(++++) BOARDING

Bathtime for Chickies. By Janee Trasler. HarperFestival. $8.99.

Five Little Monkeys Trick-or-Treat. By Eileen Christelow. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.

Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus. By James Dean. Harper. $6.99.

Pete the Cat’s Train Trip. By James Dean. Harper. $16.99.

     Janee Trasler’s adorable chickies are back for some sorely needed baths in their latest padded-board-book adventure, Bathtime for Chickies – which is so much fun that it can be a great way to get the youngest kids interested in taking their baths. The chickies keep finding new ways to get dirty, but repeatedly insist that they really do not need a bath – not even when Pig finds them covered with mud, Cow smells them after they have played with perfumes and cosmetics, and Sheep discovers them covered with pink and green cupcake frosting. Each time the “adult” animals try to get the chickies clean, the little ones start by protesting – for example, “No thanks, Pig. No bath today. We’d really rather stay and play.” Then the chickies give in, taking their bath and having so much fun that they refuse to get out – they want more toys, more bubbles, more of anything to prolong bath time. But then: “Once they’re clean and fluffy, too, what will little chickies  do?” Why, they will get dirty all over again, of course! How will Trasler end this merry-go-round of dirt and cleanliness? Clearly there is only one way out, and she takes it: the “grown-up” animals realize that getting dirty can be fun, and they join the chickies in a big muddy field. Playful and always amusing, Bathtime for Chickies shows yet again that Trasler’s chicks have something both funny and instructive to show and tell the youngest children.

     There is a lesson in Five Little Monkeys Trick-or-Treat – a 2013 release now available in board-book format – as well. Eileen Christelow’s characters decide that Halloween time gives them a perfect chance to play a great trick on their favorite babysitter, Lulu, who is there to take them trick-or-treating. The five little monkeys dress as a banana, an alien, a ghost, a goblin and a princess – but they realize that no one can really see who is inside which costume. That gives them a chance to exchange costumes with their friends: “Everyone will be SO confused!” And, indeed, this works for a while, as the alien costume is exchanged for a bunny costume and the alien monkey is replaced by an alien tiger. Then the banana switches with a TV set, and so on and so forth, until all five little monkeys have switched costumes and the original banana, alien, ghost, goblin and princess costumes are now being worn by five non-monkeys. But Lulu soon catches on, although she plays along for a while – until she takes the five NOT little monkeys home for a treat, leaving the now-differently-dressed monkeys kind of worried and wondering what to do. So the monkeys come home, but Mama says her costumes are in the house already – worrying the little monkeys even more. The joke has gone too far! But then, of course, everything is revealed, everyone has a good laugh, and everyone settles down to a suitably Halloween-y snack of “eyeballs and worm juice” (with recipes included at the back of the book).

     A different recurring character, Pete the Cat, is at the center of another new board book that is also based on an original from 2013. This is Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus. Here, James Dean uses the words of the familiar song, “The Wheels on the Bus,” as an excuse to show Pete, other cats and a dog riding in a school bus that does all the things the song describes: the horn beeps, the wipers swish, the signals blink, the motor zooms, and so on. Huge-eyed (and always rather sleepy-looking) Pete is a perfectly fine bus driver, not rattled at all even though the kitties on the bus say, “Come on, Pete!” all day long. The words of the song may not be quite what all parents remember, especially for the illustration in which the dog has taken over as bus driver while Pete sits atop the bus, electric guitar in his paws, and the cats are shouting “Let’s rock out!” (all day long). As an enjoyable variation on a well-known school-related song, Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus has plenty of enthusiasm and will be a nice way to introduce the youngest children to the sloe-eyed cat whose adventures always include some musical elements.

     For kids who enjoy Pete as a character and are just beyond the board-book stage, Pete the Cat’s Train Trip makes a good introduction to narrative stories. This is a “My First” book (“ideal for sharing with emergent readers”) in the I Can Read! series, which means the story is very simple, the sentences are short, and the print is large enough to be easily followed by kids just coming out of the pre-reader stage. What happens here is simply that Pete, his mom, and his brother, Bob, take the train to visit Pete’s grandmother – and Pete learns a bit about the train by following the conductor through the different cars and eventually meeting the engineer. Pete makes some new friends, who live in different towns and are getting off at different stops, and they all entertain each other in various ways – with Pete, inevitably, singing a song. Then the train reaches Pete’s stop, the family gets off, and everyone says hello to Pete’s grandma, to whom Pete gives a drawing of a caboose. Pete is not a particularly engaging character – there is not all that much personality to him – but he is likable enough, and kids who enjoy him in board-book form may like encountering him in an early-reader format as well.

(++++) MAKING SOMETHING OF IT

Dogfella: How an Abandoned Dog Named Bruno Turned This Mobster’s Life Around. By James Guiliani with Charlie Stella. Da Capo. $24.99.

     Stories of dogs that show people how to love are a dime a dozen. Stories showing animals bringing out the best in people are equally common. Stories of bad guys who reform for any one of a variety of reasons – some of which involve animals – are just as frequently told. Yet Dogfella, even though in many ways it differs only minimally from other “redemptive power of animals” books, is unusually effective and unusually affecting. Part of the reason is the authentic-sounding voice of former mob tough guy and longtime drug-and-alcohol addict James Guiliani – coauthor Charlie Stella,  who has written crime novels and short stories, presumably helped make sure that Guiliani sounded like himself, for which Stella deserves considerable credit. Another part of the reason the book works so well is that this is so quintessentially a New York story – Guiliani’s life is bound up with Brooklyn and Queens, those less-toney parts of the city known to most non-New Yorkers through the overstated portraits of them in many tough-guy and gangster films. And yet another part of the reason is simply that even though all the clichés of a bad-guy-makes-good story are here, along with all the tear-jerking tales of abused and damaged animals, Dogfella embraces those clichés wholeheartedly, never claiming to be more than the story of a really bad person turned into a really good one after discovering, much to his own surprise, that he loves animals and has a talent for taking care of them.

     All the harrowing scenes to be expected in this sort of book are here. Guiliani’s tie-ins to the mob, which keep him employed in construction work despite his addictions, also lead him to Manhattan after September 11, 2001, where he participates in the early work of pulling the city back from the terrorist murders of nearly 3,000 people. Later, Guiliani, by this time a committed animal rescuer, braves monstrous hardships after Superstorm Sandy hammers New York and destroys an uncounted number of animals’ lives along with so many lives and homes of human residents – the story of Guiliani’s attempt to rescue 17 surviving cats from a wrecked home owned by a hoarder is a particularly intense one. And Guiliani has just the sort of supporting cast that a film director would choose for a tale like this: his “Italian hottie” girlfriend, Lena Perrelli, whom he meets on the night he has finally hit bottom and is on the verge of committing suicide, and whose lifelong love of animals eventually proves catching; Dr. Salvatore Pernice, a too-good-to-be-true veterinarian who repeatedly refuses payment for highly expensive treatments and who not only heals the animals Guiliani and Lena rescue but also boards them when the rescuers’ home becomes overstuffed with them; and Bruno, a horribly abused shih tzu left to die outside the office of a disgustingly uncaring veterinarian (the polar opposite of Dr. Pernice), a seven-pound fluffball with a crooked jaw that set improperly after someone broke it, a cancer-riddled little dog whose eventual death goes beyond the heartbreaking into the heartrending while at the same time starting Guiliani on what would eventually become his caring-for-animals calling.

     Despite the cinematic perfection of the people in these typecast roles, what makes Dogfella so remarkable is that the story is true: there really is a James Guiliani, really is a Lena Perrelli, really is a Dr. Salvatore Pernice, and the events told in this book really did happen. If they are streamlined or whitewashed in some ways, as in a few details of the time Guiliani spent as a mobster and the two years he was in prison, or if they are overstated in other respects, it scarcely matters. Guiliani’s voice – filled with street-tough talk and plenty of four-letter words – seems highly realistic and very much part of New York. Indeed, the improbability of his story makes it seem all the more genuine, occurring as it does in a city that prides itself on being a place where anything can happen and usually does. To call Dogfella uplifting may be accurate, but in certain ways it misses the point. Yes, the book shows there can be good in bad people; yes, it affirms the extent to which animals’ unselfishness makes them in some ways better and purer than humans, enabling us to reach for our own better nature; yes, it shows for the umpteenth time how man’s inhumanity to man is scarcely a surprise in light of man’s inhumanity to animals. But there is more to Dogfella than this. What Guiliani manages to do here is something truly special. He asserts in the book that “animals are voiceless” and that, for that reason, humans must pay attention to and care for them even though they cannot tell us what they need, what they hope for, what matters to them. But in this Guiliani is wrong – for the core of the book, and its ultimate success and meaningfulness, lie in the fact that animals do have a voice. It is James Guiliani’s.

(+++) SOMEWHAT SWEET SERIES

Backyard Witch 1: Sadie’s Story. By Christine Heppermann and Ron Koertge. Illustrated by Deborah Marcero. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.

My Weirdest School #2: Ms. Cuddy Is Nutty! By Dan Gutman. Pictures by Jim Paillot. Harper. $4.99.

Alien in My Pocket 5: Ohm vs. Amp. By Nate Ball. Illustrated by Macky Pamintuan. Harper. $4.99.

Amelia Bedelia 7: Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail. By Herman Parish. Pictures by Lynne Avril. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $4.99.

     Simple, easy-to-read books strung into a sequence can be enjoyable pastimes for young readers, roughly ages 6-10, who are willing to take some time – but not too much – away from their video-saturated, fast-paced lives. These series essentially tell the same story again and again, with relatively minor variations from book to book, making them easy to follow and mentally unchallenging – but very enjoyable as periodic pastimes. The new Backyard Witch series by Christine Heppermann and Ron Koertge, for example, starts from the familiar premises that magic is all around if you just look for it, and that when you are feeling down, a little bit of magic can go a long way toward perking you up. Sadie’s Story opens with nine-year-old Sadie being upset because her two best friends, Maya and Jess, are taking a four-day trip together without her. Right after they leave, Sadie meets a pleasant witch in the back yard and is soon having modest adventures while avoiding the always-oblivious parents who are typical in stories like this (Sadie’s dad has taken the summer off from work to write a book, and is rather scatterbrained; her mom is a yoga instructor who spends most of her time upside-down against the wall, so “Sadie was accustomed to having conversations with her mother’s feet”). The fun here comes from Sadie’s insistence that the witch must adhere to fairy-tale conventions, which the witch does not. For instance, Sadie says the witch, Ms. M, must have lived in the forest before – but the witch says she lived in Milwaukee. Sadie says the witch’s friend must have lived in a gingerbread cottage, but the witch says, “Hardly. …Milwaukee gets cold in the winter.” And when Sadie sees the witch on the roof with a broom and assumes Ms. M has flown there, Ms. M explains that she went up a ladder and took the broom along to clean the gutters. There are some actual spells here, including (of course) ones that go awry, but the book’s point is really that magic is everywhere, as Ms. M explains: “What in the world’s isn’t magical? Nobody understands electricity. Not really. And look at penicillin. It grows on bread! You think that isn’t magical?” Eventually Ms. M has to leave, Sadie’s friends return, and after some mild sadness, everything is fine and happy and the authors are surely looking ahead to the next book in this series. Deborah Marcero’s illustrations are as appropriate and unchallenging as the story itself – not magical, but certainly quite pleasant.

     Pictures and text go more clearly together in the many weird-school series by Dan Gutman and Jim Paillot. The second My Weirdest School book is absolutely typical. It starts when a teacher, Mr. Cooper, tries to make a superhero-style entrance to the classroom and manages only to knock over a trash can. It continues as the elderly woman for whom the school is named, Miss Ella Mentry, gives the school a million dollars. The school then decides to use the money to start its own TV station, based on an idea from the book’s narrator, A.J. And that is where Ms. Cuddy comes in: she is a “digital media arts teacher.” And she is very competitive, getting extremely upset (to the point of nuttiness) when she learns that another school has also started a TV station and is getting more viewers for its morning announcements than Ella Mentry School gets for its presentation. The book turns into a ratings game between the schools, with the competing TV stations getting more and more outrageous in their search for viewers, and the whole thing ends with a zombie attack – not real, of course, but more than enough to bring in the TV audience. The ridiculousness of the whole setup is exactly the point, and is the reason My Weirdest School and its predecessors and successors can be fun to read and look at.

     Much the same is true of the Alien in My Pocket series by Nate Ball, with illustrations by Macky Pamintuan. As in the weird-school books, there is a single underlying premise here: a four-inch-tall alien named Amp (from the planet Erd) crashes into Zack McGee’s bedroom, and mildly amusing adventures take place. The fifth of them, Ohm vs. Amp, has Amp’s Erdian commander, Ohm, show up on Earth as well, intending to take Amp home. Various mild excitements and misunderstandings ensue – this is the pattern in all series of this type – involving not only Zack but also his “best friend and next-door neighbor, Olivia,” who “was clear-thinking in an emergency. I, on the other hand, had a brain that turned into pink yogurt when things got tense.” And things certainly do get tense here, or at least tense enough to propel the plot forward, as Ohm insists on getting ready to take Amp home, and there is the possibility of an invasion of Earth in the offing, and it takes some quick thinking about an atlatl (an ancient tool for throwing darts and spears with greater power) to come up with a way to send Ohm and Amp back where they came from. But things do not quite go that way, because if they did, the series would be over, and there is no particular reason for that to be the case. So there are some twists and turns near the book’s end (unsurprising ones, but ones that fans of the series will welcome), resulting eventually in Ohm’s departure but Amp’s remaining with Zack and Olivia in preparation for the sixth book, which will be called Forces of Nature. A sample of that book appears at the end of this one, along with instructions on building an atlatl as a science project: Alien in My Pocket is specifically designed to include Common Core science within and along with its stories.

     There is nothing scientific or especially learning-oriented in the Amelia-as-a-preteen Amelia Bedelia series by Herman Parish, a spinoff from the adult Amelia Bedelia books created by Parish’s aunt, Peggy Parish. None of Herman Parish’s simple chapter books is up to the quality of the ones by Peggy Parish, but each – including the seventh, Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail – offers an enjoyable focus on the central character. This time, Amelia goes on a beach vacation and gets to spend time with her surfing cousin, Jason – who, however, seems to have a secret of some sort, apparently involving the upcoming annual Beach Ball. Young Amelia is subject to some of the same verbal confusion that Peggy Parish made a defining characteristic of the adult character, although in Herman Parish’s books it always seem more forced and less genuine a personality quirk. Thus, for example, when Amelia’s mother says during the drive to the beach that Amelia makes things up left and right, Amelia remarks that the car is on a bridge and cannot go left or right; when Jason describes the town’s Main Street as the “main drag,” Amelia wants to know what people drag on it; and when, while sailing, Amelia is told to weigh the anchor, she says it seems to be about 25 pounds. These mild malapropisms are not the main point here, though. Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail has more to do with a prank that Jason plans to play, how it relates to the legend that pirates buried some treasure near the beach, and how a hail of water-filled beach balls saves the day when a fire breaks out on a half-sized pirate-ship replica. Lynne Avril’s copious drawings help move the story along – they do not just illustrate it – and fans of the young Amelia Bedelia will surely enjoy this simple, rather homespun summertime tale, as well as the recipe for mud pie at the book’s end.

(++++) FRESH LOOKS AT OLD STANDARDS

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Gaudenz. CPO. $33.99. (2 SACDs).

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Tonkünstler-Orchester conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Oehms. $39.99 (3 CDs).

Gounod: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Netherlands Chamber Orchestra conducted by Gordan Nicolić. Tacet. $21.99.

     The sheer quality of European orchestras and of their conductors, including ones not particularly well-known in North America, sometimes leads to revelatory performances of works on which it would seem reasonable to assume there is not much new to be said. Simon Gaudenz is scarcely a household name worldwide, and Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra is not one that immediately comes to mind when thinking about top ensembles. But Gaudenz and the orchestra deliver genuinely exciting and in some respects highly unusual performances of Schumann’s four symphonies on a new CPO recording. It is not just that the playing is so good – although it is really good, at the level listeners have come to expect of top German orchestras. What comes through here is that Gaudenz appears to have fired up the orchestra to see Schumann in some new ways, in particular as a composer whose works contain strong contrasts both within themselves and throughout the four-symphony cycle. That the four works are different from one another is scarcely a new observation, but the way Gaudenz shows those differences is highly effective. He is given to significant tempo changes and contrasts, so that, for example, the main part of the first movement of the “Spring” symphony practically gallops along, as does the work’s finale – marked Allegro animato e grazioso, and here perhaps more animato than grazioso but all the more exhilarating for that emphasis. Symphony No. 4, the second written but a work usually heard, as it is here, in a modified, later form that can easily come across as turgid (there are a lot of instrumental doublings), has a lightness, almost airiness in Gaudenz’ version. And although its single-movement structure remains clear, the four sections that make this essentially a four-movements-in-one work are particularly well contrasted here, giving the symphony a simultaneous sense of unity and of different feelings from one portion to the next. Gaudenz does just as well with Nos. 2 and 3. The Second, whose opening movement has a main theme that is very difficult to play effectively, actually attains some grandeur in the interpretation here, and this allows for a very vivid contrast with the Scherzo; and there is a similarly effective distinction between the third and fourth movements. The Third strides forward strongly and gains its expansiveness from its five-movement structure and from Gaudenz’ willingness to let both the slow movements expand to what feels like their natural size. Fine playing, very fine sound and more-than-fine musicianship make this Schumann cycle one worth returning to again and again.

     The Brahms cycle by the Tonkünstler-Orchester conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada is just as impressive in its own way. This Austrian ensemble has warmth, elegance, first-rate sectional balance, and an impressively intuitive way with Brahms. And Orozco-Estrada, a native of Colombia, has certainly plumbed the composer’s emotional depths – helped, no doubt, by having been educated in Vienna, but surely helped as well by what seems to be a finely honed intuitive grasp of Brahms’ broad sweep and melodic richness. Orozco-Estrada sees these symphonies as filled with long musical lines and breadth of thought, and he has no problem allowing them to unfold at stately tempos that do not, however, ever plod or become draggy. The pacing of the performances required Oehms to release the cycle on three CDs rather than two: the First and Fourth have their own discs here, while the Second and Third share one – and barely fit on it. Yet the timings of the movements, which might lead to an expectation of an overall slow approach, are misleading: there is no specific place to which a listener can point and say that Orozco-Estrada is holding the music back or failing to give it its propulsive due. Rather, the conductor is shaping the symphonies according to a vision in which the initial presentation of the music decidedly sets the scene for the remainder of it: the first movements of Nos. 2-4 are notably longer than any other movements of those works, and although the massive finale of No. 1 retains its position as the symphony’s climax and is longer than the opening movement, it is only so by a bit more than a minute. Orozco-Estrada pulls listeners into all this music with a sense of unfolding drama and grand scale beyond that found in most Brahms symphonic performances – and in each symphony, the succeeding movements, after those highly impressive openings, seem to follow naturally and expand upon the first movements’ arguments. The result is that each symphony comes across as a fully integrated whole – something that many performers achieve with the Third but that rarely sounds this way in the other symphonies. The superior orchestral sound – and the superior recorded sound as well – help Orozco-Estrada deliver a vision of Brahms’ symphonies that is first-rate from start to finish.

     The symphonic production of Charles Gounod is far more modest, and occurred in an environment quite different from that affecting Schumann and Brahms. Schumann’s final symphony, the revision of his original Second that we know as No. 4, dates to 1851, while Brahms’ First did not appear until 1876 – although the composer started working on it in 1855, the same year in which Gounod wrote both of his symphonies. The French had little interest in symphonies at this time, ceding leadership in the form to the Germans and focusing instead on opera. It was not until Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” symphony (1886) that a French symphony again attained the impressive heights of Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique (1830). So it is no surprise that Gounod’s works are slighter in scope than those of Schumann and Brahms. Indeed, they are highly indebted to the Classical era as funneled through the music of Mendelssohn – with the result that they sound particularly good when performed by a small ensemble, such as the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Gordan Nicolić, concertmaster of the orchestra as well as its conductor, gets the fleetness and light elegance of the works’ orchestration exactly right in a new recording for Tacet, and his live performance of No. 1 zips along from start to finish with considerable élan and a sure sense of Gounod’s style – in both its original and derivative elements. In No. 2, a studio recording, Nicolić is a touch more reserved, although he certainly listens to the composer in the final movement, which Gounod marked Allegro, leggiero assai. Indeed, there is an overall lightness to both of Gounod’s symphonies – not one indicating a lack of seriousness of purpose, but one showing that Gounod valued transparency of orchestration and easy accessibility of musical ideas above heaven-storming intensity and strongly dramatic thematic development. These symphonies are not the primary works for which Gounod is known, by any means, but they are an important part of his production and shed considerable light on his approach to operatic clarity and accessibility. They also show just how effective the symphonic form could be even when managed with less tempestuousness and structural erudition than it received from the Germanic composers in the years after the death of Beethoven.

(++++) ALTERED STATES OF EXPRESSIVENESS

Franz Ignaz Beck: Symphonies, Op. 2, Nos. 1-6. Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kevin Mallon. Naxos. $12.99.

Sibelius: Belshazzar’s Feast; Overture in E; Scène de Ballet; Die Sprache der Vögel—Wedding March; Cortège; Menuetto; Processional. Pia Pajala, soprano; Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam. Naxos. $12.99.

Bartók: Works for Violin and Piano, Volume 1. Sarah Plum, violin; Timothy Lovelace, piano. Blue Griffin Recordings. $15.99.

1939: Music by Joseph Jongen, Viktor Ullmann, Paul Hindemith, Yanjun Hua, and Gideon Klein. Teng Li, viola; Meng-Chieh Liu, piano; Benjamin Bowman, violin. Azica. $16.99.

     The things expressed in music, as well as the way in which they are expressed, vary and develop significantly over time. Franz Ignaz Beck, whose dates of 1734-1809 are almost identical to those of Haydn (1732-1809), brought very different sensibilities and expressiveness to his symphonies. While Haydn changed symphonic form throughout his career and continued writing symphonies of ever-increasing performance and emotional complexity into the 1790s, Beck wrote much-smaller-scale symphonic works and did so only in the 1750s and 1760s. The subtleties of change that Beck brought to the symphonic form are far less evident to listeners today, since we have moved so far past the experimentation of the Mannheim school (whose most-famous symphonist, Johann Stamitz, was Beck’s teacher). But listeners immersed in 18^th-century symphonic works, including those of Haydn, will hear some distinctive and intriguing elements in Beck’s symphonies – even the early set of six three-movement ones making up his Op. 2. These are works of very modest scale, running from 10 to 14 minutes, and all are cast in the familiar fast-slow-fast mode. They contain some unexpected pleasures, however, in addition to the anticipated ones associated with well-made music of this time period. Although all the works are written for a chamber-size string ensemble, two of them, Nos. 1 and 5, use horns in their outer movements. One, No. 6, ends with an unusual exchange between two violins on the one hand and a viola and basso on the other. And the musical texture of all six works is intriguing, varying from chamber-music-like delicacy to a surprisingly full instrumental sound from the small complement of instruments. These are works showing Beck’s interest in experimentation within the limits of his time period, and if they are scarcely at the level of Haydn’s symphonies – which regularly transcended those limits – they are very fine examples of the extent of expressiveness available in the years when the symphony was just coalescing into the more-familiar form that we know from Mozart onward. On this new Naxos CD, Kevin Mallon leads the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra with real pep and sure understanding of these works, producing performances that are as vivid and expressive as they can be within Beck’s chosen, limited sound world.

     Sibelius, more than a century later, delved into very different sounds, using them in very different ways that straddled the symphonic and theatrical realms. Sibelius’ first attempt at a symphony dates to 1891 and includes two pieces: Overture in E and Scène de Ballet, intended as the uncompleted symphony’s first and second movements. Leif Segerstam and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra perform them with strength and grandeur, and although they are not as high-quality as what Sibelius was to produce later in the decade when he did complete his Symphony No. 1, they are well-constructed and emotionally trenchant pieces on their own. And they have a certain theatrical flair about them: Sibelius was a frequent composer of theater music, although he is less known for it than for his symphonies and tone poems. Belshazzar’s Feast (1906) is a particularly good example of Sibelius’s skill with stage works, incorporating various moods and reusing elements of itself in skillful as well as dramatically appropriate ways – for instance, a doomed character tries unsuccessfully to repeat a “Dance of Life,” but can manage only to dance the same music in slower tempo. Belshazzar’s Feast is mostly a work of instrumental music, but it does incorporate an evocative Song of the Jewish Girl, well performed by Pia Pajala, in which the singer expresses her strong desire to find a way back to lost Jerusalem. The remaining pieces on this Naxos release show other aspects of Sibelius’ theatricality: Menuetto (1894), which was first a piano piece, then orchestrated as heard here, then included in a different version in King Christian II (1898); Cortège (1905), a good-humored work from which the composer later took themes that appeared in Scènes historiques II and The Tempest; and a not-very-march-like Wedding March (1911) that is the only piece Sibelius composed for a play called Die Sprache der Vögel. The final work on this CD is a real curiosity: it dates to 1938, by which time it is commonly thought that Sibelius had long since stopped composing. But in fact he only stopped creating major works after Tapiola (1926): he wrote smaller ones and revised earlier pieces throughout the ensuing decades. Processional (1938) is an orchestral version of one of the curious pieces that Sibelius wrote in 1927 after becoming a member of Finland’s Masonic Lodge. It is an intriguing if not exceptionally noteworthy piece that will likely make listeners hope that Segerstam – who is exploring various less-known works by Sibelius – will venture further into the composer’s late and infrequently performed compositions.

     The Bartók works for violin and piano on a new CD from Blue Griffin Recording are, unlike the Sibelius pieces, all from roughly the same time in the composer’s life: the 1920s, more or less. Actually, the Romanian Folk Dances, which Sarah Plum and Timothy Lovelace perform with a fine sense of rhythm and excellent ensemble work, were written by Bartók in 1915, for solo piano; and the Hungarian Folk Tunes were written in 1908-10, also for solo piano. Plum and Lovelace play a transcription of the Romanian set made in 1925-26 by Zoltán Székely, and one of the Hungarian tunes made in 1926-27 by Bartók  and Joseph Szigeti. And very fine transcriptions these are, preserving the rhythms and folklike elements of the dances while giving both violinist and pianist plenty of chances to show off their techniques. Székely is the dedicatee of the Rhapsody No. 2, also included on this disc, which dates to 1928 and was revised in the last year of Bartók’s life, 1945; Rhapsody No. 1, also written in 1928, revised in 1929, and dedicated to Szigeti, is here as well. Both rhapsodies are filled with folk melodies, strong rhythms, and the notable presence of the sorts of fiddle dances long associated with the Romany (gypsy) people. The rhapsodies contrast in their free flow with the two sets of folk dances, but are clearly related on multiple levels. For one thing, the involvement of Székely and Szigeti in the transcriptions provides some interesting insight into how Bartók’s compositions developed and were transformed over time. For another, the ways in which folk material permeates the two rhapsodies show clearly how foundational these dances were to Bartók’s creations in this time period. Throughout all these works, Plum and Lovelace do a fine job of treading the line between Bartók’s serious purpose and the more-modest circumstances in which the thematic material developed and flourished in the countryside. The playing is strong, the interaction between the performers effective, and the overall impression of the music is winning. All these factors come together in the Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, which dates to 1922. The piano part here is exceptionally demanding, often leading performers – but, happily, not Lovelace – into a kind of percussive brutality that makes the work as a whole seem overdone. Also in this sonata, the violin goes through so many tempo, rhythm and dynamic changes that it can be a real challenge to put forth the sort of village fiddling and Romany-derived playing for which the work calls. Plum rises to this challenge as to all the others on this CD – with the result that listeners will surely look forward to the next entry in the Plum/Lovelace survey of all Bartók’s works for violin and piano.

     Written later than any of the works by Bartók or Sibelius, the five pieces performed by Teng Li on a new Azica release are intended to provide a musical portrait of a momentous year in the 20^th century: the CD is simply entitled 1939. Li is a sensitive, careful performer whose sound practically glows at times, and she is clearly committed to the very different works on this recording. She is especially effective in Yanqiao Wang’s solo-viola arrangement of The Moon Reflected in Er-Quan by Yanjun Hua (1893-1950). Unfortunately, while the individual pieces here all have moments of interest, sometimes considerable ones, the theme of 1939 does not hold up particularly well and does not provide any significant unity to the disc. Because the five works are distinct in so many ways, what Li shows is that composers wrote in very different styles, expressing very different emotions and feelings, during this particular year. But that is true of any year: there is nothing here that ties with particular clarity to one year or another. Certainly there are extramusical messages intended here, notably through the inclusion of the Duo for Violin and Viola by Gideon Klein (1919-1945), who organized cultural life in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and died in another camp, Fürstengrube, at age 25. But aside from the fact that this duo appears to date to 1940, the reality is that there is no reflection in it of World War II, much less of the horrors visited upon Jews such as Klein under Nazism. This is simply a well-made piece that uses quarter-tones in some effective ways and that reflects some elements of musical thinking from the first half of the 20^th century. Also here are two works in fairly traditional classical format, with the Sonata for Viola and Piano by Hindemith (1895-1963) coming across somewhat more effectively than does the Concertino for Viola and Piano by Joseph Jongen (1873-1953). The 1939 Hindemith sonata is the largest of his three for viola and piano, and the last work he wrote for himself to play as viola soloist. The work’s emotional warmth comes through especially clearly in Li’s performance, which also takes the measure of the sonata’s pervasive polyphony. Jongen’s piece is well-made but comparatively slight. The fifth work on this CD, Meng-Chieh Liu’s viola-and-piano arrangement of Five Love Songs by Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), is another piece written by a composer who was sent to Theresienstadt (in 1942); Ullmann was killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Little of Ullmann’s work survives, and this affecting arrangement makes that regrettable. But the fact remains that the concept of 1939 is fundamentally flawed: these pieces do not shed any special light on that particular year, and to the extent that the music is intended to reflect the horrors of World War II, which began in 1939 but reached its peak in later years, it does not do so. Not exactly a look at prewar music, not exactly a tribute to composers killed by the Nazis, not exactly a history lesson in musical notes, 1939 is simply a collection of well-played but ultimately only minimally connected works. That makes it a (+++) CD that is attractive for the quality of the performances and for some elements of the pieces but that does not hold together from the perspective of its nonmusical thematic structure.

(++++) COPING STRATEGIES

Boy, Were We Wrong about the Weather! By Kathleen V. Kudlinski. Illustrated by Sebastià Serra. Dial. $16.99.

Itty Bitty Kitty. By Joan Holub. Illustrated by James Burks. Harper. $17.99.

Two Girls Want a Puppy. By Ryan and Evie Cordell. Pictures by Maple Lam. Harper. $17.99.

Who Wants Broccoli? By Val Jones. Harper. $17.99.

     It may be true, as the cliché has it, that while everybody talks about the weather, nobody does anything about it – but that is not for want of trying. Boy, Were We Wrong about the Weather! is an amusing but historically and scientifically accurate look at what people through the ages have tried to do about the weather, from Sumerians doing rain dances to try to appease the weather god Enlil to Aristotle trying to explain how the weather (among other things) results from a mixture of the four elements of earth, air, wind and fire. “Weather is so complicated!” exclaims Kathleen V. Kudlinski, but she duly sets about simplifying it while providing young readers with interesting informational tidbits – for example, that the word “hurricane” is derived from the name of the Taíno Indian god Huracan, thought to have caused the violent storms. Kudlinski explains, and Sebastià Serra aptly illustrates, both weather events and human attempts to cope with them, for example when scientists track hurricanes to warn people in their path about them. Halfway through, the book changes from one about weather (which is a localized phenomenon) to one about climate (a more-generalized pattern); and this gets into a possibly controversial discussion of climate change. There is nothing particularly argumentative in the historical material here, which explains that “climate changes happened by themselves thousands and thousands of years ago.” But then Kudlinski explains about a Swedish scientist (it was Svante Arrhenius) who “started wondering if all that extra soot and carbon dioxide would trap the heat of the sun inside our blanket of air. Boy, was he right!” Kudlinski then discusses ways in which the climate has been changing, and goes on so say that “some people still think global warming is a myth. Boy, are they wrong!” There is nothing wrong with this assertion in what is essentially a science book, given that the statement’s scientific accuracy is supported by nearly 100% of experts on the topic. And simply being logical, it makes sense that extensive human activity involving atmospheric changes would have some effect on the planet, even if the amount of that effect and the planet’s ability to correct for it are arguable. Unfortunately, climate change (a better, more-accurate and less emotionally fraught phrase than “global warming”) has become so politicized that discussing it in a book that is ostensibly about weather may raise some eyebrows, if not hackles. Parents should be aware that this material is prominently featured here and should be prepared to discuss it further – which, actually, is a good idea when it comes to any book about science intended for young readers.

     Coping requirements are purely familial, not planetary, when it comes to the matter of pets, and this allows much more lighthearted treatment of pet-related issues than of ones involving scientific matters. But parental discussion is important when it comes to pet-related books, too, because bringing a pet into a family is a long-term, multi-year commitment that should never be taken lightly – it does, after all, involve responsibility for another creature’s life. Pet-focused books handle the balance of levity and seriousness in a variety of ways. Itty Bitty Kitty stays on the lighter side through most of Joan Holub’s story, giving only passing mention (through the mouths of disapproving parents) to the reality that “cats shed” and “cats must be fed.” The little girl at the center of this book, Ava, really wants a kitten, and is lucky enough one day to find “a furry purry, snuggly huggly, cutie patootie” one – a purple one! – in a box marked “free kitten.” Holub’s language keeps everything light and amusing as Ava decides to name the little kitten Itty Bitty and proudly takes him home to show to her parents – who, however, are far too busy and stressed with work, household management and a new baby to pay attention. So Ava keeps Itty Bitty in her own room as an “itty-bitty secret” (parents should tell kids not to try this!). Holub writes that “Ava was good at taking care of Itty Bitty,” and certainly James Burks’ illustrations show girl and kitten bonding as they play and entertain each other in all sorts of ways. But then – uh, oh – Itty Bitty starts to grow, not just the way kittens normally grow into cats (which, unfortunately, leads to many being abandoned after they have outgrown their “cute” stage), but in a highly exaggerated way that results in Itty Bitty turning into an enormous but ever-smiling, ever-playful kitten. Yes, he is still a kitten: this happens in just two weeks. And sure enough, Itty Bitty gets out of Ava’s room and caroms through the house, making huge messes and scaring and angering Ava’s parents, whose shadow actually falls over the unhappy little girl and kitten when the parents say Itty Bitty must go (this is the best and most affecting illustration in the book). How to get to a happy ending? Enter the baby, whose unexpected midnight crawl almost ends in disaster until Itty Bitty saves the day – well, the night, but saving the baby is what matters. And so all ends happily for everyone, even though Itty Bitty isn’t itty bitty anymore.

     The real-world responsibilities and implications of pets are more clearly shown in Ryan and Evie Cordell’s Two Girls Want a Puppy, which also starts with a strong desire for a pet but continues in a more-realistic (although still amusing) way than does Itty Bitty Kitty. The two girls of the title, Cadence and Emi (named for the authors’ daughters, Cadence and Emerson), really want a puppy – but know they have to prove themselves capable of caring for one before their dad will let them have it. So the girls show they can be persistent (by repeatedly asking, “Can we get a puppy?” in every imaginable place and at every possible time); responsible (by taking care of the neighbors’ dog, which includes using a pooper-scooper – a realistic element of pet ownership that not all young people’s books include); smart (by doing research on puppies online, in books, and by asking dog owners about their animals); and creative (by writing their own book about dogs). The plan works, and the kids’ dad agrees to let them adopt a dog from a shelter – which leads to a visit to a cage-lined (and rather somber) room filled with dogs where, happily, “one puppy stands out” and becomes Cadence’s and Emi’s. They call her Millie, since they asked for her about a million times, and everything ends not only happily but also with enough attention to reality (in both the narrative and Maple Lam’s illustrations) so that Two Girls Want a Puppy can be a great jumping-off point of discussion for families in which children are really, truly, absolutely sure that they are ready to have a puppy (or kitten or other animal) of their very own.

     Indeed, the little boy in Val Jones’ Who Wants Broccoli? considers a kitten, bunny, hamster and turtle before eventually winding up with Broccoli – capital-B Broccoli, not the vegetable but a big, overly enthusiastic, loud and bouncy dog named for the broccoli box in which he was left, as a puppy, at a local animal shelter that is far brighter and happier-looking than the one in Two Girls Want a Puppy. Broccoli, whose appearance and story are based on those of Jones’ own labradoodle, is one of many anthropomorphized animals in the book: turtles are big-eyed and smiling, hamsters and guinea pigs are wide-and-bright-eyed and entertainingly interactive, and Broccoli himself has plenty of expressions and enthusiasms. The latter include tossing a filled water bowl in the air and catching it on his head (with all the water spraying everywhere), running at top speed while chasing his tail, and barking loudly and almost constantly. This is clearly an unadoptable dog – but the shelter is a sweet, gentle one run by a sweet, gentle couple, and Mr. and Mrs. Beezley keep Broccoli right by the front window even though they doubt that anyone will ever choose him. Enter a little boy named Oscar, who moves in across the street with his mom and really wants a pet. Broccoli has misbehaved once too often and is now confined, in his open pen, in the shelter’s storeroom, where his very human-like expressions of disappointment will make young readers even sorrier for him. Oscar and his mom come to the shelter, but cannot find any animal to take home, until Oscar leaves his ball behind and it ends up in the storeroom – where Broccoli finds it and alerts Oscar (who comes back to look for the ball) by going through his entire antic display. It turns out that Broccoli is just what Oscar and his mom, who are apparently gluttons for punishment, have been looking for: “a big, fun dog” who turns out to be “their perfect pet.” This is a heartwarming ending, with the wonderful implication that there is a match for every animal in a shelter – untrue, alas, but perhaps the basis for a real-world discussion with young children about the importance of adopting from shelters (rather than buying from pet stores or breeders) when the family does decide to get a pet. One way to cope with the vast oversupply of unwanted animals in shelters everywhere is to find one that you want – a message both neatly and entertainingly communicated in Who Wants Broccoli?

(++++) PHONICS HISTRIONICS

Lazy Bear, Crazy Bear: Loony Long Vowels! By Kevin Bolger. Illustrated by Ben Hodson. Harper. $7.99.

Gran on a Fan: Silly Short Vowels! By Kevin Bolger. Illustrated by Ben Hodson. Harper. $7.99.

     The longstanding belief that it is best to teach grammar, spelling, colors, numbers and the like through humor gets an amusing twist – several of them, actually – in two new phonics books by Kevin Bolger and Ben Hodson (with colorist Jo Rioux making sure everything is as packed with primary colors as possible). Intended for ages 4-8 and written as simply as possible, with highly exaggerated illustrations that neatly fit what is being taught, Lazy Bear, Crazy Bear and Gran on a Fan do a fine job of involving young children – getting their attention is a big part of what goes on here – and helping them understand how to pronounce words and, in the case of long vowels, why to pronounce them a certain way.

     Both books feature a series of silly scenes described in words that primarily include long and short vowels, respectively. In Lazy Bear, Crazy Bear, for example, “long i” is illustrated through a tale of “Five Mice of Crime [who] ride bikes with spikes.” For “long o,” the main protagonist is a ghost – “ghost on the road,” “ghost on the shore,” “ghost in the snow,” and so on. “Long u” is a “dude” story, as in “huge dude,” “rude dude” and more. The pictures are always funny, and interspersed among them are “Gran’s Reading Rules” to help kids understand the “why” of vowel sounds – for example, “A silent e at the end of a word makes the vowel in the middle say its own name,” as in “smile,” “nose” and “shake.” Especially useful is the rule that says “long vowels say their own name,” which is a real helper with pronunciation: “snake,” “likes,” “cube,” etc. There is, however, one rule that runs afoul of the many exceptions-to-the-rule that permeate the English language – and yes, kids who are quick on the uptake will notice this and ask about it. This is the apparently clear comment by Gran that “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and says its own name” as in such words as “hair,” “spies” and “blue.” But what is the title of this book? Lazy Bear, Crazy Bear. Using this rule, the word “bear” should be pronounced “BEE-ahr.” True, Bolger and Hodson are dealing here with simple vowels, not diphthongs, phonemes, or other more-complex elements of speech and linguistics; but having the title of this book contain an exception to one of the rules given within it does create, at the very least, a moment of awkwardness. Parents be warned!

     As for Gran and her rules: Gran comes into her own in the short-vowel book, Gran on a Fan (which, yes, is just what one illustration shows).  This book includes none of Gran’s rules: it is more story-oriented, in terms of extended and connected narratives, than the one on long vowels – providing a pleasant contrast for kids reading both books. “Pets in Jets” is a flying adventure that ends badly and includes “wet,” “nets” and “vet.” “Chimp and Kid” is a family-at-home story, while “King Ding-a-Ling” shows an over-enthusiastic monarch who clings, swings and ends up in a sling. There is a long crime story called “Stop That Pop!” for “short o” and an extended “short u” narrative about “Mutt and Pup.” The funniest entry in the book is the “short e” tale of Nell, who falls into a well and is left there by the narrator even though she yells and yells and yells – and who then reappears at the very end of the book to object to how she has been treated. The subtitles of these two books aptly refer to vowels being “silly” (a short-vowel word) and “loony” (not a long-vowel word – another “watch it” moment for parents). Of course, it is not really the vowels themselves, or the words in which they appear, that are funny: it is the presentation, both in the amusing stories and in the highly exaggerated illustrations. For teaching basic phonics or helping new readers get used to vowel and word sounds, these attractive books are a fine choice – provided that parents stay on the alert for the few instances in which the vowels do not quite obey the books’ stated rules.

(+++) AS THE CELEBRITIES TURN

Grace of Monaco: The True Story. By Jeffrey Robinson. Da Capo. $15.99.

Vegan with a Vengeance. By Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Da Capo. $22.99.

     In the long-ago days when celebrities were remote and untouchable, existing apart from mere mortals and only occasionally glimpsed by those so far below and beneath them, Grace Kelly personified the sort of icy beauty and regal bearing that made her seem a perfect fit for Prince Rainier of Monaco. Even her name was just right for her role: grace was what she had, and Grace was who she was.

     Nowadays celebrities are supposed to be far more accessible, easy to reach, hear from, react to, imitate, and follow throughout lives in which their fans believe they participate – although in reality the gulf between the famous and their hangers-on is as wide as ever.

     The difference in what celebrity was and what it has become is neatly, if unintentionally, encapsulated in Grace of Monaco and Vegan with a Vengeance. Jeffrey Robinson’s biography of Grace (1929-1982) originally dates to 1989, when it was called Rainier and Grace: An Intimate Portrait, and has been revised several times. Its latest incarnation retains the emphasis on first-person accounts of events in Grace’s life and the veneer of hagiography that is inevitable in a book created “with the full and unprecedented cooperation” of Monaco’s royal family. Quite obviously, what is expected in return for such access is a book that, if it does not completely whitewash any awkward moments, at the very least minimizes and marginalizes them. Robinson is good at this. There is a fair amount of information here about Monaco, much of it interesting history (including an attempted lawsuit against the state of Mississippi). But there is little in the book about Grace’s early life – this work, from its current as well as its original title onwards, is about Grace as princess of Monaco. There is, however, a good deal on the proprieties and expectations of both Hollywood and European royalty in the 1950s. Catholicism, for example: this was before the election of John F. Kennedy as U.S. president, and religion was a major factor on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, Father Tucker, an Irish friend of Rainier and matchmaker between Grace and the prince, “best of all…liked the idea that she was a good Catholic girl with a good reputation,” and wrote to Grace, “I want to thank you for showing the Prince what an American Catholic girl can be.” Grace herself was as focused on what role she wanted in life as she was on her film roles, and it was something filled with the clear expectations of the time: “I didn’t want a future Mr. Kelly, if you see what I mean. I didn’t want to take a husband. I wanted to become somebody’s wife.” By all accounts – and certainly by Robinson’s – Grace did well at this. “She and I were a pretty good team,” Robinson quotes Rainier as saying, and it is apparent from the book that this is an understatement: the two clearly respected as well as cared deeply for each other, and they certainly seem attached and highly comfortable in their interactions in the book’s two photo sections.

     Grace and Rainier were very much a public couple, and the book’s discussion of how their public-relations work was handled by Nadia Lacoste certainly offers insight into celebrity management and marketing – at least in the 1950s. The intrusiveness of the paparazzi, though, is one thing that has not changed over the decades, and Rainier’s remark could as well have been spoken in the 21^st century as in the 20^th: “You have to let a lot of things go. You just have to write some of it off as part of the apprenticeship of life.” But of course, Rainier and Grace were not professional celebrities – he was the ruler of a principality, with definite responsibilities for the population, and she was his consort and no longer dependent on media hype for film work or attention. Robinson’s book shows clearly how Grace and Rainier fit the “untouchable” model of celebrity, with people wanting to know everything they could about them, see as much of them as possible, but never for a moment believing that the glamorous lives of Grace and Rainier were anything like their own mundane ones. True, there was plenty of mundanity even in Monaco – the discussion of the principality as a business, sometimes called “Grimaldi Inc.,” is an interesting one: “Rainier was the first full-time sovereign, and also the first to approach the running of the country like the running of a business.” By and large, though, Grace of Monaco is a story of what celebrity used to be and how it changed over time: Princess Stephanie’s remarks on how she felt in California when, four years after her mother’s death, she herself was seeking the limelight, are clearly those of a different generation of the famous, not just a different generation of the Grimaldi family. Grace of Monaco: The True Story may not be entirely true in its rather starry-eyed portraits of the principal characters, but it certainly has some truths to offer about the world in which they lived and the kind of scrutiny they sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, sometimes endured.

     Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a much more modern, down-to-earth, accessible, 21^st-century type of celebrity. In her 40s, punked out and tattooed, a cookbook author for the past decade who writes about “a literary agent who had seen my interview in the (now defunct) zine Punk Planet,” Moskowitz is all Brooklyn brashness, the polar opposite of Grace Kelly’s aristocratic Philadelphia glamor. The 10^th anniversary edition of Moskowitz’ Vegan with a Vengeance is a cookbook, of course, but also an assertion that she and her punk style are not sadly dated, not unimportant, not irrelevant – that all of this still means something. This is a celebrity asserting, within an admittedly limited venue, her celebrity-hood – an unheard-of circumstance for old-fashioned high-and-mighty celebrities but de rigueur for those in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of instantaneous communication and gratification. In this new edition of Vegan with a Vengeance, Moskowitz continues to include “Fizzle says” comments “from” her now-11-year-old cat, such as, “If you are too punk for a coffee grinder, place the seeds in a plastic bag and cover with a thin towel or even a few pieces of newspaper, and proceed to hammer with a mallet or a regular hammer until the neighbors complain.” The book also includes “I am still cool” elements such as talking about “sammiches” rather than sandwiches, providing a recipe for “Fauxstess Cupcakes,” and offering “some pizza tips from a Brooklyn girl who knows from pizza.” To a great extent, Vegan with a Vengeance comes across as a book whose author is pleading for continued attention and continued relevance – unthinkable for old-style celebrities but a kind of “new normal” for 21^st-century ones competing with so many other 15-minutes-of-fame people for today’s extremely limited attention span. The positive news in all this is that the actual recipes in Vegan with a Vengeance are generally good ones, and usually simpler than comparable ones in the first edition of the book: Moskowitz admits at the start that she initially “wanted to use more ingredients” than other cookbook authors, but has since come to realize that it is better to “do a lot with very little.” Committed vegans will actually find the ideas here simpler than those in many other vegan cookbooks. Muffins, scones, finger foods, pastas, main courses, cookies, cakes and pies – all these and more are here, mostly in reasonably easy to follow recipes. Sweet potato hash with five-spice and watercress; beet, barley, and black soybean soup with pumpernickel croutons; potato samosas with coconut-milk chutney; orecchiette with cherry tomatoes and kalamata tapenade; lemongrass noodle bowl with mock duck; Moroccan tagine with spring vegetables; seitan-portobello stroganoff; no-bake black bottom-peanut butter silk pie – the variety here is extensive and impressive, and even committed vegan cooks are likely to find a few recipes here that they have not tried before. Vegan cooking is, of course, not for everyone, and celebrity vegan authors are a rarefied breed, even at a time when so many people can be celebrities in so many ways for so many different interest groups. If you find Moskowitz and/or her approach to vegan cooking and baking attractive, Vegan with a Vengeance will certainly give you plenty to enjoy.

(++++) CONCERTO CONSIDERATIONS

Alkan: Complete Transcriptions, Volume 1—Mozart. José Raúl López, piano. Toccata Classics. $18.99.

Weber: Wind Concertos—Clarinet Concerto No. 1; Bassoon Concerto; Horn Concerto; Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra. Maximiliano Martin, clarinet; Peter Whelan, bassoon; Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn; Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Alexander Janiczek. Linn Records. $19.99.

Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1-6; Violin Concerto; Flute Concerto; Clarinet Concerto. Nikolaj Znaider, violin; Robert Langevin, flute; Anthony McGill, clarinet; New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert. Dacapo. $64.99 (4 SACDs).

     The ability of great music to be twisted, turned, arranged and rearranged in sometimes-surprising ways is frequently deemed a special characteristic of Bach, whose works have been said to be so pure that they somehow transcend the instruments on which they are performed. This is an exaggeration, of course, but it helps explain how and why Bach’s works became and remain so popular even when performed in ways the composer could never have imagined – most prominently, on modern pianos rather than harpsichords, clavichords and organs. What is interesting is to observe ways in which other composers’ music can also have a wonderful effect on instruments for which it was never intended – in particular, again, on piano. When great pianists have adapted orchestral and vocal pieces for keyboard, some genuine insights have resulted – along with a feeling of discovery, for listeners, of elements of the original works of which they may not have been aware. Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies and Wagner’s operatic works are excellent examples of this, but Liszt was in fact only one of the 19^th-century composer/performers to produce transcriptions at the pinnacle of the form. Another, and one almost never thought of in this regard, was Charles-Valentin Alkan, whose quirky, even bizarre original works have been slowly making their way into pianists’ and audiences’ awareness but whose transcriptions remain almost totally unknown. José Raúl López has made a commitment to record all the Alkan transcriptions for Toccata Classics, and if the first disc is any indication, the sequence will be absolutely marvelous. Alkan made only five transcriptions of music by Mozart, the most enthralling by far being that of the Piano Concerto No. 20, Op. 466 – the D minor concerto that triumphantly if somewhat jarringly erupts at the very end into an apotheosis in the sunniest D major. Alkan’s transcription, which has never been recorded before, is the highlight of López’s CD. The technical requirements of the music are, it should go without saying, prodigious, and López handles them with unerring skill. But more interesting are the musical requirements of a transcription that very carefully arranges Mozart’s concerto by emphasizing certain lines and de-emphasizing others, by bringing some string parts to the fore pianistically while allowing others to settle in the background, and by producing a gigantic 79-bar first-movement cadenza that is scarcely Mozartean but that fascinatingly explores tonal and harmonic elements of the music while building a Romantic-era edifice upon the Classical-era foundation. This is an utterly fascinating transcription, true in the main to Mozart while unhesitatingly making choices in accord with Alkan’s own thinking in the 1860s. It is accompanied on this disc by two other world première recordings, of the Minuet and Trio from Symphony No. 40 and the chorus Ne pulvis et cinis superbe from Thamos, König in Ägypten, K. 345. Also here are Alkan’s transcriptions of the Minuet and Trio from Symphony No. 39 and the Andante from the String Quartet in A, K. 464. In all these transcriptions, Alkan shows himself particularly adept at bringing forth multiple melodic lines while keeping the harmony secure, largely through highly sophisticated pedal use. Alkan’s textural understanding and very obvious respect for Mozart’s creativity meld beautifully with his full comprehension of the still-developing pianos of his own time – a fact that actually points to the one disappointment of this CD, which is that it is performed on a modern Steinway piano rather than one of the Erards that Alkan favored and that provide very different effects in intonation and, especially, pedal use. That one element aside, López’s handling of this material is at the very highest level, his command of Alkan’s style as superimposed on Mozart is first-rate, and his pianism is very distinguished. This is a revelatory CD, primarily where the concerto is concerned but also in terms of the new and different light the whole disc shines on Alkan and, though him, on Mozart.

     Carl Maria von Weber’s wind concertos are intriguing in a different way, for all that they have their own ties to Mozart (the composer’s father was the uncle of Mozart’s wife, Constanze). Weber created unusually up-to-date works (for their time) for solo clarinet, following in Mozart’s footsteps in giving prominence to the instrument but taking matters considerably further in two concertos and the Concertino. The full, rich tone of the clarinet, an inherent quality of the instrument to modern listeners, was by no means its normal sound in Weber’s time – indeed, it was largely Weber who institutionalized it in writing pieces for clarinetist Heinrich Bärmann, who had followed in the footsteps of Joseph Beer, the performer who developed the mellower approach as a reaction to the more-brilliant, more-piercing French clarinet style. Two of the four works on a new Linn Records CD showcase the clarinet and Weber’s handling of it, which included an operatic approach to the instrumental material and plenty of chances for the soloist to show off his technique. The Concertino was Weber’s first work of this type, with the two concertos – only the first of which, unfortunately, is heard here – following soon after. Weber’s operatic inclinations and Bärmann’s subtlety of style mesh particularly well in some unusual sections, both in the Concertino and in the first concerto, in which the hue of the music significantly darkens and Weber comes up with striking ways of using instruments (for example, the clarinet playing with divisi violas in the Concertino). Maximiliano Martin, first clarinetist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has a fine tone and nuanced approach to this music, and the accompaniment of the ensemble under Alexander Janiczek is first-rate, with the result that the two clarinet works offered here leave one wishing the other concerto had been included as well. However, the concerto performances by two other of the orchestra’s first-chair players help make up for that lack. Weber’s bassoon concerto puts the instrument through its paces in different ways in each of the three movements, with the usual good humor ascribed to the bassoon evident only in the finale. The first movement shows the instrument in something like military mode, while the second shows it quite capable of lyricism – a capability known to, among others, Vivaldi, who wrote more than three dozen concertos for bassoon and certainly never treated the instrument as the “clown” it was later to sound like. Peter Whelan makes a fine bassoon soloist, with great skill throughout his instrument’s range, and deserves credit for trying to re-create the 1822 edition of the work, which represents Weber’s revision of his 1811 original – instead of using the heavily edited 1865 version preferred by most performers. Matters are not quite as admirable in Alec Frank-Gemmill’s handling of Weber’s horn concerto, however: the playing is quite good for anyone favoring a modern valve horn over the hand horn for which the work was written, but the edition performed is another matter. Frank-Gemmill uses a much-ornamented 1847 version for piano duet as the basis of his performing edition; and he also somewhat overdoes the cadenza between the second and third sections, which he plays in his own version. The playing itself is quite fine, but the instrument’s tone and the relative ease with which Frank-Gemmill is able to play notes that would be quite difficult on a hand horn lend the piece a smoothness and evenness that Weber surely did not expect. Whether he would have preferred it is unknown, of course, but it is a trifle disappointing at a time of heightened sensitivity to historic performance practices to hear this concerto in a version so different from what the composer intended.

     What Carl Nielsen intended as a concerto composer is another matter. Weber wrote just one concerto for bassoon and one for horn; Nielsen, just one apiece for violin, flute and Weber’s favored clarinet. All three of Nielsen’s concertos are late works, dating respectively to 1911-12, 1926 and 1928. The violin concerto moves uneasily on an arc from intensity to frivolity and includes a tribute to Bach through use of the notes of the letters of his name. The flute concerto has what could be called a more serious kind of humor, less rollicking and more controlled, after an opening that is on the verge of sounding hysterical. The bass trombone becomes a distinctly odd partner for the flute part of the time, in one of Nielsen’s more ingenious instrumental pairings. And the clarinet concerto includes atonality, an important snare-drum role, and a contrast between deep melancholy and demonic march passages – Nielsen’s predilection for strong instrumental and thematic contrasts is especially evident here. The concertos are very well played by violinist Nikolaj Znaider  and two first chairs of the New York Philharmonic, Robert Langevin and Anthony McGill.  And the orchestra itself performs with excellent responsiveness and a very warm tone for conductor Alan Gilbert in a four-SACD Dacapo recording that also includes all six Nielsen symphonies. The concerto performances are so good that they lift this entire release of live recordings to, or at least close to, a top rating – one that the symphonies do not really merit on their own. The suppleness of the orchestra as accompanist, and the sensitivity that Gilbert shows in weaving the solo instruments into and through the entire ensemble, are less in evidence in the symphonies. Gilbert’s conducting tends to highlight the similarities among the six, which are really distinguished mostly by their differences: Nielsen had an extraordinary range of thoughts and ideas to pack into symphonic form. The fact that Nielsen repeatedly contrasts near-violent loud and fast passages with quiet ones that seem almost to drift dreamily is clear enough here – but the balancing of the importance of these two stylistic elements is missing: Gilbert generally relishes the intensity but becomes unfocused, even flabby, in the rhythms of the more-thoughtful sections.

     Thus, Symphony No. 1 strides forth tempestuously from its opening notes, but soon calms down to a level of overdone placidity – the music need not subside into quietude and a lack of forward impetus, but it does here. On balance, though, the First is more successful in this recording than the Fourth (“The Inextinguishable”), with which it shares a disc: No. 1’s fundamentally classical balance provides it with a graspable structure that the Fourth – which is essentially a single extended movement – does not inherently possess. The Fourth tosses and turns, pulling the audience hither and yon before eventually reaching the affirmation of its title – that music, like life itself, is ultimately inextinguishable. But the elements of the struggle toward that conclusion are downplayed by Gilbert, so the eventual sense of triumph is lessened and muted. And Gilbert seems, oddly, to hold back a bit when the big climaxes become too big, notably in the “timpani duel” of No. 4, which is simply not as intense and gripping as it needs to be in order to pave the way for the sense of positive completion that succeeds it. On the disc of Nos. 2 (“The Four Temperaments”) and 3 (“Sinfonia espansiva”), the Third is better by far. Here the orchestra plays with outstanding warmth, the rhythms are supple, the first movement sounds truly expansive (its tempo marking, Allegro espansivo, gives the symphony its title), and the vocalise in the slow movement (featuring soprano Erin Morley and baritone Joshua Hopkins) is lovely.  The finale, though, is on the plodding side, with elements of rhythmic flabbiness not heard earlier in the work. And No. 2 is a real disappointment.  There is simply not enough differentiation among these temperaments: the interpretation as a whole, not just the second movement, is phlegmatic – this symphony just does not seem to engage Gilbert and the orchestra as No. 3 does.  The finale, in particular, is far too sedate – very far from sanguine. On the recording of Nos. 5 and 6, Gilbert tends to make the works too bland, smoothing their sharp edges and generally taming their frequently outré orchestrations, rhythms and harmonies. Thus, in the Fifth, where the timpani player is at one point famously instructed to play ad libitum and try to disrupt the rest of the orchestra, Gilbert keeps things under such tight control that this aleatoric, highly provocative section becomes merely noisy, which was not Nielsen’s idea at all. As for the bizarre Sixth (“Sinfonia semplice”), which is deliberately crass, overdone, silly, mocking, sarcastic, and at times just plain weird, this work invites a conductor to pull out all the stops and really show what he or she can get an orchestra to do. Gilbert may be up to the challenge, but if so, he chooses not to rise to it: this Nielsen Sixth is very mild indeed, its jagged edges smoothed to such a degree that even the very end (when the bassoons keep playing after everything is finished, as if the conductor failed to cue them to stop) sounds less surprising and strange than it should. Still, the recordings of all these symphonies deserve recognition for the very fine playing of the ensemble and the excellent sound with which the discs are endowed. And the concerto performances show how much Gilbert is capable of doing with Nielsen’s music when he really sets his mind to it and complements the orchestra’s performance with excellent interpretations by first-rate soloists.

(+++) VARIETY IS THE SPICE

Moto Continuo: Music of Osias Wilenski, Nicholas Anthony Asciotti, Diane Jones, John A. Carollo, Robert Fleisher, and Brian Noyes. Trio Casals (Sylvia Ahramjian, violin; Ovidiu Marinescu, cello; Anna Kislitsyna, piano). Navona. $16.99.

Robert J. Martin: 100 Views of Mt. Fuji: 100 Pieces in 100 Minutes—Homage to Hokusai; stone & feather; Neely Bruce: Improvisations; Homage to Seb. Shirley Blankenship and Neely Bruce, piano. Ravello. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Tornado Project: Trios for Flute, Clarinet and Computer by Ricardo Climent, Robert Rowe, Paul Wilson, Andrew May, Eric Lyon, and Russell Pinkston. Elizabeth McNutt, flute; Esther Lamneck, clarinet. Ravello. $16.99.

A John Williams Celebration. Itzhak Perlman, violin; Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. C Major DVD. $24.99.

By the Red: Folk Songs from the Red River Valley. Mel Braun, baritone; Laura Loewen, piano; Fred Redekop, mandolin; Jay Taylor, bass; Greg Gardner, percussion. Big Round Records. $14.99.

Light of Gold: Cappella SF Christmas. Cappella SF conducted by Ragnar Bohlin. Delos. $16.99.

     Anthology audio projects are inevitably searches for variety, hopefully within an overall context that makes both aural and intellectual sense to listeners. The context of Navona’s CD entitled Moto Continuo (not to be confused with moto perpetuo, although clearly related to it) is not, however, a singular one. Five of the six works are for piano trio – but the sixth, Robert Fleisher’s Ma Mère, is for cello solo. Three of the six tie into and comment upon earlier pieces: Fleisher’s is based on Jeux de Vagues from Debussy’s La mer, with Fleisher’s title and Debussy’s making a French pun (“mother” and “sea”); Brian Noyes’ Piano Trio is titled as being “in the spirit of Ave Maris Stella,” a 1975 piece by Peter Maxwell Davies; and Osias Wilenski’s Variations for Trio is based on a portion of Beethoven’s Große Fuge, Op. 130. One piece on this CD ties to an earlier work by the composer himself: Nicholas Anthony Asciotti’s Adirondack Tableau, adapted from his earlier Adirondack Suite. The remaining two works relate to the natural world but not to specific other pieces of music: Diane Jones’ Three Songs briefly portrays a city street scene, a mountain tableau, and a “Sky Song,” in which a spirit watches from above; and John A. Carollo’s Piano Trio No. 1 was inspired by the terrorist murders of September 11, 2001. Such a mixed bag of music produces, not surprisingly, mixed responses. Fleisher’s piece is rather incomprehensible for anyone who is not intimately familiar with the Debussy on which it is based. Noyes’ is less directly tied to the Davies piece in whose spirit it was written, although knowledge of that work certainly makes the rhetorical gestures of Noyes easier to comprehend. Wilenski’s trio stands well enough on its own so that even listeners not highly familiar with Beethoven’s Große Fuge can appreciate it – although Noyes’ second movement, in particular, gains in clarity if listeners do know the Beethoven. Asciotti’s piece is not particularly evocative of the Adirondacks, or indeed of any specific landscape, and comes across better if heard as absolute rather than image-focused music. Jones’ work, on the other hand, does make a genuine effort to reflect specific places, although it is rather obvious in doing so. And Carollo’s trio, whatever its impetus, is a work of some depth and strength, a touch long-winded but generally effective. This CD will be of most interest to people familiar with Trio Casals, which performs all the works with fine individual and ensemble playing.

     The two-CD Ravello set whose major work, 100 Views of Mt. Fuji, takes up even more than the 100 minutes its title claims (closer to 106), is really only for people who know the art of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) beyond his most famous portrayal of a huge foreground wave with Mt. Fuji in the background. In terms of pieces intended to evoke specific images, Robert J. Martin’s stands out for the precision with which he tries to translate Hokusai art into sound: every movement of Martin’s work bears a title that listeners must know in order to comprehend what the composer is trying to portray (A Fast Ascent, Purple, Evening in the Shadow of Fuji, Swimming Through Moonlight, Different Worlds, Lanterns Moving on the Mountain, and so on – and on). Listening to the music without knowing the movements’ titles is a lost cause: nothing coming from the piano (which Shirley Blankenship plays with a fine mixture of strength and delicacy) actually sounds much like what the titles say, so listeners must familiarize themselves with those titles and then try to understand why the composer wrote particular pieces to go with particular scenes. Certainly 100 Views of Mt. Fuji is a highly ambitious work, but it is not a particularly engrossing one on a strictly musical basis – listeners must actively engage themselves in relating concrete portrayals of scenes rendered by Hokusai with the necessarily abstract impressions delivered by music, which Leonard Bernstein once famously pointed out “does not mean anything.” A similar relationship between concrete and abstract is called for in Martin’s much shorter stone & feather, whose title shows the composer’s intention of contrasting heavier and lighter musical elements. Also on this recording are two works by Neely Bruce. Homage to Seb is another contemporary piece that harks back to something much earlier, in this case to the music of Bach, which Bruce treats as an opportunity to explore atonality in much the way that Bach so assiduously investigated tonality. The work is rhythmically interesting, if not particularly profound. Bruce’s Improvisations is a set of 13 short pieces in which Bruce, like Martin in his tribute to Hokusai, tries to guide listeners in specific directions by presenting them with titles that are keys to what the music is supposed to portray: Frost into Flame, The Vast Night Brooded, Across the Summer Grain, The Feline Sea, etc. Bruce’s work, like Martin’s, does not really pin down the visual images evoked by the titles, but listeners willing to strain a bit to hear what the composer intends will find those titles to be reasonably helpful touchstones.

     The variety inherent in Tornado Project, a concept of composers Ricardo Climent and Paul Wilson, comes from the fact that all six pieces on Ravello’s new CD use the same basic sonic building blocks (flute, clarinet, and computer-generated sounds) and flow from the same foundational notion of winds and wood flying through the air. One of the keys in most of this music is that the instruments play against their inherent natures rather than in line with them: the clarinet, in particular, is a richly textured instrument with a particularly sonorous chalumeau lower region and a sometimes-uncanny ability to imitate the human voice – but in these works, it is generally thin, shrill, and given pointed (even pointillist) notes rather than the lyrical legato to which it more naturally gravitates. Using the computer to create the impression of chaos and color, all six composers here seem primarily interested in producing the same set of moods: now turbulent (like a windstorm), now ethereal (like a gentle breeze), now static, now eerie. The pieces sound different, to be sure, but not in any way distinctive enough for listeners uninvolved in the Tornado Project itself to choose one or more that stand apart from, much less above, the others. Perhaps this is just the sort of collaborative effort that Climent (who contributes Russian Disco) and Wilson (Beneath the Surface) intend. The other works here, all handled skillfully by Elizabeth McNutt and Esther Lamneck, are Robert Rowe’s Primary Colors, Andrew May’s Still Angry, Eric Lyon’s Trio for flute, clarinet, and computer, and Russell Pinkston’s e++. The Rowe and Pinkston pieces date to 2009, the other works to 2007, but all certainly fit within the Tornado Project concept. Listeners familiar with it will have a far greater sense of participating in this CD through listening to it than will ones who simply come to the disc, as it were, cold.

     There is, in fact, a coldness to a great deal of contemporary music, as there was to the self-proclaimed electronic music of the mid-20^th century and, indeed, to at least some twelvetone and aggressively atonal music dating back considerably further in time. This may be one reason that the overt, even overdone warmth of much film music proves irresistibly attractive not only to many listeners but also to many performers. The opening-night concert of the 2014/15 season of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was testimony to this attraction, offering an hour and a half of the decidedly tonal and very definitely warmly effusive music of John Williams. Yes, there is variety here, but it is the variety of the topics of the films for which Williams has written, not any significant variety in the orchestrations or the basic handling of melodic (very melodic) material in an entirely tonal universe. The new C Major DVD of this concert, which features enthusiastic playing by the orchestra under the always-enthusiastic Gustavo Dudamel and includes Itzhak Perlman making another of his many upbeat appearances, is a treat for fans of Schindler’s List, Fiddler on the Roof, Catch Me if You Can, Amistad and, emphatically, Star Wars. There is also a cleverly constructed occasional piece here called Soundings, in which Williams writes a work for the Walt Disney Concert Hall where this concert took place – and specifically designs some of the music to reverberate in a way that makes the hall itself seem to be a participant in the performance (which, in truth, every venue is, although normally not this explicitly). There is something facile about Williams’ music (and, as well, about some of Perlman’s playing and Dudamel’s conducting here) – yes, there is occasional depth to what Williams writes, but this music is mostly surface-level flash whose gestures are clever and calculated rather than motivated by any particularly deep impulse. Indeed, in a sense, all these works are occasional music, the occasions being the movies for which Williams created most of the pieces heard here. The familiar tunes will certainly be enjoyable for the films’ fans, and even the unfamiliar Soundings will lie comfortably in the ears of those who have not previously heard it. There is never anything challenging in Williams’ music, nor is there meant to be: it serves a specific purpose, and serves it well. The interviews offered on the DVD with Williams, Dudamel and Perlman tend to give the material more gravitas than it really deserves, but that is somewhat forgivable in the course of what is, after all, a “tribute” concert. Best to take neither the words nor the music itself too seriously.

     In the same way, the professed emotions of most folk music are not to be taken too seriously, even when delivered in exaggerated form (perhaps especially then). The 15 offerings on a new release from Big Round Records provide evidence of this. There is certainly a striving for variety here: although most tracks are songs sung by baritone Mel Braun, with fine piano accompaniment by Laura Loewen and interesting periodic interjections by Fred Redekop, Jay Taylor and Greg Gardner, there are some instrumentals to break things up (The Agony of the Dance, for instance, and Meet Big and Dinky, that being the name under which Redekop and Taylor perform on mandolin and bass), and some unexpected arrangements (Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie for soloist and chorus). Most listeners will likely be highly familiar only with Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie and Red River Valley: the remaining music contains some surprises. The intended setting of the disc is not the Red River Valley of Texas but that of Manitoba, Canada; as a result, the folk music presented, although some of it dovetails with U.S. “cowboy culture,” also includes material that is French Canadian, German Mennonite, Scots, and drawn from the aboriginal Métis people. The emotional compass of the works is not especially wide or deep, but these pieces certainly do draw, at least in a superficial way, on the things that make people human no matter where they live: love, sacrifice, exile, determination, and (perhaps above all) humor. Nine of the 15 tracks come from traditional sources, but whether the music has been around for centuries or was composed recently, it all sounds simple, straightforward, tuneful and easy to hear – lacking any particular profundity, perhaps, but all the more pleasing for not claiming to possess any. One notably successful Scotsman, Andrew Carnegie, once said, “There is little success where there is little laughter,” and certainly this CD cannot be said to lack that particular element of accomplishment.

     And how, then, does one seek variety and success in a 20-track release focused entirely on the same subject, Christmas, and sung a cappella throughout? Ragnar Bohlin, who founded Capella SF in 2014 and directs it on its new Delos recording, comes up with an intriguing approach by mixing not only languages (as on By the Red) but also musical time periods, works familiar and unfamiliar, and the secular with the sacred. To the pieces by notable composers (Praetorius’ Psallite unigenito, Britten’s Balulalow and This little babe) are added traditional sacred and worldly songs and even a spiritual (Go Tell It on the Mountain in Bohlin’s own arrangement). Silent Night is juxtaposed with Ding, dong! Merrily on high, and a CD that opens with Veni, veni, Emmanuel (also in a Bohlin arrangement) concludes 57 minutes later with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. There is even a piece composed especially for this choir and receiving its world première recording: Fredrik Sixten’s There is no rose (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the longest work on the disc). The singing is uniformly smooth, elegant and beautifully blended, whether the choir is holding forth in Latin or English, in centuries-old music or contemporary works. Although quite clearly a winter-season disc, this CD’s release in summer shows Bohlin’s determination to make Cappella SF a choir for all seasons – a clichéd notion that has more-than-usual applicability here. It is true that even when music is sung this well and varied as much as possible within its context, some listeners will find that the sameness of the choir’s overall sound wears on the ears a bit or blends into the background – although that can be a reason to enjoy the disc on several hearings rather than straight through. Christmas music itself is not universally appealing, nor is a cappella singing, so Light of Gold is by definition intended for some listeners and not for others. Yet it will certainly bring joy, if not to the world, then to quite a few music lovers within it.