(++++) THE LYRICAL PIANO

Brahms: Sonatas Nos. 1-3 for Violin and Piano. Arnaud Sussmann, violin; Orion Weiss, piano. Telos Music. $16.99.

American Lyricism: Piano Music by American Composers Christopher Theofanidis, Richard Danielpour, Monica Houghton, Justin Merritt and Pierre Jalbert. Christopher Atzinger, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

James Adler: Suite Moderne for Strings; Psalm for Michael; Six Little Variations on Noël Ancien; Twisted Tango; 3 Introspections; Kevin Cummines: Three Works for James Adler; Paul Turok: Clarinet Sonata; Seth Bedford: Three Postcards for Piano—Beneath the Moonlight Tower; Pike-Pine March. James Adler, piano; “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jason K. Fettig; Virginia Brewer, oboe; Eugene Moye, Jr., cello; Cain-Oscar Bergeron, flute; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; David Babich, tenor saxophone; Malcolm J. Merriweather, baritone. Albany Records. $16.99.

     There are many excellent recorded performances of Brahms’ three sonatas for violin and piano, works whose depth and emotional complexity make it possible to focus on and emphasize them in very different ways while still producing effective, affecting, meaningful and involving performances. Arnaud Sussmann and Orion Weiss look to the lyrical beauty of these works for inspiration more than to their drama, intensity and compositional complexity. The result is a warm, involving performance in which, even though some tempos are rather faster than usual, the overall sense of the music is one of expansiveness. Sonata No. 1 benefits to a particularly great degree from this treatment, its manifest beauties at the service of a level of intimate expressiveness that is wholly convincing. The finale’s melancholy, which eventually blends into a conclusion that straddles feelings of resignation and calm, comes across especially well in this very fine reading. Sonata No. 2 has more grace and arguably less depth than No. 1, its inventive second movement (part scherzo, part slow movement) coming across particularly effectively here; the conclusion of this finale, like that of No. 1, is something of an emotional question mark, lying between the pensive and the nostalgic. Sonata No. 3 is a touch less appealing in this performance than the others, but very beautifully played nevertheless. This is a sonata of high drama and almost violent emotions, but Sussmann and Weiss tend to downplay some of the more intensely dramatic elements in favor of an emphasis on the work’s passages of tenderness and contemplation. The result is an unusually lyrical approach to the sonata, an entirely legitimate way of looking at it if perhaps one not quite as satisfying as a rendition that more strongly embraces the divergent, strongly contrasted moods that Brahms displays here. The Telos Music CD’s sound is very fine, emphasizing the careful balance between the instruments and allowing the piano as much lyrical intensity as is heard in the violin.

     Lyricism pervades a new MSR Classics disc of recent piano music by American composers, as the CD’s title, American Lyricism, makes clear. There are five piano works here, two of them world première recordings, and like so much contemporary music – American and otherwise – they are something of a mixed bag. In a sense, the very names of the composers constitute a celebration of the inclusiveness that is so characteristic of the United States: Theofanidis, Danielpour, Houghton, Merritt, Jalbert. In another sense, the music itself is evidence of inclusion: styles, approaches and moods vary all over the place, and although the appellation “lyricism” is appropriate enough for some parts of some of the works, it is not descriptive of them as a whole. Christopher Atzinger approaches all these pieces with considerable understanding and finely balanced technique, whether playing the compressed four-movement Sonata for Piano (1998) by Monica Houghton (born 1954) or the slightly longer, more emotionally trenchant four-movement All Dreams Begin with the Horizon (2007) by Christopher Theofanidis (born 1967) – a sonata-like work whose first movement is interestingly designated “lucid, present.” The most extended piece here is The Enchanted Garden: Preludes, Book II (2009) by Richard Danielpour (born 1956), in which the composer skillfully weaves a variety of emotions into a suite-like seven-movement sequence that, like many suites, is somewhat disconnected thematically. The two shorter pieces on the CD are more consistent in expressiveness than the three longer ones: Chaconne: Mercy Endures (2009) by Justin Merritt (born 1975) and Toccata (2001) by Pierre Jalbert (born 1967). The Houghton and Merritt pieces are the world premières. The disc as a whole is the sum of not-very-strongly-related elements, resulting in a (+++) overall rating: the very fact that contemporary American music is so variegated makes it difficult to home in on any specific unifying factor among these works except for the fact that they are American in origin, and this makes the disc an interesting sampling of modern American piano compositions but not a particularly focused one.

     There is focus to the contemporary music on another lyricism-oriented (+++) CD, this one from Albany Records and featuring James Adler. The focus comes through Adler himself, who composed five of the eight works here and performs as pianist in seven of the eight. As a display disc for Adler, this is certainly a triumph, but for listeners not already enamored of him as composer and/or pianist, there is less to celebrate. His pianism is fine and sensitive, and his compositions are nicely put together and more than adequately reflective of the emotions they intend to convey. But there is nothing particularly inspirational here, nothing likely to stay with listeners long after the recording has played – except perhaps for admiration of the skill with which Adler creates music for a variety of different instruments and instrumental combinations. The disc opens with the five short movements of Suite Moderne for Strings (1982) as performed by “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra under Jason K. Fettig, and this modern update of the Baroque suite has a pleasantly old-fashioned sound. Adler’s other pieces here, even when tonal, are more firmly planted in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. They include Psalm for Michael (2003) for oboe, cello and piano; Six Little Variations on Noël Ancien (1986) for flute and piano; Twisted Tango (2012) for tenor saxophone and piano; and 3 Introspections (2014) for baritone, oboe and piano, using lyrics by David Cote. Adler knows when to make the piano more prominent in these works and when to let it subside into the background, and his lyrical propensities are pleasantly evident time and again, even if the music comes across as being well-crafted rather than genuinely inspired. The piano writing is particularly intriguing in Kevin Cummines’ Three Works for James Adler (2013-14: “Toccata,” “Torque” and “Termination”), and Adler handles the music with aplomb. Paul Turok’s Clarinet Sonata (2011) and two of Seth Bedford’s Three Postcards for Piano (2011-13) are, like Adler’s own music, well put together but ultimately not especially memorable. However, for fans of Adler as composer, pianist or both, this CD will provide some noteworthy insights into Adler’s thinking while creating music and his expressiveness when performing it.

(++++) FANTASIES OF VARYING SILLINESS

Big Bad Detective Agency. By Bruce Hale. Scholastic. $4.99.

What if You Had Animal Feet!? By Sandra Markle. Illustrated by Howard McWilliam. Scholastic. $4.99.

Batman: The Penguin’s Arctic Adventure. By Donald Lemke. Illustrated by Jeremy Roberts. HarperFestival. $3.99.

Batman: Winter Wasteland. By Donald Lemke. Pictures by Steven E. Gordon. Colors by Eric A. Gordon. Harper. $3.99.

     Bruce Hale has a thing about weird detectives, and so will anyone who stumbles upon Big Bad Detective Agency, which features Wolfgang the misunderstood and unfairly accused wolf and his enthusiastic helper, Ferkel the tiny pig, both of whom are on the trail of housebreakers in the kingdom of Fairylandia, which is ruled by a prince rather than a king for reasons best known to the rather choleric prince himself. Anyway, fans of Hale’s Chet Gecko series (Chet is the fourth-grade lizard detective at Emerson Hicky Elementary School) will welcome this new take on the detecting biz, which lacks some of Chet’s wisecracks and nemeses but makes up for it by standing the whole Three Little Pigs fairy-tale concept on its head (the little pigs here are hugely oversized porkers, and nasty ones, to boot). Big Bad Detective Agency features chapters “in which nobody is turned into a newt,” “in which the world’s ugliest granny comes to call,” and in which there are guest appearances by Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, and other favorites from, well, Fairylandia, where “giants accidentally stepped on houses, and you couldn’t get insurance to cover the damage. And don’t even get me started on the magic goose poop.” Hale’s typically skewed sense of humor is hard at work (or hard at play) here, with Wolfgang getting increasingly desperate to prove that he was not the one who trashed the pigs’ houses and should not therefore be thrown into a dungeon forevermore and fed, yuck, porridge. The twists and turns through which Wolfgang and his porky helper go in order to pursue and eventually track down the culprit are amusing in Hale’s typically ridiculous way, and the eventual solution – with everyone living more or less happily more or less after – is both satisfying and the recipe for a sequel. Which readers will no doubt eagerly await.

     Animals take on a different role, and for that matter so does fantasy, in a rather odd fact-based book called What if You Had Animal Feet!? Here, Sandra Markle and Howard McWilliam present things that make various animals’ feet special, then show cartoon kids with those feet doing things that they could do if they actually had those feet, which of course they don’t. A housefly’s feet have tiny claws for gripping, for example, so the fly can stick anywhere, even upside down – and a basketball-playing kid with fly feet “could run up the wall and across the ceiling to drop the ball through the hoop.” A green basilisk lizard’s back feet “have long toes fringed with skin,” which spreads out when the lizard slaps its foot on water – allowing the lizard to run on top of the water for at least 15 feet; so a kid with these feet “wouldn’t need a bridge to cross a stream.” A duck-billed platypus has feet with skin connecting the toes, which are “perfect swimming flippers,” plus (in the males) back feet with spur-like nails that can inject venom, so a kid with those feet would be “a fast-swimming superhero with a built-in weapon.” There are 11 creatures’ feet discussed in all – including, among  others, those of the aardvark, cheetah, and giant African millipede – and then matters get serious (and, to tell the truth, less interesting) with a discussion of human feet and how kids can take good care of them. Well, there probably had to be some sort of educational orientation here, beyond the descriptive material about animals and their appendages, and the concluding “keep your feet healthy” section is harmless enough and actually contains reasonable advice. The real attraction of the book, though, lies in the fanciful notion of kids with decidedly non-human feet – and in drawings that manage to make the use of such feet look like a tremendous amount of fun.

     The fun is more limited in two new (+++) books featuring the redoubtable comic-book superhero, Batman, who is nowadays shown with a craggier and generally angrier look than he used to have as he battles villains who seem far more incompetent than they really ought to be. Kids who are fans of the modern incarnation of Batman will briefly enjoy these books, which are super-simply written and instantly forgettable once read. The Penguin’s Arctic Adventure involves disappearing businessmen, courtesy of the human Penguin, who hatches a nefarious scheme (of course) that draws in both Batman and his equally craggy sidekick, Robin (whose mask appears to stay put by magic and who seems to have no eyeballs). The slight story pits B&R against “the evil sorceress Circe,” who really does do magic – which is countered when Batman gets some help from Zatanna, who is able to rescue the Dynamic Duo but cannot figure out what to do next (a rather sexist story twist, if anyone happens to notice), so she has to follow the guys’ lead. Winter Wasteland is a Level 2 book in the “I Can Read!” series (this level consists of “high-interest stories for developing readers”), and it includes not only Batman (without Robin) but also the Flash and Wonder Woman. The three team up to stop “a group of frosty felons” called the Ice Pack. The baddies, Captain Cold, Mr. Freeze, and Killer Frost, are using weapons to make everything, like, really cold and frozen, for no apparent reason other than mischief-making – but hey, after all, they are baddies, so the goodies get together and stop them. These Batman-based books are very thinly plotted and clearly intended only as very quick reads requiring little attention and no real involvement with the characters. As fantasies, they fall short, but for providing a modicum of short-term excitement to existing Batman fans, they do have a niche to fill.

(+++) MEMORIES OF A FORGOTTEN WAR

A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival during the Korean War. By Stanley Weintraub. Da Capo. $26.99.

     Christmas in wartime is always a little strange. Strangest of all was Christmas 1914, when British and German troops met in no man’s land in exactly the spirit of comity and good will that was notably absent during (and before and after) that devastating conflict – and then, when the day was done, immediately resumed trying to kill each other. It is testimony to the inherent peculiarities of the human mind, and perhaps to the special madness that is all-out war, that this World War I story, while extreme, is scarcely the only one relating to a holiday of peace and good will at a time and place dedicated to mass killing and destruction.

     Stanley Weintraub’s A Christmas Far from Home shows the importance – and, alas, the ultimate irrelevance – of the Christmas spirit in a different way, during a different war. The Korean conflict, which has never formally ended (it concluded with a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty), is sometimes considered a forgotten war in the United States, where the historical focus in recent decades has been more on World War II and Vietnam. But Weintraub has certainly not forgotten: he served in Korea, being awarded a Bronze Star there, and in this book – the latest of several Christmas-themed war books he has written, others being Silent Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas – he gives readers a “you are there” feeling for the Christmas season of 1950, five months after the war started.

     This is not a place or time that readers will be comfortable visiting. Weintraub tells the story largely through first-person accounts by troops, but at the same time he puts what happened in perspective through his own looks at tactical plans and the political strategies that largely shaped those plans. This means that the book is, on the one hand, the story of General Edward Almond’s X Corps and General Oliver Smith’s Marine division within it – and, on the other hand, the story of President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur at a time before the famous clash that led Truman to fire MacArthur in 1951. In A Christmas Far from Home, MacArthur is riding his success at Inchon with an eye toward his own political future, in the course of which he promises to have the troops home from Korea by Christmas 1950. MacArthur as seen here is arrogant, ego-driven and politically ambitious, scarcely the strong and determined military leader that his many defenders still make him out to be. And Truman comes across as weak-willed and passively accepting of MacArthur’s proclamations, strategy and tactics, even though MacArthur himself was only occasionally in Korea: he was stationed in Tokyo, and he relied for intelligence on such military “yes men” as Major General Edward “Ned” Almond, MacArthur’s Far East Command deputy.

     The result of these circumstances is chilling – and was literally chilling for troops forced to fight a brutal and relentless winter campaign in some of the most rugged mountains in Asia. MacArthur’s ego and his overreaching through his Christmas-themed promise made him oblivious to the brilliant strategy of Mao Zedong, who allowed the United Nations troops under MacArthur’s command (most of them American) to advance with little resistance to positions near the Yalu River. These troops of the X Corps – which was newly created as an east coast parallel to the Eighth Army, which was marching up Korea’s west coast – were unaware that the North Koreans and their Chinese helpers were massing their forces at the Manchurian border, secretly slipping them across the Yalu River by night in sub-zero temperatures. Soon the X Corps faced overwhelming numbers of highly disciplined and determined enemy troops – forcing a casualty-laden retreat through ice-clogged mountains where the very landscape, which included a 4,000-foot-deep abyss, seemed to turn against MacArthur’s forces. Eventually, led by the Marines in their midst, the surviving soldiers of X Corps did escape, with the ship waiting for them ironically weighing anchor on Christmas Eve. MacArthur’s strategy lay in ruins, and the foundation was laid for the eventual unresolvable conflict between him and Truman.

     The heroes here are the fighters on the ground, not most of their commanders and certainly not the politicians directing them (and Weintraub makes it clear that MacArthur here acted more like a politician than a commanding general). A Christmas Far from Home includes the same sorts of scenes of fear and courage, trial and triumph, death and survival that are central to Weintraub’s other military-history books and many others in the genre. Also like those other books, it is a celebration of the common soldier and a condemnation of the know-nothing (or know-little) command structure. Well-written, with a strong sense of place, by an author who, after all, himself served in the conflict, the book will be of most interest to other Korean War veterans and to those interested in military history for its own sake. It is decidedly a niche publication, but it is a very well-done one that contains some genuinely thoughtful reconsideration of the more-common notions about the determination and heroism of MacArthur and Truman – suggesting that the truly determined people, the true heroes, were the members of X Corps desperately trying to escape from overwhelming odds so that at least some of their number would indeed be out of Korea by Christmas.

(++++) PIANO DELIGHTS

Franz Hummel: Diabelli Variations. Angela Cholakian, piano. TYXart. $18.99.

Saint-Saëns: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5; Africa—Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. Gabriel Tacchino, piano; Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg conducted by Louis de Froment. Brilliant Classics. $11.99 (2 CDs).

Alkan: Sonatine in A minor, Op. 61; Capriccio alla soldatesca; Le tambour bat aux champs, esquisse; Trois Menuets, Op. 51; Une fusée, introduction et impromptu; Nocturnes Nos. 2 and 3, Op. 57. Costantino Mastroprimiano, piano. Brilliant Classics. $7.99.

Idil Biret Chamber Music Edition, Volume 1: Schumann—Piano Quintet; Symphonic Etudes. Idil Biret, piano; Borusan Quartet (Esen Kivrak and Olgu Kizilay, violins; Efdal Altun, viola; Çağ Erçağ, cello). IBA. $9.99.

Uncommon Ground: Contemporary Works for Trumpet with Horn, Trombone, Piano and Organ. Amy Schendel, piano; Gregory Hand, organ; Bernhard Scully, horn; Todd Schendel, trombone and euphonium; Réne Lecuona, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     As outrageously bold musical attempts go, the Diabelli Variations by Franz Hummel (born 1939) has to rank very close to the top. Training one’s sights on Beethoven, using the same theme that inspired Beethoven to create what may the greatest set of variations ever written – perhaps even, as Alfred Brendel said, the greatest piano work of all time – and creating one’s own work with the same number of variations (33) and the same extraordinary length (nearly an hour)….well, Hummel here set himself a task that even his Beethoven-era namesake, Johann Nepomuk Hummel (no relation), would never have attempted. The fact that today’s Hummel does not fall flat on his musical face with this work and the fact that it does not sink beneath the weight of arrogance are themselves remarkable. The fact that this Diabelli Variations is not at all imitative of Beethoven’s greater set, but is instead an exploration in its own right and something of a homage, is a huge tribute to Hummel’s  tastefulness, his musical understanding, and his own considerable abilities – as a fine pianist in his own right – in writing for piano. Angela Cholakian gives a simply splendid performance for her recording on the TYXart label, moving with ease from variation to variation, elegantly contrasting the speedy with the slow and the emotional with the staid, carrying the work as a whole from start to finish with a remarkable sense of its daring elements as well as its imitative ones. This is a tour de force performance of a really remarkable piece. Hummel keeps the music tonal and bases his approach to the rather trivial Diabelli waltz at the work’s core on the same foundation used by Beethoven. That is to say that these are not variations in which the basic theme is ever readily discernible, because Hummel, like Beethoven, takes the theme apart, using tiny bits of its smallest elements to build dozens of miniature tone poems that showcase aspects of the waltz’s rhythm, intervals, turns, harmonies and other building blocks. Hummel does not follow slavishly in Beethoven’s harmonic footsteps: Beethoven’s variations are harmonically daring for their time, but Hummel’s understandably go farther even as they pull back from contemporary extremes. Hummel’s strongest variations are the fast, complex ones: it is in the slower ones that he seems to become self-conscious about what he is evoking, so that the Adagio cantabile (variation 11), Molto rubato, passionato, parlando (variation 14), and Intermezzo nostalgico (variation 23) draw attention to themselves as too deliberately sweet. And the longest variation, Marcia funebre (variation 28), is disappointingly ordinary. On the other hand, the lovely little Ländler, marked Comodo, is a gem, several variations without tempo markings are intricately impressive, and the final variation – which leaps unapologetically and unashamedly into jazz, the only out-and-out anachronism here – is an absolute delight. Even listeners who come to Hummel’s Diabelli Variations predisposed – with reason – to be deeply skeptical, will likely find themselves captivated by this bold and fascinating foray into Beethovenian territory.

     There is much that is fascinating as well in Saint-Saëns five piano concertos, of which No. 2 is heard fairly often but the others are comparatively rarely encountered. A fine release of the full cycle by Brilliant Classics makes the relative neglect of most of these works much harder to understand. Gabriel Tacchino handles Saint-Saëns’ music highly idiomatically, with all its warmth, flourishes, runs, arpeggiation, cadenzas in unexpected places, and the other elements that set these concertos apart from others of their time. Admittedly, Concerto No. 1 is somewhat less than highly engaging for the soloist – the orchestral writing is actually more imaginative and daring than that for the piano, which is a major surprise in light of Saint-Saëns’ own keyboard virtuosity. But Tacchino gamely handles the many charms of his part, and when he does get a chance to cut loose, at the work’s very end, he does so in splendid style. In No. 2, Tacchino’s light touch is in the forefront, making the concerto into a fleet, dashing, elegantly glittering exercise in pianism filled with mischief, playfulness and light. No. 3 is a more conventional work, its most distinguished movement being the second, a lovely nocturne in which strings rather than the piano dominate. The Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg is not one of Europe’s best – the musicians play gamely and with considerable understanding, but their overall sound is rather thin, and the sections are not always as well-balanced as they could be. In this movement, though, Louis de Froment guides the players with particular skill, and the interplay between woodwind and piano is especially charming. Concerto No. 4, which is more strongly reminiscent of Liszt than the other concertos, has well-balanced elements of warmth and severity within a structure that broadly parallels that of Liszt’s Concerto No. 1. Saint-Saëns’ skillful reuse of the piece’s early themes late in the work is well brought out by Tacchino, who infuses the music with considerable severity and grandeur to balance its more-affectionate elements. Concerto No. 5, called the “Egyptian” because of where it was written and because it uses actual Egyptian and Arabian themes, is a particularly lyrical work and one with a distinct Oriental (not just Middle Eastern) cast. Here Tacchino emphasizes the music’s exoticism, the virtuosity of the final movement, and the overall delicacy of the concerto. As what amounts to an encore, the recording includes the fantasy for piano and orchestra called Africa, which also shows Saint-Saëns’ willing and able use of exotic elements in the context of a virtuoso display piece – and which caps a very fine, exceptionally well-priced offering of music whose manifest pleasures are deserving of much more frequent hearing.

     Speaking of music deserving of more-frequent performance, the piano works of Charles-Valentin Alkan emphatically fit that description. One reason they may not be played more often is simply how difficult they are. Yes, even in a century marked by the piano works of Liszt and Chopin, Alkan’s music stands out for its unique combination of drama, intensity, intricacy and delicacy. Much of it is extraordinarily complex and filled with echoes of Chopin (Alkan’s close friend) and prefigurings of later composers such as Mahler (in the military-like Le tambour bat aux champs). Alkan does not hesitate to demand differing techniques for different pieces – each of the Trois Menuets, for instance, represents a different social class and needs to be performed with more or less suavity and gentility. Nor does Alkan shrink from confounding expectations – for example, Nocturne No. 2 on a new Brilliant Classics CD seems to have the wrong pace for a nocturne, requiring performer and listener alike to consider the meaning of the title and take it as evocative of nocturnal atmosphere in general. Other Alkan titles must be taken with a grain or two of salt: the Sonatine, Op. 61, the major work played by Costantino Mastroprimiano, is an extended four-movement piece with clear debt to Beethoven and considerable complexity of thought and performance requirements throughout – scarcely a “little sonata” at all. Mastroprimiano, who specializes in historically informed performances of less-known 19^th-century piano repertoire, offers his Alkan recital on a very fine, beautifully restored 1865 Pleyel instrument with almost the full complement of a modern grand piano: it has 85 keys. It fits these specific works very well indeed: the Sonatine is from 1861, and all the other pieces date to 1859. Furthermore, Mastroprimiano has thoroughly explored Alkan’s relationship with Chopin, not only in terms of their personal relations but also regarding their piano methods and approaches – and the result is a knowing, unusually idiomatic performance of music whose sheer technical requirements can be off-putting for both performers and audience. Not so here: everything is very well-considered to make use of the formidable virtuosic elements of these pieces for the purpose of bringing a multitude of pleasures to listeners.

     The pleasures of Idil Biret’s pianism are displayed in an ever-increasing series of recordings on the IBA label: an Archive Edition, a Beethoven Edition and a Solo Edition – and now an Idil Biret Chamber Music Edition. Unlike most recordings in the other editions, the first volume here includes very recent performances, recorded in May 2014 and featuring a string quartet formed only in 2005. This new sequence is off to a very good start with a disc highlighting works by a composer who is one of Biret’s particular specialties: Schumann. The composer’s sole Piano Quintet was a climax of a year (1842) in which he devoted himself wholeheartedly to chamber music. Written not in haste but with great speed (it was sketched in five days and finished in two weeks), the quintet highlights the piano but rarely allows it to dominate the strings, although it is preeminent in the Scherzo. The work is tightly written and filled with interestingly contrasted themes, notably the rather sinister minor-key march that opens the slow movement and the contrasting major-key theme that provides some respite. The performance here is a strong one: there is some sense that the quartet members defer to Biret, but never unduly so, with the balance among the players generally finely honed and nicely cooperative. The quintet is coupled with Biret’s highly impressive performance of the Symphonic Etudes, a long work with a complex publishing history that makes the numbering of its sections complicated but does nothing to diminish its very considerable complexity and virtuosic demands. Biret handles these with apparent effortlessness, whether Schumann is looking for extended arpeggios, lightly traced passages, delicate triplet figures, counterpoint, expansiveness or sheer speed – these and more are the building blocks here, and Biret uses them to construct a highly impressive edifice of sound, technique and musicianship.

     The piano is just one of several accompaniment instruments on a trumpet-focused MSR Classics release featuring Amy Schendel and entitled Uncommon Ground. An anthology of contemporary compositions that are largely unrelated except for their use of the trumpet in a chamber-music context, this (+++) CD has the typical pluses and minuses of a recording of music that will be largely unfamiliar to listeners: there are some fine elements, some less-fine ones, and little reason for listeners to buy the disc unless they are fans of Schendel or are already familiar with one or more of the composers. Even in the latter case, they will not likely know these specific works, since five of the six are world première recordings – only the 1971 Sonate für Trompete in C und Orgel by Harald Genzmer (1909-2007) has been recorded before. The other works on this CD are Fanfare for Trumpet and Organ (2007) by Patrick Schulz (born 1975); French Suite by Joseph Blaha (born 1951); Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (2007) by Wayne Liu (born 1970); and two pieces by Jean-François Michel (born 1957) – Suite pour Trompette, Cor et Trombone (1994) and Eveils pour Trompette, Trombone et Piano (1993). Listener enjoyment here may turn less on the specific composers, none of whom has an especially distinctive style – although Blaha’s suite is an attractive updating of its Baroque model – than on the works’ varying sonorities. In particular, the trumpet and organ have complementary sounds that merge to fine effect in the pieces by Schulz and Genzmer, and Michel’s melding of trumpet, horn and trombone makes for some interesting mingling of brass in three short but nicely distinguished movements. Schendel and the other performers here do a uniformly fine job with the music, and the CD as a whole is pleasant to hear even if none of the works on it is really exceptional.

(++++) WORDS, MUSIC, PICTURES

Verdi: Requiem. Krassimira Stoyanova, soprano; Marina Prudenskaja, mezzo-soprano; Saimir Pirgu, tenor; Orlin Anastassov, bass; Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Mariss Jansons. BR Klassik, $37.99 (2 CDs); Arthaus Musik DVD, $29.99.

Carl Davis: Last Train to Tomorrow; Liberation—A Film Suite; National Songs. Children’s Opera Prague and Czech National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carl Davis. Carl Davis Collection. $24.99.

Granados: Goyescas—La Maja y el Ruiseñor; Canciones Amatorias; Falla: Siete Canciones Populares Españolas; Turina: Tres Arias. Danielle Talamantes, soprano; Henry Dehlinger, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Astor Piazzolla: Tango Nuevo—arrangements for violin and piano. Tomas Cotik, violin; Tao Lin, piano. Naxos. $9.99.

     An unusually well-integrated Verdi Requiem in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the performance by Mariss Jansons and the Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks provides a welcome opportunity to consider the pluses and minuses of music-only vs. music-and-video presentation. What Jansons has here is an absolutely first-rate chorus and orchestra, with a quartet of soloists who are all right but scarcely outstanding – but who, in the context of the work as a whole, sound just fine for their roles and help produce a highly impressive reading. Verdi’s Requiem is more theatrical, more operatic, than any other Requiem in the repertoire, notwithstanding the drama and sometimes even greater flair of Berlioz’. It is always tempting to overdo Verdi’s extremely dramatic Dies irae, which is not only tremendously impressive in itself but also repeated frequently as the work progresses. But Jansons eschews this approach, keeping the Dies irae and the rest of the Latin funeral rite in the perspective of the Requiem as a whole, giving considerable weight to the eight-part double fugue of the Sanctus and allowing the lovely Ingemisco to flow freely and with considerable beauty – although Saimir Pirgu’s voice does not seem ideally suited to the music. The beauties and terrors of the presentation get equal weight in this performance, with the choral sections exceptionally effective. As to the question of whether to choose the performance on CD or on DVD (with the visual version being, unusually, less expensive than the audio-only one): the decision depends on whether a listener believes the visuals of people singing and orchestral musicians playing add to the work’s effect or detract from it. This is music that is sublime as well as highly dramatic, and there is much to be said for simply listening to it in audio form – preferably in an otherwise quiet setting, without surrounding distractions. In that form, using the BR Klassik CD version, this Verdi Requiem is at its most impressive. Watching Jansons conduct and the soloists and chorus perform on the DVD tends to be distracting rather than enlightening – and it is always true that a recorded performance requires the viewer’s eye to go where the director wants it to go, which is different from attending a live concert and deciding, on one’s own, where to look at any given time. One can always close one’s eyes during the DVD, of course, but that undermines the purpose of having the work in a visual format. As operatic as Verdi’s Requiem is, it is not an opera, and it is at best arguable whether seeing formally dressed musicians and singers on a stage adds to or distracts from the impact of the performance. Jansons extracts very fine sound and very involving performances from orchestra and singers, but it is not really necessary to see how he does so in order to get the full effect of what he has done. The Arthaus Musik video is well done, and director Michael Beyer is sensitive to the music and tries not to make the visuals of this 2013 performance at the Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein overly distracting. But the video elements really add little here, and they do, to some extent, pull attention away from the excellence of the music.

     On the other hand, visuals would have helped the Carl Davis Collection release of Davis’ score for Last Train to Tomorrow, a song cycle written by children’s author Hiawyn Oram. The cycle tells the story of the Kindertransport, a rescue mission launched by the British government after Kristallnacht in 1938. Through the Kindertransport, some 10,000 children, ages 3-17, found refuge in Britain from the Nazi regime. They left by train from Vienna, Berlin, Prague and other cities in Europe, and very few saw their families again. Oram tells their story through songs including “Night of Breaking Glass,” “A Big Adventure,” “Goodbye to Our Treasures,” and “Sun Rising on Another World.” And the Children’s Opera Prague and Czech National Symphony Orchestra, under Davis’ direction, sing the texts with feeling – the songs are mostly in the words of the rescued children themselves, and the whole story is told from their perspective. As one of many, many remembrances of World War II and the Holocaust, the song cycle is effective enough – but Davis created the music not for the concert hall but for a film, and in the absence of the visual element, Last Train to Tomorrow comes across as just another well-meaning, well-written bit of accessible movie music, designed to support a story being told primarily in a visual medium. The inclusion of a complete libretto is a nice touch and a meaningful one, but it is no substitute for seeing what Davis created the music to enhance. Over a period of decades, some excellent composers have written some first-rate film works: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Korngold, Tiomkin and many others. Davis’ work is, by comparison, rather ordinary, however well-meaning and sincere. That applies as well to Liberation—A Film Suite, which is another work designed to explore and lend impact to the story of Nazi oppression and murder. The movements here bear titles such as “Annihilation,” “Massacre of Children,” “The Death Camps,” and “Free at Last: Liberation,” and Davis does his best to have the music make the titles’ meaning self-evident. Listeners strongly committed to any and all memorials of World War II and the depredations of the Nazi regime will surely find these accessible works to their liking. But for listeners in general, the music is insufficiently dramatic or moving – that is, insufficiently distinctive in storytelling – to mark the release as important. This (+++) CD also includes, as an encore or afterthought, La Marseillaise, Rule Britannia and Hatikvah, with those three national songs collectively underlining the purpose of the other music on the disc.

     Less portentous and considerably lighter are the songs performed by soprano Danielle Talamantes and pianist Henry Dehlinger on a new MSR Classics CD. Redolent of Spanish rhythms and strongly imbued with a sense of national identity, these works by Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Turina are by and large not especially substantive, but they are uniformly attractive in their handling both of the voice and of the piano. The most substantial piece is Turina’s Tres Arias, which sets texts by three different Spanish authors: Ángel de Saavedra, Duque de Rivas (1791-1865), a poet and playwright who became Prime Minister of Spain; José de Espronceda (1808-1842), a Romantic poet well-known for his radical politics; and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870), an influential poet from Turina’s birthplace, Seville. Turina makes Rivas’ heroic ballad Romance quite dramatic; offers gentle, wavelike rocking motion for Espronceda’s El pescador (“The Fisherman”); and in Bécquer’s Rima (“Rhyme”), picks up on the passionate intensity of the poem with a thrilling vocal line that Talamantes handles particularly well. The Granados and Falla songs are comparatively mild, although La Maja y el Ruiseñor from the opera Goyescas comes across with considerable feeling. What is interesting about all the music on this (++++) disc is that, even in the absence of any visuals whatsoever, it makes it easy to envision Spanish scenes and Spanish landscapes, so vividly do the composers capture the mood of the words and so feelingly do Talamantes and Dehlinger brings the songs to life. The CD may contain little of deep meaning, but it offers much of beauty and a great deal of impressionistic music that allows and encourages listeners to envision the Spanish landscapes and culture from which these texts and settings sprang.

     The performances are also first-rate on a new Naxos CD of the music of Argentine composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla – who is best known for The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and an apparently inexhaustible series of tangos, which Piazzolla rethought from their wrong-side-of-the-tracks roots and turned into concert-hall music ranging from the smooth to the energetic and incorporating the influences of jazz, rock and klezmer music. Piazzolla’s music has a strongly visual element: it clearly bespeaks its country of origin and often calls up images of the dance halls where tango originated and developed. The attractively edgy playing of Tomas Cotik and Tao Lin – with additional violinist Glenn Basham heard in two works – is the main attraction of Tango Nuevo, which is musically something of a hodgepodge. Of the dozen pieces here, seven were arranged by Cotik himself; other arrangers represented are Dmitriy Varelas and Sofia Gubaidulina. The disc begins and ends with high points: the fast and virtuosic La muerte del ángel and the bright Libertango, respectively. The material in between is more of a mixed bag. The four movements of Histoire du Tango neatly trace the dance’s evolution through the 20^th century; two excerpts from María de Buenos Aires are atmospheric stage accompaniments, the second (No. 3 in the score) being especially evocative; Melodía en la menor (Canto du Octubre) is particularly emotionally evocative, while Le Grand Tango is elegant and striking. The works, however, are not presented in any especially intelligible sequence, either chronologically or based on their moods or other factors. The remaining pieces here are also served up willy-nilly: Tanguano (No. 1 from Dos piezas breves), Milonga sin palabras, Aire de la zamba niña, and two pieces from Henry IV, an Italian film from 1984—Ave María (Tanti anni prima) and Oblivion, the latter being another milonga (a kind of cousin of the tango). Clearly some thought has gone into the arrangement of the disc – otherwise, why would Ave María appear between the two excerpts from María de Buenos Aires? But the overall effect of the CD is of a series of disconnected and rather random encores, with the result that the totality seems to go on longer than it actually does. The performances by Cotik (who is himself from Argentina) and Lin – by turns warm, sultry, bright, rhythmically intense and brilliantly ornamented – are what give this CD its (+++) rating. Fans of the violinist and/or pianist will be especially drawn to it, but those not already familiar with the performers or with Piazzolla’s music may find themselves a bit puzzled by the choice of pieces and their sequencing.

(+++) VISITS TO THE UNUSUAL

Simon Mayr: Il sogno di Partenope. Andrea Lauren Brown, Sara Hershkowitz, Caroline Adler, Florence Lousseau, Cornel Frey, Robert Sellier, Andreas Burkhart; Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Simon Mayr Chorus and Ensemble conducted by Franz Hauk. Naxos. $9.99.

Chant: Missa Latina. Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz and Ensemble Vox Gotica. Obsculta Music. $18.99.

Chant: Into the Light. Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz. Obsculta Music. $18.99.

Jake Schepps Quintet: Entwined—Music of Marc Mellits, Matt McBane, Matt Flinner and Gyan Riley. Fine Mighty Records. $12.99.

     Here are some fascinating discs that are of limited rather than general interest but that can be just the thing for people looking to explore some less-often-visited corners of musical repertoire. Il sogno di Partenope on Naxos is part of a rather strange work, described on the CD as a “cantata opera,” that was written for a specific occasion by Simon Mayr (1763-1845). The reason it is only part of the piece is that the first act of the two-act work has disappeared, so only the second act is presented in this world première recording. Dedicated to King Ferdinand l on his birthday, the 1817 piece has a libretto by Urbano Lampredi (1761-1838), well known in his time as a classicist and intellectual. Lampredi and Mayr here create an allegorical cantata performed with recitatives and arias that make it sound like an opera – in fact, Il sogno di Partenope is a kind of bridge between opera seria and 19^th-century operatic melodrama. Very little is obvious to modern listeners here. Even the title requires explanation: it refers to the dream (really a nightmare) of Parthenope, the tutelary goddess of Naples. The city’s Teatro San Carlos had been destroyed by fire on November 12-13, 1816, and Il sogno di Partenope was written for the opening of the rebuilt theater 11 months later. The missing first act of Mayr’s work focused on the fire and the character who caused it, Polyphlegon, an entirely imaginary mythological representation created to give the allegory a negative personage to balance the positive ones. Gods, muses, genii and evil spirits (the last group led by Polyphlegon) are involved in the cosmic cause at whose center is the theater, which is deemed the Temple of the Muses. After the first-act decline and destruction, the second act – the one recorded here – involves restoration of the theater by Olympic forces. The sad event vanishes like a bad dream – Mercury’s wand puts Parthenope to sleep – and a character known as Time Personified allows the rebuilt theater to shine anew. At the very end, Ferdinand is praised on his birthday for his beneficence and his gift to Naples of the rebuilt, shining theater. Il sogno di Partenope was intended to be performed only once, as was also the case with other works in its genre, and hearing it (or half of it) shorn of context is a distinctly odd experience. What we have here is part of a piece whose totality would have been strange if it were available. Il sogno di Partenope happens to be quite well sung by the seven soloists (three sopranos, mezzo-soprano, two tenors and bass) and nicely handled by chorus members and instrumental musicians alike. A quartet with chorus and the final chorus of jubilation are musically fairly interesting; the remaining sections, all with their accompanied recitatives, are straightforward within the allegorical context. There is good music here, if scarcely great music, and the whole curiosity that is Il sogno di Partenope shines a light on a long-neglected musical form. But it is one whose neglect is rather understandable: there is little on this CD that bears repeated hearings.

     Two new Obsculta Music CDs featuring the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz in Austria feature not allegory but straightforward and entirely orthodox religious material, much of it traditional and anonymous and all of it sung with great purity of tone and a strong sense of the singers’ involvement not only in the music but also in the sentiments and beliefs underlying it. Both discs are expressions of supreme and sublime faith, and both draw forth great beauty of sound from the Cistercian Monks – all to proclaim and highlight the Latin texts. Missa Latina is the more interesting of the two CDs: its primary offering is Ordo Missæ in Lingua Latina (Missa de Sacratissimo Corde Jesu), but it also contains the simple, straightforward and very moving Missa sine Nomine by Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474), sung by Ensemble Vox Gotica, plus – performed by the same group – the Dufay hymns Veni Creator Spiritus, Pange lingua and Ave, maria stella. Dufay, although writing in the same style as that of others of his time, found ways to exalt and entrance listeners while celebrating deeply held religious beliefs, and his music retains considerable power even after an astonishing 600 years. Into the Light has a more interesting arrangement of its music, although no settings here match Dufay’s. The disc is set up in six sections: Missa Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, Magnificat, Amor, Passio, Silentium, and Iubilatio, the last two of these being particularly heartfelt in sound and interestingly unfamiliar in content.  These are CDs for listeners deeply committed to a faith shared with the singers, or one of considerable similarity: the discs are more forms of heightened worship than they are performances, and one must share in their sincerity in order to get their full effect.

     At the opposite musical extreme, in many and various ways, is a CD released by Fine Mighty Records and called Jake Schepps Quintet: Entwined. It is not just that this disc is wholly secular, nor that it is as up-to-date as the Cistercian Monks’ recordings offer sound that is old and honored. The entire spirit of the music and performances here is as wild and extroverted as that of the Cistercian Monks is focused and inward-looking. The four pieces here are Flatiron by Marc Mellits, Drawn by Matt McBane, Migrations by Matt Flinner, and Stumble Smooth by Gyan Riley – all jazzlike titles that do indeed reflect one of the myriad of influences upon this combinatorial music. The performers are Jake Schepps on banjo, Flinner on mandolin, Enion Pelta-Tiller on violin, Ross Martin on guitar, and Eric Thorin on bass – plus Ryan Drickey on violin in Drawn and Grant Gordy on guitar in Flatiron. The music uses the many capabilities of a bluegrass ensemble to explore works whose provenance ranges from classical to jazz to pop to machine and electronic sounds and techniques. Flatiron is in eight movements that explore a wide range of emotions and a considerable number of rhythms, contrasting hectic sections with almost-lyrical ones. Drawn, a five-movement work, is an odd mixture of bluegrass instruments with modernistic compositional techniques. Migrations becomes modernistic, too, but it builds to that category by starting with an old-time bluegrass approach and working its way through a development connected loosely with traditional classical music. And Stumble Smooth, which functions as something of an encore, mixes multiple musical types in a piece designed to show off the instrumentalists’ capabilities. Only listeners enamored both of the bluegrass sound and of experimentation in the name of combining multiple musical forms will likely appreciate this CD fully. The prominence of banjo and mandolin can become rather grating over time, and the composers’ various attempts to combine musical approaches are scarcely seamless. Heard as an experimental disc that unites a particular performance sound with forms of music for which that sound is not traditionally thought to be suited, the CD is interesting, even intriguing, at least from time to time. But the individual works are not particularly distinguished, and none of the composers seems to have anything especially novel to say: all have written a form of display piece that explores performers’ abilities but has little communicative impact beyond an occasional “oh wow” moment resulting from a neat turn of phrase or unusually virtuosic bit of instrumental ostentation.

(++++) OF DOGS AND FROGS

Stick Dog. By Tom Watson. Harper. $12.99.

Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog. By Tom Watson. Harper. $12.99.

Stick Dog Chases a Pizza. By Tom Watson. Harper. $12.99.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog! By Lucille Colandro. Illustrated by Jared Lee. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

     The first two Stick Dog books by Tom Watson proudly proclaim themselves “a really GOOD story with kind of BAD drawings” and “another really GOOD story with kind of BAD drawings,” so Watson presumably achieved an epiphany of some sort with the third book, Stick Dog Chases a Pizza, since there is nothing apologetic on the cover. There is simply Stick Dog chasing a pizza as his four stick-dog friends look on. Of course, the book starts, like Stick Dog and Stick Dog Wants a Hot Dog, with Watson making it clear that he does not draw well, knows he does not draw well, does not wish to be criticized for not drawing well, and intends to tell a good story to anyone who will not complain that he does not draw well. Seems reasonable. All the books focus on Stick Dog, Karen (“a dachshund who loves potato chips”), Mutt (“a mutt”), Poo-Poo (“a poodle and not named after, you know, going to the bathroom”), and Stripes (“a Dalmatian who…lost her job after the Nacho Cheese Grande incident”). The three books all include adventures of a really mild but always amusing sort, all of which help flesh out the dogs’ personalities and are just generally a lot of fun. Watson’s narrative style helps a lot. In the first book, at one point, squirrel-hating Poo-Poo is disappointed that the other dogs do not have a giant rubber band that he could string between two trees to make a slingshot so “I could shoot my way up there to get that whisker-twitching menace to society.” In the second book, there is a hilarious picture of Stick Dog with a chainsaw, and there is a scene in which the dogs try to understand why a man is “mad at the carpet or something” and is “pounding it with his whole body” (a perfectly logical misinterpretation of exercise, human style). In the newest book, Stick Dog Chases a Pizza, there is a chapter called “The Ultra-Missimo-Pizza-Snatch-O-Meter,” and there is dissension in the ranks when Poo-Poo, Mutt and Karen all want to rescue a kitty but “Stripes definitely did not,” until Stripes decides the kitten is “the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen” and starts making funny faces at it. The rescue attempt – the kitten is inside a truck – leads to Karen’s explanation that “pyramids were around during caveman times. The cavemen would climb to the top of the pyramids to get away from the dinosaurs and Viking ships.” And yes, there is an illustration, and yes, it is kind of a bad drawing, and no, that does not matter at all. And yes, pizza does figure in the story, and yes, all the dogs eventually get some – get covered in pizza, in fact – and all the dogs “had splotches of pizza stains somewhere on them, but none of them cared.” All three Stick Dog adventures are pleasant, unassuming (as is Stick Dog himself), amusing, and, well, sticky – not only in terms of how the dogs are drawn but also in terms of the food-related messes they get into whenever possible. Individually or as a set of three, the Stick Dog books, intended for ages 8-12, are playful enough to be fun for anyone looking for lighthearted, easy-to-read fun in which the “kind of bad drawings” are a big part of the kind of charming whole.

     Jared Lee’s drawings for the “Old Lady” series by Lucille Colandro are more professionally rendered but scarcely more outrageous than Watson’s in the Stick Dog books. Colandro’s old lady – derived from the old song about the old lady who swallowed a fly (“perhaps she’ll die”) – seems to have an endless capacity for swallowing just about anything and everything, always without chewing and without causing the swallowed things much discomfort, and certainly without dying. She is at it again in There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog! This time she starts with a frog (“she was in a fog”), then swallows dirt “to hide the frog,” then seeds, then rain, then sunlight, then gloves, and then a rake – finally spitting out a colorful garden. The sequence is less interesting and less absurd than in some of the other Colandro books – it is fairly easy to see where things are going – and the fact that everything swallowed after the frog is inanimate reduces the silliness factor. The book therefore gets a (+++) rating – it will be enjoyable enough for kids who like others in the series, and the final “Happy Spring” wish will be welcome to families dealing with a harsh winter, but the accumulation of absurd objects swallowed and eventually combining into something wonderful does not quite work here. The illustrations are actually more fun than the narrative, with the old lady’s dog, watching with a smile or bemusement as various items get swallowed, being as much a star of the story as is the old lady herself. Hopefully the next book in the series – there are sure to be more – will meld words and pictures to somewhat better overall effect.

(+++) A BEAR RETHOUGHT

Paddington: The Junior Novel. Adapted by Jeanne Willis from the screenplay by Paul King. HarperFestival. $5.99.

Paddington: Meet Paddington. Adapted by Annie Auerbach from the screenplay by Paul King. Harper. $3.99.

Paddington: Paddington’s Adventures. Adapted by Annie Auerbach from the screenplay by Paul King. Harper. $3.99.

Paddington: Paddington in London. Adapted by Annie Auerbach and Mandy Archer from the screenplay by Paul King. HarperFestival. $3.99.

Paddington: Paddington’s World. Adapted by Annie Auerbach and Mandy Archer from the screenplay by Paul King. HarperFestival. $3.99.

     Michael Bond’s marvelous tales of Paddington, the bear from “darkest Peru” who shows up at London’s Paddington Station one day, lost and craving marmalade, originated more than half a century ago: A Bear Called Paddington was published in 1958. Clearly these sweet, innocent, mischievous and subtly destabilizing stories – the most recent of which, Love from Paddington, is brand new, as Bond continues chronicling the bear’s fortunes and misfortunes – are too laid-back and wry for the film industry. And so we have a Paddington movie that combines live action with the now-typical computer-generated bear who moves almost realistically and communicates almost believably while going through a series of trials and tribulations that are almost those created by Bond. But not quite. Movies for young people need clear-cut heroes and villains, the thinking goes, but alas, there are no such in the Paddington books, where just about everyone and just about everything is good-natured and where misunderstandings rather than outright evil drive the stories and provide the amusement. But what works for a bear called Paddington will simply not do for a movie called Paddington, and so there must be a scene in which the bear amusingly pursues a thief through the streets of London, and there must be a Cruella De Vil type who wants to take the stuffed bear and – horrors – stuff him. And exhibit him in a taxidermy showing, of all things! Well, this is all ridiculous and, to those who know and love Paddington, close to sacrilegious; but the idea is to bring in new fans of Paddington, ones who will presumably not sit still in their media-saturated environment for anything like warm, homespun tales featuring nice people and gentleness. Oh my, we simply cannot have anything like that in the 21^st century, now can we?

     Families that buy into the reconstituted Paddington and the film bearing his name have many available takeaways to continue their enjoyment at home. Paddington: The Junior Novel is for ages 8-12 and simply retells the film’s story, from Paddington’s arrival in London to his many adventures and his eventual realization – typical for films of a certain type – that what matters most is not gadding about but finding a home and family within which to settle down. Kids who want to re-live the film’s plot will find it all here, with eight pages of film scenes as illustrations.

    Families that want to use the film, rather than Bond’s books, to help young children learn to read, can pick up two movie-based Level 1 books in the “I Can Read!” series. This level, intended for kids ages 4-8, is designated as “simple sentences for eager new readers,” and the books accordingly tell their film-based stories – set against many scenes from the movie – in very simple terms. Meet Paddington is a first-person narrative in which Paddington tells about himself, the Brown family members whom he meets in London, and the movie’s evil character, Millicent. Paddington’s Adventures is a third-person narrative showing and describing film highlights. Also for kids in the same age range are two books with an even stronger visual orientation. Their writing is slightly more complex, so they are best for slightly more advanced readers, but there is nothing really difficult in either of them. Paddington in London shows Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, and other famous places, as well as close-ups of the movie’s characters, and has Paddington conclude that “London is a fascinating place.” Paddington’s World is slightly more unusual, mixing movie scenes with a few things for kids to do: get Paddington through a maze, create captions for Paddington’s scrapbook, do a word search for some things associated with Peru, and more. This is the only one of these five movie tie-in books that goes beyond describing the film’s plot and showing scenes from it; as such, it is the book most likely to give kids who enjoy the film something to do beyond simply recalling what they saw. All these books, though, are intended more as souvenirs than as serious reading – for that, kids should have any of Bond’s original Paddington books or any of the adaptations that have been made of them, not featuring movie scenes but offering wonderful illustrations by Peggy Fortnum or R.W. Alley (the latest Paddington book has pictures by both). The film may offer Paddington for the 21^st century, but the odds of it being fondly remembered 50-plus years from now are very small. Bond’s books, on the other hand, have made it past the half-century mark with their charm intact, and show every sign of continuing to enchant children for years to come – provided that parents make it clear that the movie called Paddington is by no means the first or last word on the stories of a bear called Paddington.

(++++) AMONG THE CONCERTOS

Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 1-5; Adagio in E, KV 261; Rondo in B, KV 269; Rondo in C, KV 273. Lena Neudauer, violin; Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern conducted by Bruno Weil. Hänssler Classic. $29.99 (2 CDs).

Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5; Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra; Meerstille und glückliche Fahrt. Yefim Bronfman, piano; Schweizer Kammerchor and Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by David Zinman. Brilliant Classics. $16.99 (3 CDs).

Schumann: Complete Symphonic Works, Volume III—Cello Concerto; Symphony No. 4 (revised version, 1851). Oren Shevlin, cello; WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln conducted by Heinz Holliger. Audite. $18.99.

François Devienne: Flute Concertos Nos. 1-4. Patrick Gallois, flute; Swedish Chamber Orchestra. Naxos. $9.99.

Alexander Raskatov: Piano Concerto, “Night Butterflies”; Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring. Tomoko Mukaiyama, piano; Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot. Seattle Symphony Media. $16.99.

Anders Koppel: Marimba Concertos Nos. 1-4; P.S. to a Concerto. Marianna Bednarska, marimba; Aalborg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henrik Vagn Christensen. Dacapo. $16.99 (SACD).

     Concertos, from their origin in the Baroque notion of concertino vs. ripieno to their multiple modern configurations, have long enthralled composers and audiences alike, and continue to do so – and the reasons become clear when listening to a wide variety of high-quality performances of music that spans multiple eras and styles. Mozart’s Violin Concertos are nowhere near the importance of the ones he wrote for piano, but they have a great deal of charm in and of themselves as well as a lot to tell listeners about Mozart’s own compositional development: Nos. 1 and 2 are at a very different level from Nos. 3-5, even though all the works were written within a comparatively short time span. Lena Neudauer’s handling of the pieces is distinguished by her determination to take each of them at its own face value, which means emphasizing the wild-but-decorous finale of No. 1, the carefree nature of No. 2, the lovely slow movement of No. 3, the effective structure and unusual pianissimo  conclusion of No. 4, and the multiple technical demands of the “Turkish” No. 5. It is not just Neudauer’s assured technique that makes these performances so attractive, nor is it only the fine accompaniment she receives from the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern under Bruno Weil – rather, it is the overall thoughtfulness of the performances that stands out, the notion that these works, whose virtuosic demands are comparatively modest by later standards, have a great deal to communicate that can best be put across through careful phrasing, attentiveness to rhythm and balance, and overall poise. In this Hänssler Classic  release, Neudauer brings all those elements – plus a clear enjoyment of the music – to her performances, which as a result are highly involving and emotionally satisfying. The three additional movements, two of them written as alternatives for the ones usually played in two of the concertos, serve as attractive encores and receive equally pleasant and pleasure-giving performances.

     The Beethoven Piano Concertos as performed by Yefim Bronfman, with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by David Zinman, provide evidence of just how far the concerto itself had progressed in the few years after Mozart’s death. Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 (the latter being the earlier written despite being the later published) owe a considerable debt to Mozart, but Beethoven’s canvas is already larger, his modulations more daring, his formal constraints fewer as he strains at the bounds of Classical form. Bronfman handles these concertos with a light touch, but not too light, as he and Zinman give the concertos sufficient weight to show that they draw distinctly on the past but are also the first steps toward a new musical future. As in the five violin concertos of Mozart, the five piano ones by Beethoven have a turning point midway through the sequence: Beethoven’s No. 3 is altogether grander, more extensive in thematic development and intensity than either earlier work, and proceeds with a level of seriousness that makes it seem longer and broader than it actually is (Concerto No. 1 lasts longer but does not feel as if it does). And Beethoven’s No. 4 is an astonishing piece, especially in its short and very unusual slow movement, where piano and orchestra are in the sort of stark opposition that would later characterize a great deal of Romantic music – and not only concertos. After this, the grandeur and epic scale of Concerto No. 5 justify its title “Emperor” even though Beethoven did not call it that and probably would not have approved of the royalist designation. Bronfman and Zinman make this work grand, stately and thoroughly convincing, a chance for soloist and orchestra to complement each other while also competing for the audience’s attention. Bronfman has an understated virtuosity that works very well in this music, conquering Beethoven’s demands without seeming to strain to do so and without drawing undue attention to himself as a performer rather than as a conduit for the composer’s intentions. This very well-played and very well-priced Brilliant Classics release also includes the Choral Fantasia, a work that not long ago was dismissed as a mere trifle but that has grown in stature as scholars and audiences alike have come to appreciate its unusual hybrid form (a touch of concerto, a bit of cantata, all wrapped up in symphonic trappings). The set then ends, a touch oddly, with Meerstille und glückliche Fahrt, Beethoven’s vocal setting of the same two Goethe poems that would later lead Mendelssohn to write his concert overture, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The absence of texts for this work and the Choral Fantasia is disappointing, but the words can be found readily enough online, and the uniformly high quality of the performances more than makes up for the words’ omission.

     By the time Schumann wrote his Cello Concerto in 1850, the post-Beethoven Romantic notion of concerto construction was in full flower, with the solo instrument set distinctly against the orchestra and often competing with it. Yet Schumann’s work, although it is a mainstay of concertos of this period, is less concerned with this opposition than are many other concertos of the time. Instead, Schumann emphasizes the warmth and beauty of tone of the solo cello, producing music of interactivity rather than a high degree of competitiveness. There is certainly considerable drama here – and Oren Shevlin adeptly brings it out – but there is a spirit of conversation, if not quite of full cooperation, underlying it all. Heinz Holliger’s direction of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln is well-paced and sensitive – Holliger is a first-rate oboist and has considerable understanding of how easily a solo instrument can be subsumed within orchestral sound, to the detriment of a work’s effectiveness, and he makes sure here to treat the cello as a partner in producing music of great beauty within a highly effective structure. This third CD in Audite’s survey of Schumann’s complete symphonic works also includes the 1851 version of Symphony No. 4 – the version that is usually heard (the decade-earlier version appeared on Volume I of this series). There has been, since the 19^th century, considerable argument over which version of the symphony better conveys Schumann’s thoughts: his widow, Clara, opted for the second, while his and her great friend and defender, Brahms, preferred the first. Hearing Holliger’s way with the two forms of the symphony is fascinating: he emphasizes the lighter elements of the early version and the stronger, more-intense ones of the late version, making the two sound almost like separate symphonies despite their nearly identical thematic and rhythmic progress. The fine orchestral playing here, and Holliger’s excellent sense of instrumental balance, prevent the second version from seeming turgid, as it does in some performances. Instead, what we get here is a weighty and effective reading that neatly balances Holliger’s handling of the earlier version and makes it pleasantly difficult to choose one over the other. It is a pleasure to have both of them played so well and sounding so good.

     The concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, and the cello concerto of Schumann, are standard-repertoire works, but other, less-known concertos can be just as revelatory of the concerto form and just as interesting to experience. The first Naxos volume of the flute concertos by François Devienne (1759-1803) is a case in point. These are not earthshaking, heaven-storming works, by any means; rather, they display the poise and elegance of Mozart’s time and are structurally reminiscent of Vivaldi in their neat three-movement arrangement, featuring brief slow movements that are essentially interludes between the opening and closing and that provide some aural respite without seeking to plumb any particular depths. The music here is elegant, rather detached, graceful and exceptionally pleasant to hear: the flute engages in many virtuoso techniques but never sounds strained or stressed, especially when played as well as Patrick Gallois does and with the light, finely balanced backup of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. None of these works can be considered “great” music, but all of them are exceedingly well-formed, all show a firm and fine understanding of concerto construction and of the abilities and limitations of the flute, and all – especially No. 4 – pull the listener along, seemingly effortlessly, into a sound world just a few steps beyond the fully cooperative one of the best chamber music.

     Modern concertos, on the other hand, make a whole set of new demands on performers and audiences alike. Alexander Raskatov (born 1953) has created one for piano that goes through a dozen short episodes in the course of half an hour. The work’s title, “Night Butterflies,” refers to its inspiration, which Raskatov says came from a childhood walk in the forest during which he was surrounded by butterflies. Commissioned by the Seattle Symphony, the work is performed on the orchestra’s own label by Tomoko Mukaiyama, who is perhaps better known as a performance artist than a pianist but who here shows she has plenty of technique to conquer Raskatov’s sound world. Ludovic Morlot conducts the music with a sure hand, and certainly Raskatov goes out of his way to produce as many types of miniature scenes as possible: there is a touch of drama here, a bit of tenderness there, an occasional startling exclamation, and some perhaps slightly overdone attempts to be poetic. The work is worth hearing despite its episodic nature and an overall feeling that it is more clever than genuinely thoughtful; the fine performance here certainly makes a strong case for it as a concerto in which piano and orchestra have very separate but closely connected roles to play. Interestingly paired with the concerto is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, the intent perhaps being to contrast Russian works of two different times – or perhaps, as is common in concert programming nowadays, to use a well-known piece to draw audiences’ attention to a little-known one. In any case, although the Seattle Symphony’s handling of the Stravinsky is not over-the-top excellent – Morlot lets the rhythms flag a bit from time to time, and the sheer intensity of the experience is somewhat muted – this is a very worthy performance that actually does complement Raskatov’s concerto in some interesting ways.

     Even more interesting is a Dacapo SACD of the four concertos for marimba by Anders Koppel (born 1947), who – like pianist Mukaiyama – is perhaps better known for his non-classical-music endeavors: he co-founded the rock group Savage Rose in 1967. But just as Mukaiyama shows herself to be a first-rate performer, at least in the sort of music that Raskatov writes, so Koppel shows himself quite adept in absorbing the basics of concerto form and using it to produce quite interesting works for a solo instrument that is rarely heard in this context. The four marimba concertos date to 1995, 2000, 2002 (revised 2003), and 2006, and the interesting little solo called P.S. to a Concerto was written in 1995 as a kind of appendix to the first concerto. The first, third (“Linzer”) and fourth (“In memory of things transient”) concertos use full orchestra; the second is for marimba and strings. The first concerto is the most classically balanced, with a dramatic first movement, “night music” second and bravura third. The second concerto, in one movement, is more modernistic and experimental, using the marimba to measure out the passage of time through a series of tick-tocks interrupted by occasional cadenzas and other flourishes. The third concerto requires a large orchestra and places particular demands on the brass, with the marimba sometimes needing to struggle to find its place in a sound world that seems on the verge of overwhelming it. The fourth concerto is almost program music, its title coming from an inscription that Koppel saw on an old stone in a Swedish forest. Yet this work, far from being despondent, is life-affirming, even including a bit of Mozart’s Rondo alla turca from his K. 331 piano sonata. The four concertos, and the encore-like P.S. to a Concerto, give listeners a chance not only to hear some interesting contemporary music in which an instrument not usually thought of as a concerto candidate is used to very good effect – but also to experience the ways in which the concerto concept has continued to intrigue composers right up to the present day, being adapted by them to new sounds, new instruments and new structural techniques.