their handles and shake them back and forth. The handles have holes in them that are a good size for small fingers, so babies and toddlers will quickly learn to “clack” the books on their own. And the stories are very simple and enjoyable: in Crocodile, the little croc looks for her mother, finding her by the waterfall, where the two splash together playfully; in Monkey, the title character swings through the trees, observing other animals (each given a sound effect that an adult can make for a baby) and eventually landing on a banana plant for lunch. Both parents and young children will find something to do here.

     They will find things to do in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe as well. Aimed at the same very young kids, Salina Yoon’s count-to-10 book has an unusually attractive layout that includes cutouts within pages and two foldouts for the numbers nine and 10. The number “three” gets three colorful horizontal stripes, for example, while the number “four” gets a cross shape (two intersecting lines) on the next page – that shape seen through a square cutout. Turn the page, and the rhyme is completed: “knock at the door,” with the three stripes now part of a door and the four lines part of a window. The whole book is filled with bright colors and clever illustrations, although parents may wonder why the rhymes have been altered from the traditional version (not only “knock at the door” instead of “open the door” but also “a good fat hen” instead of “a big fat hen,” although the picture certainly shows a very large hen indeed). This board book is very sturdy, and its overall scenario – which involves a circus – fits the counting rhyme well and gives Yoon plenty of chances to create attractive illustrations.

     Also for the youngest children – although not the very youngest ones, who would be tempted to put inappropriate things in their mouths – is the Go, Dog. Go! Party Book, which includes stickers, construction projects and games based on P.D. Eastman’s well-known 1961 dogs-on-the-move book, called simply Go, Dog. Go! Parents can help kids make the party hats and snack cups included here, and kids can use the stickers to decorate the “dog party” poster. There is also a game board, with 30 game cards to cut out – in fact, the entire book will be a mass of shredded paper when parents and kids are finished with it, but it (or rather its remnants) will still contain plenty of fun. Whether that will be more fun than Eastman’s original book will be a matter of opinion – and of age, since the book is intended for slightly older children (ages 5-8). The new “50^th-anniversary party edition” of Go, Dog. Go! – which has a foil-enhanced cover – shows why this popular book has remained such a favorite for decades: it builds carefully from the single word “dog” into a tale of dogs of all sizes, shapes and colors rushing to a big tree for a big party, and there is even a subplot about whether or not one dog likes another dog’s hat (on several occasions, no, but at the party at the end, yes). Simple but not too simple, Eastman’s book may not provide specific activities beyond reading itself; but reading alone is, after all, a wonderful activity, and even 21^st-century early readers will enjoy this book, which uses a mere 75 words to tell a colorful, amusing and thoroughly enjoyable story. And a timeless one.