(++++) MOZART, AMONG OTHERS

Idil Biret Concerto Edition, Volume 6: Mozart—Piano Concertos Nos. 13 and 17. Idil Biret, piano; London Mozart Players conducted by Patrick Gallois. IBA. $9.99.

C.P.E. Bach: Hamburg Symphonies, Wq 182 and Wq 183. Kammerorchester ‘Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’ conducted by Hartmut Haenchen. Brilliant Classics. $11.99 (2 CDs).

Mozart: Davide Penitente. Christiane Karg, soprano; Marianne Crebassa, mezzo-soprano; Stanislas de Berbeyrac, tenor; Salzburger Bachchor and Les Musiciens du Louvre conducted by Marc Minkowski; Académie équestre de Versailles with stage direction and horse dressage by Bartabas (Clément Marty). C Major DVD. $24.99.

     Mozart’s music stands so far above that of virtually all his contemporaries – excepting only Haydn – that it is easy to forget that he was only one among many highly regarded composers of his time. Indeed, he was not sufficiently well thought of to avoid the financial difficulties that plagued him late in his brief life. Yet time after time, hearing Mozart’s music today, listeners must marvel that so much of lasting value was produced by one man who flourished within such a brief period. The Idil Biret Concerto Edition turns to Mozart for its sixth volume, showcasing both the composer and the considerable skill that Biret, although usually considered a specialist more in Romantic music than in the Classical era, brings to the performance of Mozart’s music. Unlike a large number of the many releases from IBA, the Concerto Edition CDs offer recent readings – in this case, recorded in December 2014. That means Biret was 73 when she made this recording, but a listener would never know that from the bright, limpid readings and light pianistic touch she brings to the music, or the apparently effortless way in which she weaves her piano solos into and about the London Mozart Players under Patrick Gallois’ direction. Interestingly, the text on the back of the CD contains reviews of Biret’s Mozart performances dating to early 1953 (when she was 11 years old), 1963 and 1980 – all quite irrelevant to the music heard on this disc, except insofar as they show that she has indeed had a career-long devotion to and excellence in Mozart’s music. Certainly she handles the Piano Concertos Nos. 13 and 17 with firm understanding, both intellectual and technical, and with a wonderful sense of the music’s ebb and flow, its structure and its emotional evocations. Neither of these bright major-key concertos (in C and G, respectively) is among Mozart’s most profound: both have central movements marked Andante, for one thing, although Biret takes the one in No. 17 rather more slowly than that. But if there are more than a few hints of the galant style here, there are also significant ways in which the works call on resources both pianistic and emotional; and Biret, who among other things is a very cerebral and thoughtful performer, has certainly delved into the music deeply and come up with performances offering a fine sense of flow, plenty of bounce where that is appropriate, and periods of thoughtfulness within individual movements (even though no entire movement in either concerto is especially inward-looking). These are the performances of a pianist comfortable in her knowledge of the music, sure in her technique, and certain in a lifetime’s study of a composer who repays dedication by inviting performers and listeners alike to find new things to explore each time his music is heard. The CD is a fine addition to a series showcasing the ways in which a mature Biret both reflects and expands upon the Biret who, when younger, amazed so many who heard her with her fine technique and the depth of her musical understanding.

     The Mozart concertos date from 1783 and 1784, respectively, and an appreciation of just how far above his contemporaries Mozart stood is furthered by listening to some of the highly popular music with which Mozart’s competed – such as the works of C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788). The four symphonies “with 12 obbligato parts,” Wq183, date to 1776, and the six for strings, Wq182, to 1773. They were thus part of the musical scene just when Mozart was making his way in it, although C.P.E. Bach was based in Hamburg (with a publisher in Leipzig), while Mozart’s venues were Salzburg and Vienna. If a direct comparison is therefore impossible, or at any rate unnecessary, the fact remains that these very well-made Bach symphonies, of which the composer was understandably proud, sound like the products of a much earlier time than Mozart’s. All 10 symphonies are in three movements (the Berlin School of the time, to which C.P.E. Bach adhered in these works, considered minuets too light for this serious form), and all last between nine and 12 minutes, about the length of most Vivaldi concertos. Yet these works are not throwbacks: the Sturm und Drang spirit appears frequently (although only one of the symphonies, No. 5 from Wq182, is in a minor key), and the intense flow of ideas and strong dynamic contrasts mark the works strongly and help explain their considerable popularity in their time. These are very well-made pieces indeed, and receive enthusiastic and knowing performances from the Kammerorchester ‘Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’ under Hartmut Haenchen on a new Brilliant Classics release. Yet these pieces, for all their pleasantries, structural elegance and occasional surprises (notably in swiftly changing dynamics), seem to come from a world and time quite distant from Mozart’s. They represent one direction in which music was going in the Classical era, and one to which many people – indeed, perhaps most – gravitated. But they do not hold a proverbial candle to the expansiveness and emotional involvement offered by the works of Mozart (and, for that matter, Haydn): C.P.E. Bach’s symphonies are not so much a look backward as a look ahead toward a dead end, while Mozart’s orchestral music was largely responsible for opening up entire new vistas.

     Just how far to take that newness, though, was and remains a matter of opinion – and taste. The days of performing Mozart with 100-plus-piece orchestras are largely over, but the impetus to “improve” or rethink his works, particularly the less-known ones, remains very much with us. A perfect example of this is the horse-enhanced (or at any rate horse-focused) presentation of Davide Penitente presented during Mozart Week 2015 in Salzburg. This oratorio is something of a curiosity. Mozart was commissioned to write it in 1785 by the Viennese Society of Musicians. It was to be for a Lenten benefit concert, and that left Mozart short of time. So he did something as unusual for him as it was common for Handel: he recycled some of his earlier music. The Kyrie and Gloria from the unfinished Mass in C Minor became part of this oratorio, which uses both the penitential and joyful psalms of David. The choruses of Davide Penitente are particularly noteworthy, as are two new solo arias, A te, fra tanti affanni (“In you, amid such tribulation”) and Tra l’oscure ombre funeste (“Amid the dark grievous shadows”), both of which open with long, expressive sections that are followed by faster ones requiring considerable vocal virtuosity. Marc Minkowski leads the soloists, chorus and Les Musiciens du Louvre adeptly, bringing out the sumptuous woodwind writing particularly well, although the brass is not always entirely together. But the primary focus of the performance, and of the C Major DVD on which it is now available, is an equestrian one. It takes place in a summer-opera venue called the Felsenreitschule, which dates to 1693 and whose name, “Stone Riding School,” points both to the way it is carved into a cliff and to its original purpose. Given the venue’s origin, the equestrian displays organized by Bartabas (the performing name of horse trainer and impresario Clément Marty) make sense. But only in that regard. Davide Penitente has nothing whatsoever to do with horses, and it might as well have been staged as a ballet as been offered with horses and riders. In fact, the prancing and trotting of the horses is somewhat balletic here, but none of it fits with the music in any meaningful way. The best use of horses comes in the fast-paced chorus Cantiam le glorie (“Let us sing the glories”), where the riders seem almost to be dancing on horseback as their mounts become part of the scene. Clearly intended as an unusual and dramatic visual spectacle, this Davide Penitente is certainly a treat for horse lovers – but for lovers of Mozart, not so much. This DVD is a (+++) release with a very specific target audience – a presentation that shows how well Mozart can stand up under significant reinterpretation, but that does not really add any understanding or significance to the beauties that Mozart himself built into his score.

(++++) GIVING WEIGHTY TOPICS A LIGHT TOUCH

Boy, Were We Wrong about the Human Body! By Kathleen V. Kudlinski. Illustrated by Debbie Tillie. Dial. $16.99.

Dear Santa, Love, Rachel Rosenstein. By Amanda Peet and Andrea Troyer. Illustrated by Christine Davenier. Doubleday. $17.99.

     As in the other “science then and science now” books in the Boy, Were We Wrong… series by Kathleen Kudlinski and Debbie Tillie, there is a pleasant mixture of amusement and knowledge in Boy, Were We Wrong about the Human Body! This series is formulaic, but in a good way: families can be sure that each entry is carefully researched and presented in a way that draws young readers in through amusing text and illustrations and then gives them facts in a straightforward manner. The difficulty that Kudlinski and Tillie face, for the most part successfully, lies in the necessity of not laughing at or mocking the wrong notions they present: people had good reasons to believe what we now know to be untrue, and that is why so many incorrect ideas persisted for hundreds or even thousands of years. Indeed, at the end of the latest book, Kudlinski reminds readers that “our current ideas about the human body may someday seem just as strange as the mummies of long-ago Egypt” – a welcome dose of scientific modesty. The main point of the book, though, is to highlight ways in which scientific knowledge has advanced over the centuries – for example, from Plato’s belief that the eyes shoot rays to gather images of objects, to Persian physician Rāzī’s discovery of how the eyes respond to light rather than emitting rays, to modern understanding of how the pupil, retina, optic nerve and brain function together when we look at something. Even when discussing a “boy, were they wrong!” notion – such as the idea that because bloodletting helped reduce the swelling of bruises, it would work for all sorts of illnesses – Kudlinski provides perspective by pointing out that “sometimes, we still use the ancient ideas that work, like acupuncture to ease pain or leeches to shrink swelling.” Throughout the book, concepts that can be difficult to understand are explained clearly by Kudlinski, while Tillie’s illustrations do a great deal to keep the information flow from seeming too heavy – starting with a dedication-page picture of a skeleton walking along and chatting with a boy and girl. Tillie’s facing-page views of an imagined medieval science-fair exhibit on “Thee [sic] four humors” and a modern one on water and vitamins are particularly well-contrasted, while the simplified views of X-rays, CAT and PET scans, and ultrasound provide young readers with solid grounding in what these modern medical visualizations show. Like other books in this series, this one is only a superficial introduction to complex material: the references given on the last page are a good place to start getting more-in-depth information.

     Feelings, not information, are the problem in Dear Santa, Love, Rachel Rosenstein. Here, Amanda Peet and Andrea Troyer – abetted by warm and pleasant illustrations by Christine Davenier – explore the sadness of not fitting in through a story about a little Jewish girl who really, really likes Christmas and wants to celebrate it. “Being Jewish was fun most of the time” for Rachel Rosenstein, Peet and Troyer write, but at Christmastime, “Rachel felt like a kid in a candy store with no mouth.” The religious aspects of Christmas are nowhere mentioned here (although the religious elements of Jewish celebrations are): what Rachel misses are the bright lights, the celebratory atmosphere and the anticipation of Santa’s visit. Rachel is determined to have some sort of Christmas, although her family insists, in rather callous terms, that that is not going to happen. Rachel tries writing to Santa, making her own Christmas decorations to go with the Hanukkah ones already displayed in the house, and even talking with Santa at the mall during a shopping trip with a Christmas-celebrating friend. But of course Rachel gets nothing for Christmas, not even a family-togetherness day, since her mom works at a hospital and has to go there until dinnertime. Rachel’s feeling of being left out of all the fun persists when the family goes out for Chinese food, “to the Chinese place they went to every Christmas” – until she sees some other non-Christmas-celebrating families eating there, including ones who mark Chinese New Year and others who celebrate Diwali. Rachel realizes that Christmas is only one among all the “many great holidays in the world,” and finally feels better – although, to the authors’ credit, still “a tiny bit bad” at the end, when she leaves the restaurant and observes just how festive everything is. A sensitive and nonjudgmental approach to the issue of being Jewish at a time of a major Christian celebration with strong and omnipresent secular elements, Dear Santa, Love, Rachel Rosenstein would have been even better if Rachel’s family, in recognition of how young she is, had allowed her a compromise of some sort, as the family of one of Rachel’s friends does – or if the absolute refusal to “give in” to Rachel’s hopes had been accompanied by a better explanation than her grandfather’s glib “you can’t sit on two horses with one behind.” Still, for Jewish families determined to have nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas, even in its most secular manifestations, this is a book that can help young children feel less left out than they otherwise would, while assuring them that it is all right to feel a little bit sad as non-participants in all the fun they see others having.

(++++) TAKING ADVENTURES SERIOUSLY, OR NOT

The Last Kids on Earth. By Max Brallier. Illustrated by Douglas Holgate. Viking. $13.99.

TodHunter Moon, Book Two: SandRider. By Angie Sage. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $17.99.

     Let us stipulate at the start that The Last Kids on Earth is utterly ridiculous, ill-plotted (almost without plot), tremendously silly and, oh yes, utterly ridiculous. It is nevertheless a delightfully goofy take on end-of-the-world stories, zombie-and-monster novels, and all sorts of post-apocalyptic fiction. Yes, “delightfully goofy.” The central character, 13-year-old Jack Sullivan, has survived the never-explained Monster Apocalypse intact and has kept himself going by thinking of the end times in which he is now living as a video game. He sets himself goals, attains them, and gives himself points. The goals involve such typically disgusting characters as zombies, Dozers (“straight-up GIANT MONSTERS”), Winged Wretches (which are sort of like mutated pterodactyls), and the occasional Octo-Beast and Stone Tower Monster. There is no explanation, zero, zilch, about how and why the Monster Apocalypse occurred (42 days before the book starts), and there is almost nothing about Jack’s response to it that makes an iota of sense. For example, he uses a “Louisville Slicer,” a sharpened, broken baseball bat, to fight most monsters, but a hockey stick to fight zombies because they used to be people and the hockey stick is somehow a more humane weapon.

     Jack is an orphan who has lived in a series of foster homes, so it does make sense that he clings tightly to his current living space, a treehouse he built and equipped (rather miraculously and, again, without explanation) with all sorts of offensive and defensive weaponry. But that is about as far as Max Brallier takes the logic of this initial book of a series. Of course, being a book for preteens and young teenagers, The Last Kids on Earth must have a group of protagonists, not just one, and they must be well-balanced ethnically and in gender to accommodate political correctness and the expectations of book publishers. So to the extent that it has a plot, this series opener is all about how the team gets put together. Jack’s best friend, Quint, is an African-American genius and science nerd who comes up with all sorts of neat anti-monster potions and plans. The middle-school bully, Dirk, is dull-witted and super-strong and looks like a bulked-up adult, but he has a change of heart about Jack and Quint after the whole apocalypse thing and becomes one of the team. And then there is the attractive Latina whom Jack considers “the love interest,” June Del Toro, who turns out not to be any sort of damsel in distress when the three boys finally locate her. And a team needs a mascot, so of course there is one here: a monstrous dog (no explanation of why it is the only non-dangerous monster) that Jack names (what else?) Rover.

     What makes The Last Kids on Earth better than most of the other utterly ridiculous books of its ilk is its Douglas Holgate illustrations, which amplify what cleverness there is in Brallier’s writing and introduce a lot more enjoyment. Brallier comes up with the idea of a “zombie ball,” for example – a kind of squashed-together, round thing with zombie parts sticking out all over – but it is Holgate’s picture that really makes the concept work. When Jack first tries to communicate with Rover, the best part of the scene is Holgate’s image of a five-armed Jack (that is, Jack gesturing all over the place, as if he has five arms, in traditional comic-book style) while a sort-of-smiling Rover stares out of the page and over Jack’s head as Jack yells “Murgleblargleburghh!!!!” The chief monster, which Jack names Blarg (and, later, Acid Blarg), is a 40-foot-tall terror because of the way Holgate depicts him. And the way Holgate brings Jack’s imagination to life is wonderful: we see “Quint Baker – The Best Friend” fully outfitted for the role, and Jack casting himself as “The Hero,” and a scene in which Jack imagines June surrounded by monsters and cowering while begging to be saved by “post-apocalyptic action hero Jack Sullivan,” and much more. And then there are Jack’s photos – he was the school newspaper photographer – which include, among other things, the “Doin’-Dangerous-Stuff-in-the-School-Montage” and a closeup of Blarg’s eye that provides a clue to the monster’s weakness. This is all, well, utterly ridiculous, but the pacing is so good and the character interactions so much better than usual in books of this type that The Last Kids on Earth manages to be pretty awesome, almost in spite of itself. And that, not the attempt at a damsel-in-distress rescue, is really, as Jack would say, “the ULTIMATE Feat of Apocalyptic Success!”

     Far more serious – although it does have its moments of humor – is the second book in the TodHunter Moon trilogy, SandRider. This series is designed for readers who longed for a return to the world of Septimus Heap, which Angie Sage developed through seven books from 2005 to 2013. The new trilogy takes place seven years after the earlier one and introduces numerous new characters while bringing existing ones back. In the first book, PathFinder, Alice TodHunter Moon – known as Tod – went on a mission to rescue her best friend, Ferdie, from the evil Lady. Tod was assisted in her quest by Ferdie’s brother, Oskar; the two received help from Septimus, now ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and from Septimus’ predecessor, Ex-ExtraOrdinary Wizard Marcia Overstrand. Arrayed against them were the Lady and her brother, the Darke Sorcerer Oraton-Marr; to succeed, Tod had to discover her own identity and develop her abilities as a PathFinder, which specifically meant finding her way through Magykal paths known as the Ancient Ways. Now, in SandRider, Tod is on assignment to get the Egg of the Orm from the Desert of Singing Sands before the egg hatches and the baby Orm imprints on Oraton-Marr and gives him so much Magyk that his evil plans will be unstoppable. This is a fairly typical type of quest in fantasy novels and is one in which Tod is, unsurprisingly, helped by Ferdie and Oskar. Sage paces the book with her usual skill, but it is not a good entry point for people unfamiliar with the world of Septimus Heap, and in fact the whole TodHunter Moon sequence seems intended for people who not only remember the earlier series but also are glad to have frequent references to it. For example, “The Queen, the Chief Hermetic Scribe and the ExtraOrdinary Wizard looked at one another, each remembering times when they were younger and had been in the middle of all kinds of trouble. Then all things had seemed possible, but now that they were older, nothing seemed possible. They weren’t sure if they liked being older very much.” This slight hint of uncertainty, even melancholy, pervades SandRider in scenes featuring characters from the earlier series, and actually gives the book more depth than it would have as a simple adventure tale. But the adventure is its primary reason for being, and of course it ends with Oraton-Marr and the Lady defeated – for now – and the baby Orm imprinting on someone, or something, other than the evil wizard. The difficulties of the search for the egg, and the twists after the Orm hatches, are not particularly surprising – it is obvious from the start that the Orm is not going to be allowed to imprint on Oraton-Marr – but the action is well handled by Sage, whose juggling of characters and actions is as skillful as always. Nevertheless, SandRider is a (+++) book, fully comprehensible only to readers who have already read PathFinder and completely enjoyable only for those well-versed in the characters and Magyk of the Septimus Heap books. SandRider has its share of exciting moments, but like other middle books of trilogies, it neither starts in an entirely engaging way nor ends conclusively. Hopefully the third TodHunter Moon book, which will be called StarCatcher, will sum up both this series and its relationship to the earlier one well enough so readers will be fully satisfied with the 10-book double-series total and the adventures of the characters in Sage’s Magykal world.

(+++) DOING DERRING-DO

Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent. By Simon Read. Da Capo. $26.99.

     Those who simply cannot get enough of all things Churchillian will find themselves entertained by Simon Read’s exploration of the courageous (and foolhardy) adventures (and antics) of a headstrong and supremely self-confident Winston Churchill in his 20s, when he reported on – and participated in – a number of the regional conflicts plaguing the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Saving others’ lives, often risking his own, being imprisoned and escaping, and always writing and drinking and smoking cigars, young Churchill, as portrayed by Read, may well remind some readers of Ernest Hemingway – or, more accurately, the later-born Hemingway’s exploits may remind some readers of Churchill’s.

     The wars of this time period were conflicts of empire, with the British Empire at its greatest extent and stretched to (but not beyond) the breaking point by regional eruptions in South Africa, the Sudan, India and elsewhere. “Peace was not conducive to young Churchill’s longing for adventure,” Read says at the outset, and then embarks on an extended recounting of Churchill’s activities on and about multiple battlefields, using Churchill’s own letters and reports from the front as major sources. Certainly Churchill showed himself brave, even gallant, time and again; and he was also given to grand gestures and some surprising actions. Imprisoned by the Boers, he escaped and left behind a letter beginning, “I have the honor to inform you that as I do not consider that your Government have any right to detain me as a military prisoner, I have decided to escape from your custody,” and concluding, “Regretting that I am unable to bid you a more ceremonious or personal farewell.” This would seem outlandish, even laughable, were it not so obviously sincere and so indicative of Churchill’s outsize personality as it was much later to manifest itself in his greatest role, as Great Britain’s prime minister during World War II.

     However, Churchill’s activities – some might consider them shenanigans – did not win him universal praise. That escape from the Boers, for example, was supposed to include two other men, but they could not follow him immediately and urged him to return until a better time. Instead, he left on his own and later wrote about the details of his escape – leading some prisoners to state angrily that he had thus prevented others from using the same means of escape and had, indeed, abandoned his fellows.

     Churchill was nothing if not controversial – in later years as well as the earlier ones chronicled in Read’s book. Read, however, is primarily interested in presenting an adventure story, and he does this by repeatedly writing as if he was present at the events: “With blood on his mind, Churchill reached for his Mauser pistol, only to discover he had left it in the engine. He cursed and briefly contemplated running.” “Churchill sat up, his body aching.” “His lungs burning, he pressed himself against the side of the embankment.” “Churchill, cursing his luck and his blasted horse, turned and ran for his life.” This type of you-are-there writing is undeniably exciting, but whether it offers readers the truth or only verisimilitude is an open question. It is, however, worth noting that this time period was one of grand gestures in war: Read quotes one British officer who, upon seeing some men of his command offering to give up their position, stormed up to the place where a white flag had been raised and shouted, “I’m in command here. Take your men back to hell, sir. I allow no surrender.”

     Read describes Churchill as “a social animal who thrived on being the center of attention,” and certainly his activities and his reporting from war zones support this. “We soon had a capital loud noise,” Churchill wrote in describing one artillery battle, “which I think is a most invigorating element in an attack.” Self-aggrandizement aside, though, Churchill was certainly brave in the face of significant personal danger – and he used his dispatches from war zones to hone a writing style that would serve him well when, decades later, he wrote his own superb six-volume account of World War II. Indeed, it could be argued that young Churchill’s experiences in war helped prepare him for leadership of his nation in wartime, and Read, writing in his Epilogue about Churchill’s later life, makes this point: “Certainly in his long career Churchill was wrong about many things, but not when it came to German rearmament. He spoke from experience, knowing full well the horrors of war from his years spent as a correspondent and his brief time on the Western Front.” Read spends little time on this later, better-known material, which has been written about so frequently by so many others (and perhaps this is just as well, since this section is a bit slipshod, to the point that Hitler’s first name is misspelled “Adolph”). Instead, Read offers a focus on the earlier, less-known elements of Churchill’s life, presenting them with an eye to excitement rather than in any attempt at psychological analysis or placement of Churchill’s war experiences within their historical context. The result is that Winston Churchill Reporting is a fast-paced, novelistic book that provides few insights into Churchill’s inner life but a great deal of intriguingly detailed material on where he went and what he did in his youth that would, in the main, serve him and his nation extraordinarily well in the years to come.

(++++) KNOWING THE UNKNOWN

Soler: Harpsichord Sonatas Nos. 1-120 (Padre Samuel Rubio edition). Barbara Harbach, harpsichord. MSR Classics. $149.95 (14 CDs).

     No one knows what Padre Antonio Francisco Javier José Soler Ramos (1729-1783) looked like: he lived in religious seclusion essentially throughout his life, and no portraits of him are known to exist. No one knows how many compositions he wrote: there appear to have been around 500, but there are so many missing manuscripts, conflicting notations and repetitions among his works, or those attributed to him, that there is no consensus. No one knows how many keyboard sonatas he produced: there were probably about 130, but again, there is simply no way to sort through all the uncertainties and inconsistencies and find out. No one knows what instrument or instruments he wrote his keyboard sonatas for: certainly the harpsichord makes sense for most of them, but some movements’ designs seem to point to the fortepiano or even the organ. No one knows whether he studied with Domenico Scarlatti, to whom he makes reference in a treatise and whose work Soler’s sometimes, but by no means always, seems to resemble. No one even knows whether to deem Soler a composer of the late Baroque or early Classical period, because his sonatas straddle the eras in so many ways that it is impossible to assign him to just one time – assuming the sonatas attributed to him are in fact by him.

     With so much unknown, it is a relief to point out some things that are known, of which the primary one is that Soler’s keyboard sonatas are absolutely wonderful pieces of music. By turns balanced and poised, short and long, with developed themes or straightforwardly repeated ones, with unusual or typical modulations, in single movements or multiple ones, written simply or requiring considerable virtuosity, these are gems of music of their time – to whatever time they are considered to belong. Individual ones are occasionally heard in recital, and groups are recorded once in a while, but the chance to listen to a more-or-less-complete set of the sonatas is a rare one and, when the works are as well-played as they are by Barbara Harbach, is not to be missed.

     This MSR Classics release is a joy from start to finish. There are several editions of Soler’s sonatas and several ways to present them. Harbach, who is a composer of some finesse as well as a performer of considerable skill, chooses the edition of Padre Samuel Rubio and presents the 120 sonatas in that edition in numerical order. This is as good an approach as any: some sonatas are surely left out, some of the included ones repeat within others, and the organization of Rubio’s edition is not immediately apparent, since none of Soler’s sonatas can be dated precisely, but Harbach’s cycle gives a pleasant orderliness to the Soler sonatas that they do not otherwise possess.

     Indeed, because the sonatas in the Rubio edition (and other editions) are arranged in somewhat helter-skelter fashion, the decision to present them in numerical order gives listeners a chance to hear just how wide a variety of sounds and techniques Soler’s sonatas offer. For instance, a graceful and decidedly old-fashioned three-and-a-half-minute sonata such as No. 37, which sounds as if may be the earliest or at any rate one of the earliest of all (as Haydn’s Symphony No. 37 may be his earliest, despite the number), is followed within a few minutes by No. 40 in G, a seven-minute piece whose sound and structure appear to come much more clearly from the Classical time period. Elsewhere, sonatas may be presented as pairs, providing back-to-back examples of differing forms of Soler’s creativity – as, for instance, in the two E-flat sonatas Nos. 41 and 42. In other cases, a single-movement binary-form sonata (these Scarlatti-like constructions are the most common in Soler’s work), such as No. 45 in G, presents a pleasant surprise and a different way of looking at and listening to the same material when it reappears later as part of a multi-movement work – in this case, as a portion of the third movement of No. 94.

     Harbach performs the Soler sonatas on a modern harpsichord modeled after an 18^th-century French one, and the instrument suits her admirably careful attention to detail and extreme care in phrasing very well indeed. Once in a while, it would be nice to hear her cut loose a bit more, but Harbach’s primary concerns are careful pacing and close attention to ornamentation (including its use during repeated sections, as is appropriate for the time period); and it has to be said that she makes some of the sonatas exceptionally exciting (the flamenco-style No. 48, for example, is splendid, and the second movement of No. 67 is downright perky). The harpsichord sound is big and close – the instrument seems to fill the whole sonic environment – and while this makes the individual works highly effective and very involving, it also makes them difficult to listen to in long stretches. Indeed, trying to consume this entire set in just a few listening sessions would be a mistake on multiple levels, not the least of which would be a kind of aural exhaustion: the sonatas run a total of nearly 17½ hours. A full appreciation of Soler, and of Harbach’s exceptionally perceptive approach to his music, really requires listening to only a bit of this music at any one time. This will also help with yet another unknown, that being what Soler meant by the word “sonata.” There is little in these pieces resembling a sonata as we now understand the term; they are certainly not in what we know as “sonata form.” Many, perhaps most, were written for instructional purposes: one thing we do know about Soler is that he was harpsichord tutor of the Infante Don Gabriel. But like everything else in these works, this information helps in understanding some elements (such as some of the sonatas’ technical requirements) without clarifying others (such as their expressive elements).

     The reality is that much will remain unknown about Soler and his music: sources of extensive information on someone who lived virtually his entire life in monastic seclusion simply do not exist. In a way, though, this lack of information is liberating, since it requires performers and listeners alike to deal with Soler’s works without the distraction of biography, without considering in any way the sense in which they may have reflected his life or his everyday secular concerns. One of the best things in Harbach’s Soler cycle – among many – is the ease with which her meticulous playing makes it possible to immerse oneself in Soler’s music, to absorb it and be absorbed into it, to hear its flow and accept its beauties at face value, and thus to be all the more impressed when the composer throws in something unexpected, such as minuets in contrasting tempos or “intento” movements that are something like free-form fugues (theoretically a contradiction in terms, but not so here). This is an unusual and most welcome set, packed with pieces that directly reflect Spain (such as Nos. 15 and 32), ones in unusual keys (Nos. 22, 23, 88 and 110 in D-flat), ones requiring impressive cross-hand playing (Nos. 10 and 108), and ones packed with grace and beauty and delightful style – whatever style one chooses to call it. Harbach is a wonderful advocate for this music, and the music itself is wonderful on so many levels and in so many ways that this Soler collection is flat-out treasurable. It is safe to predict that it will amply repay many listenings over many years.

(+++) GAINS AND LOSSES IN WORDS AND NOTES

Robert Aldridge: Keillor Songs; Jorge Martín: A Cuban in Vermont; Glen Roven: Two Millay Songs from “Poetic License”; Herschel Garfein: The Divine Image. Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano; Myra Huang, piano. GPR Records. $14.99.

Frances White: She Lost Her Voice, That’s How We Knew. Kristin Norderval, soprano; Elizabeth Brown, shakuhachi. Ravello. $14.99.

Masatora Goya: Dream of Sailing and other chamber music. Ravello. $16.99.

McCormick Percussion Group: Plot—Music for Unspecified Instrumentation by Stuart Saunders Smith, Robert Erickson, Johanna Magdalena Beyer, James Tenney, Herbert Brün and Earle Brown. Ravello. $14.99 (2 CDs).

     The art song is alive and well, or at least something approximating the traditional lied is alive and well, in the hands and minds of contemporary composers – that is, it may be alive and well, unless composers decide to stretch its concept to and beyond the breaking point, thus creating a kind of “anti-art” art song. The more-traditional art-song approach comes through effectively in four works, two of them newly commissioned, sung by Jennifer Rivera on a new GPR Records release. One of the new song sets, Robert Aldridge’s Keillor Songs, is particularly effective in its echoes of the lieder tradition coupled with Americanizations that flow naturally from Keillor’s poetry. There are five songs here: “Guardian,” “Table Grace,” “Unification,” “Fatherhood” and “Wedding March.” All have the combination of straightforward expression and homespun wisdom for which Keillor is known, and Rivera and pianist Myra Huang perform them with just the right blend of simplicity and expressiveness. Equally effective, in a different way, are the five songs by Jorge Martín to his own lyrics. A Cuban in Vermont, a title that refers both to Martin himself and to the general experience of an immigrant in a new land, includes “Frutas,” “Sol y Brisas,” “Nocturno,” “Amor brujo” and “En el fin.” Naïve in expression but hinting at depths of feeling – notably in “Frutas,” which is written in a mixture of English and Spanish – the poems have the underlying theme that “your sweetness then is not your sweetness now,” conveyed by Martín in music that draws on Cuban style without ever being subservient to it. The other two song groupings on this disc are less immediately appealing. Glen Roven’s two Millay Songs are “Love Is Not All (Sonnet XXX)” and “An Ancient Gesture,” both set rather straightforwardly. Herschel Garfein’s seven-song cycle, The Divine Image – to poems by William Blake – is equally forthright, but the choice of especially well-known poems somewhat undercuts its effectiveness. This cycle, the second of the two newly commissioned works here, includes “The Tyger,” “The Divine Image,” “The Garden of Love,” “Eternity,” “Never Pain to Tell Thy Love,” “A Poison Tree,” and “Jerusalem.” Although the music is fine, it is scarcely revelatory – it is probably inevitable that contemporary Blake settings will be measured against William Bolcom’s masterly Songs of Innocence and of Experience and found wanting. Here, though, it is not only the music but also the poetry selected that makes this more of a surface-level work than it could be. Garfein could, for example, have used not only “The Divine Image” (from Songs of Innocence) but also its companion poem from Songs of Experience, “The Human Abstract.” As is, this Blake sequence never quite plumbs Blake’s depths either philosophically or musically – although here as throughout the CD, the performances are heartfelt and well-considered.

     At the opposite end of modern art-song creations are works such as Frances White’s She Lost Her Voice, That’s How We Knew, now available on a Ravello CD. Written for soprano, shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and electronic sounds, this is vocal music in which the vocalizing is essentially irrelevant – like a vocalise. Or, to put it more clearly, Kristin Norderval’s voice is not so much absent as it is present in a non-vocal way. This is essentially a theatrical work, a piece presenting sound more than one presenting what most listeners would regard as music. But it is theatrical without a script: there is no overt narrative, although there is a sort of interior monologue/dialogue/multi-logue, which is to say that Norderval’s voice represents a multitude of inner voices such as a singing voice, a voice of memory, a voice that has been silenced, and more. In addition to being the voices, Norderval listens to the voices, and her own voice is wrapped in non-vocal sounds that are intended to open the audience’s thoughts to multiple interpretations of the production, which was written and directed by Valeria Vasilevski. All this is oh-so-sincere and oh-so-self-referential and oh-so-avant-grade and oh-so-self-conscious. The production runs just 44 minutes, but seems much longer as it crawls from nowhere in particular to nowhere else in particular. Nordeval actually has a fine voice, capable of many nuances of feeling and expression, but even though her vocal contribution is crucial here and the sounds she makes (whether she is singing sounds or actual words) are often beautiful and always expressive, the whole production comes across as a compositional exercise in self-indulgence and self-importance. It constantly teases the ear with notions of comprehensibility, only to fall back again and again into meaninglessness.

     Masatora Goya’s Dream of Sailing is at something of the opposite extreme. Its basic topic is the same: the meaning of life and our own path within it. But the six chamber works on this new Ravello disc are all inspired by specific real-world matters: the life and death of the composer’s father. The specificity of the inspiration here stands in stark contrast to the intended generality (and thus hoped-for universality) of White’s work – but because Goya’s music deals with an aspect of the human condition to which listeners can readily relate, it reaches out more effectively than White’s more-abstract production. Goya’s father, Masahiro, was a marine engineer, so the ocean is a recurring element of this music, nearly omnipresent as background even though these are works without vocals and the presence of the sea must therefore be inferred rather than explicitly heard. The CD opens with Distance (2013) for solo viola (Carlos Boltes), a work intended as a meditation on death and the purpose of existence. Next is Dream of Sailing (2011) for alto flute (Melanie Chirignan) and guitar (Scott Hill), an imaginary final journey out to sea in a fading dawn. Inner Voice (2013) for flute and stomping (Chirignan) is in two movements, Impulse and Epiphany, the first bouncy and bright, the second longer and more percussive and rhythmically uneven. Next is Where It Begins, Where It All Ends (2014), for cello (Susan Mandel) and guitar (Kenji Haba) – another meditative and questioning work, but this time one that intends to carry listeners into contemplation of their place in the cosmos. Sound of Life (2013), for flute (Chirignan), viola (Conway Kuo) and guitar (Oren Fader), is the longest work on the disc, its four movements exploring elements of everyday life and ending with “Acalanto” (“Lullaby”) – which may, in this context, have to do with hoped-for peacefulness at life’s end. Finally, Sunset on the Hudson (2013) is a work for guitar solo (Fader) that picks up on some of the feelings of “Acalanto” and is intended to offer comfort and quiet at day’s (or life’s) end, but not without some feelings of uncertainty and concern. Several of these pieces are effective in and of themselves, but their connection to Gora’s father is mostly in Gora’s own mind: there is nothing in the works that connects listeners in general to Gora’s specific concerns and feelings, although some of the music does call up emotions such as warmth, worry, somberness, uncertainty, even loneliness. The music will not have the specificity of association for listeners to the CD that it has for Gora himself, but there is enough here that is affecting so that the overall emotional content of the material comes through, even if imprecisely.

     The emotions expressed and perceived are much more varied on the latest Ravello release from the McCormick Percussion Group. The two-CD set includes eight works by six composers. The pieces are Bones and Winter by Stuart Saunders Smith; Nine and a Half for Henry (and Wilbur and Orville) and Pacific Sirens by Robert Erickson; Percussion by Johanna Magdalena Beyer; Percussion Responses by James Tenney; Plot by Herbert Brün; and December 1952 by Earle Brown. The variegated instrumentation is much of the point in these works, with the ensemble constantly pushing the boundaries of percussion by using computer-generated scores, taped elements, improvisation and similar techniques. The nonmusical material sometimes fits very well: the two Erickson pieces both involve sounds such as engines and machinery, for example, although of course these works – which are from the 1960s – are merely drawing on a tradition dating back to Edgard Varèse, whose Amériques (1918-1921, revised 1927) and Ionisation (1929-1931) had long before explored similar territory. But the cleverness of the electronic and aleatoric elements is actually less interesting than some purely musical matters here, notably the inclusion of Percussion, which dates all the way back to 1935 and is one of only eight known percussion-ensemble works by Beyer (1888-1944). None of the computer-generated material, none of the fancy compositional systems, none of the forays into chance and other modernistic techniques really has much meaning unless it is put at the service of musical communication that actually reaches out to an audience and tells listeners something or involves them in some way. Beyer’s piece, which is in five short movements, shows how creativity and originality can communicate more effectively than all the tricks and electronics can. The McCormick Percussion Group plays everything on this release with its usual skill and enthusiasm, and listeners who simply want to hear a considerable amount of very well-performed percussion material will find this set a real bargain, with its two full hours of music. The fact is, though, that much of the best material here is the most traditionally constructed: the cleverness of computers and of works that never sound the same twice (because their page order is chosen by the musicians, who then improvise within the picked pages) is just that – cleverness. It does not effectively communicate in any specific way with an audience, even though it may be great fun for the performers tossing material back and forth among themselves.

(++++) THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING VISUAL

The Marvels. By Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $32.99.

Pearls Gets Sacrificed: A “Pearls Before Swine” Treasury. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.

     The story-presentation format invented by Brian Selznick in his brilliant The Invention of Huge Cabret is no longer new, having been used again by Selznick in Wonderstruck and now appearing for a third time in The Marvels. But the approach is, visually, as amazing and compelling as ever. Half of this more-than-660-page novel is drawings, all of them wordless or with a few words seen on, for example, a piece of paper – never in characters’ mouths. The drawings themselves tell the first part of the story with wonderfully cinematic pacing and tremendous impact, inviting readers to race along from page to page to find out just what is happening and what it all means. This is virtuoso storytelling, easy to get through and quick to absorb – and far more involving than illustrations are when they are merely adjuncts to a written tale or integrated into it in a form such as the graphic novel. There is nothing else quite like Selznick’s approach to The Marvels – except his use of the same approach twice before. But The Marvels is structurally different from the earlier books, being arranged as two separate stories – one visual, one in words – whose interconnectedness only gradually becomes clear. Thus, there is a mystery here, one that unites the entire book and appears to cover the years from 1766 (when the visual story begins) to 1990 (when the written one takes place). “Appears” is the operative word here, however, because as young Joseph Jervis – protagonist of the contemporary story – starts to unravel the oddities of the strange London home of his uncle, Albert Nightingale, inconsistencies begin to emerge along with connections that somehow do not quite tie together. Albert’s own reticence, unexplained until its source eventually comes out and clears up much of what is going on, is only one issue that Joseph faces. A runaway from school and from absent and uncommunicative parents, Joseph is also trying to figure out who he himself is, what his background is, where he belongs – the usual quests of a preteen in a mystery/adventure. But as The Marvels goes on, the revelations prove anything but usual. The entire first half of the book – that is, the visual part – is about a theatrical family known as the Marvels, which passes its love of Shakespearean acting down through generation after generation until, in 1900, young Leontes Marvel is banished from the theater when it turns out he would rather draw than perform on stage. On the verge of boarding a ship for India, Leontes returns to the theater when he sees the glow of a fire, and he realizes what must have caused it, so he – there the visual story breaks off and the one in words begins. But this halt at a climax is scarcely a cheap trick – Selznick is too good for that. Readers will surely be disappointed at first, but as the modern, told-in-words story progresses, they will be drawn further and further into it and start to see how it connects with the older, told-in-pictures one. Or they will think they see the connections, but in fact, Selznick masterfully misdirects readers’ attention (and Joseph’s), so that when revelations finally occur, they come as genuine surprises.

     So far, so good – better than good. Unfortunately, the last part of the book does not live up to the wonderful buildup, even though it makes sense in terms of the novel’s overall structure – and the return of illustrative material at the end knits matters together very cleverly. Selznick is too determined here to write something meaningful, to question reality and make-believe, to look into the importance of storytelling itself, to explore ways in which fiction can be realer than reality. These are big aims, ones undertaken by many other authors in many works for adults and not often attempted in a book for young readers. The problem is that they overweigh The Marvels. It soon becomes clear that the title refers not only to the family introduced in the early part of the book but also to the marvelous aspects of storytelling itself, as well as to the marvelous things to be found in Uncle Albert’s house and – well, there are marvels aplenty here, rather too many for the book to be fully coherent. The intertwining of reality and make-believe extends to the creation of the book itself, as Selznick explains in an Afterword – but this is all rather abstruse and convoluted, and takes some of the joy out of following the story lines of The Marvels and learning how the various characters relate to each other. There is also a politically correct but narratively gratuitous inclusion of homosexuality in the book – with the narrative bent and twisted around the subject matter, because in the real world, the real real world in which Selznick created the book, homosexuality was a factor in the story whose elements Selznick modified for the novel. The Marvels is a wonderful read despite these flaws, thanks to a format that, although no longer new, is very far from stale. But there is already so much in the book that adding more and more and more to it as the narrative progresses makes it, in the end, far more unwieldy than it would be based on its structure and length alone.

     Part of the success of Selznick’s books lies in the way they defy expectations: readers expect a novel to be told primarily in words, so elevating pictures to an equal level of importance makes these books something special and unusual from the start. In another medium, comic strips, readers expect the visual elements to dominate – otherwise, why use the format at all? But a number of contemporary strips have art that is passable at best, and rely on words rather than pictures to make their points. The snarkiest of them is Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine, whose new oversize Treasury volume – containing the cartoons previously published in the collections Breaking Stephan and King of the Comics – continues this lawyer-turned-cartoonist’s approach of offering even more words than in the previous, smaller-size books. Whether those extra words, sprinkled among the reprinted strips, are reason enough to buy Pearls Gets Sacrificed is a matter of opinion. The remarks sometimes do provide interesting insights into the strip – at one point, Goat is seen reading a book about theoretical physics that Pastis says he actually read himself, adding, “Despite not understanding almost any of it, I really enjoyed it.” At other times, the comments relate to Pastis’ less-than-first-rate artistic abilities: “This is one of those strips where Rat’s snout is inexplicably long. I cannot explain that.” “It’s surprisingly hard to draw babies. They always end up looking like tiny old men.” At still other times, what Pastis says is silly, juvenile or both, as in several comments on his sister’s Jell-O molds and multiple remarks on a sequence in which cartoon Pastis is thrown out of his house by his wife – which, real-world Pastis assures readers, did not happen in real-world Pastis’ home.

     One strong argument for buying this book even if you already have the earlier collections is the cover of Pearls Gets Sacrificed, which is complex and hilarious (the back of the book shows some of the elements involved in creating it). The cover has real-world Pastis (not the cartoon version seen in the strip) about to be burned alive in Joan of Arc mode, standing – with cartoon Rat and Pig strapped to him – beneath a sign saying “Le Punster” (Pastis being notorious for the elaborate puns in Pearls Before Swine, some of which are actually funny). Crowded around the about-to-be-set-on-fire wood beneath the platform on which Pastis stands are various realistic humans and a whole batch of angry cartoon characters that Pastis has made fun of in his strip: Wanda from Baby Blues, Cathy from Cathy, Garfield, Duke from Doonesbury, Dilbert, Alice from Cul de Sac, Jason from FoxTrot, and several members of The Family Circus (with Jeffy, having followed his dotted line all over the place, carrying a burning torch on the back cover). The Pearls strips within Pearls Gets Sacrificed may put those who remember the past hilarity of Mad magazine in mind of the phrase, “the usual gang of idiots,” because that is what Pastis proffers here: lemmings repeatedly jumping off a cliff (yes, Pastis knows this does not really happen), inept crocodiles repeatedly failing to catch and consume Zebra, megalomaniacal Rat repeatedly abusing everyone and taking things out especially on sweet and gentle and not-very-bright Pig, educated but unfunny Goat repeatedly trying to set himself above all the riffraff, and so forth. Pastis’ art may not be the biggest draw (ha ha) of the strip, but his writing – which goes very well indeed with his peculiar characters – makes an extended visit to Pearls Before Swine worthwhile for anyone with a sufficiently offbeat sense of humor. And Pastis retains the ability, from time to time, to surprise readers with something genuinely touching – the more so because it is so unexpected. In Pearls Gets Sacrificed, a sequence that qualifies involves the always-chained small dog named Andy. He breaks his chain and escapes because he wants to see his father, who is dying in a hospital, but finds his dad snappish and uncommunicative to the very end – yet Andy gets a thoroughly surprising and uplifting message after the very end. Pastis never hesitates to deal with death – he kills off all sorts of characters in the strip, although he sometimes brings them back to life later – but this is a case where he actually handles the topic with sensitivity, something that is scarcely his hallmark. Pearls Gets Sacrificed is certainly not for everyone, nor is Pearls Before Swine. But those who “get it” will, it seems fair to say, want to get it.

(++++) THE UNCOMPROMISING COMPROMISER

Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman. By Harlow Giles Unger. Da Capo. $25.99.

     Compromise is a dirty word in Washington, D.C., nowadays, a sign of weakness and being untrue to one’s principles. Those principles may, of course, change as it is expedient to have them change, for example in running for the nation’s highest office. Long gone are the days in which anyone would be naïve and simplistic enough to declare, “I’d rather be right than president.” How long gone are they? They disappeared after February 7, 1839, the day on which Henry Clay uttered those very words.

     Clay (1777-1852) is one of the most famous early politicians of the United States, and a somewhat enigmatic one. He was a Virginia-born slaveholder (he had 60 slaves) who strongly opposed slavery (he wanted to free the slaves and return them to Africa) even in the knowledge that his position would likely cost him the presidency that he wanted so much to win. His 1839 remark was about being correct regarding the evil of slavery – but some saw the comment as sour grapes, not a ringing denunciation of an institution from which Clay benefited even as he decried it.

     Nominated three times for the presidency (1824, 1832, 1844), Clay never attained it; some say that if he had become president, there would have been no Civil War – that he was the only person who might have averted it. This feeling is based on his reputation as “The Great Pacificator” or “The Great Compromiser”: he was architect of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (admitting Missouri to the Union as a slave state and balancing it with Maine as a free state), the Compromise of 1850 (which admitted California as a free state and cleared up four years of political infighting dating to the Mexican-American War), and other compromises in 1821, 1833 and 1836. There is a notion that Clay might have found a way around the apparently irreconcilable demands of North and South, much as he found a way to get the Compromise of 1850 through Congress by taking a large bill and breaking it down into small component pieces that could pass even though the larger version could not. Or, the thinking goes, Clay might have used something like his American System to bind the nation. This was, among other things, a network of federally financed roads, canals and railways linking the states, a system that Clay managed to push through and expand into 20 states despite widespread state opposition to what was seen as a federal takeover of state-level rights and responsibilities.

     Harlow Giles Unger, frequent chronicler of early American political life, brings his usual lucidity and attentiveness to detail to Henry Clay: America’s Greatest Statesman. Unger strongly believes in his subtitle, but it carries some unintended irony in the form of President Harry Truman’s remark that “a statesman is a politician who’s been dead 10 or 15 years,” which was later echoed in the Bloom County comic strip as: “A statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen.” Unger sees Clay as having been a highly admirable political figure throughout his life, not merely becoming one in hindsight. He regards Clay as someone aware of the fact that intractable problems have no solutions, only compromises, and a man who tried to follow his personal human values even when they cost him his ambitions, notably that of the presidency. Unger makes much of Abraham Lincoln’s high regard for Clay, noting that Lincoln voted for Clay in 1832 and worked for Clay’s campaign in 1844. Unger traces Lincoln’s famous remark to the New York Tribune about slavery directly to Clay – that is the comment that Lincoln made about being focused on saving the union, whether that meant freeing all slaves, freeing no slaves, or freeing some and leaving others alone. And Unger points out that some of Clay’s accomplishments in the political sphere have stood the test of time: for example, he remains the youngest-ever Speaker of the House of Representatives and, indeed, is largely responsible for making that position the powerhouse it has remained until today. It is also interesting that in 1809, Clay was elected at age 29 to fill retiring Senator John Adair’s unexpired term – even though the constitutionally required age was 30. Either no one noticed or no one was bothered by this.

     Interspersing stories about Clay’s political acumen with tales of his difficult personal life, including long-term poor health and the death of all six of his daughters by 1835, Unger also shows that today’s depths of political enmity have their roots in the early years of the United States: Clay threw his votes in the 1824 presidential runoff election (which was decided in the House of Representatives) to John Quincy Adams and against Andrew Jackson, whom Clay considered too uneducated and temperamental to be president. Adams later made Clay his Secretary of State, and Jackson condemned the arrangement as a “corrupt bargain,” starting a campaign that undermined Adams’ presidency, eventually led to Jackson’s ousting of Adams (and Clay) in the 1828 election, and later led to Jackson (1767-1845) working successfully against Clay’s own presidential ambitions. In a sense, Clay’s troubles outlived him: once the Civil War erupted, one of his sons died fighting for the North and one died fighting for the South. And Clay’s legacy? It can certainly be argued that in the long run, the very long run, Clay’s economic and political vision of the United States was to a large degree fulfilled. But Unger makes no attempt to craft a Clay legacy, beyond Clay’s influence on Lincoln. Certainly there is no one in modern American politics who would qualify as a “great compromiser,” or who would consider it an honor to be known by that sobriquet.

(+++) LEVELS OF LOVE

A Song for Ella Grey. By David Almond. Delacorte Press. $16.99.

Love Is Everywhere. By Jim Benton. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $7.99.

     Ever since Skellig (1998), his expansion and reinterpretation of Gabriel García Márquez’ short story, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, David Almond has reveled in a kind of magical realism directed not at adults in the García Márquez manner but at younger readers. A Song for Ella Grey is his latest foray into this field, combining the tropes of modern teen romance with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to produce a book that aims for a conflation that does not quite come off. Almond creates a narrator named Claire Wilkinson to tell the story of the mysterious and musically inspired Orpheus and his intense and ultimately doomed relationship with Ella. Claire’s essentially matter-of-fact voice helps ground the story until the crucial descent to the ill-defined land of Death, where Orpheus rather awkwardly takes over the narrative (since Almond does not push the myth so far as to have Claire accompany him). Orpheus’ musical winning of the right to bring Ella back to the land of the living, his ultimate failure, and his eventual death and dismemberment, are all here, all sprinkled with heaping helpings of teen angst and the frequent use of the mild curse word “bliddy” (a British dialect variation of “bloody,” itself not much of a curse on the western side of the pond). “How did all this happen to us, Claire?” a minor character, Bianca Finch, asks near the end. “We’re just kids. We’re just us.” But Almond spends the entire book suggesting that the protagonists and their friends are not “just” anything, but are actors in an age-old drama of life, death and resurrection that, as the book’s ending indicates, is likely to be repeated yet again in some other time, some other venue. Almond makes a great deal out of the importance of the old myths, transformed though they be, in modern times, as when Bianca – ultimately a more interesting character than Ella, whose role is merely to fall hopelessly in love and then die – erupts with frustration and anger in class: “‘Paradise Lost!’ Bianca went on. ‘Let’s all go abliddy Maying, and my ending is despair and blablablablablablabla. We’ve got our lives to live. We’re young!’” The shouting match continues, but the point is made: the characters in A Song for Ella Grey are the young people of today, but that is not all they are, for they are also characters in a kind of world-without-end drama that calls on, and calls up, the ghosts of ancient times. And those ghosts – made manifest in modern guise – in turn call up other ghosts, such as the one that Ella becomes. All this is convoluted and frequently over-clever, as in the section in the realm of Death, presented on black pages with white lettering as a visual reversal of the rest of the book. Certainly there are many affecting moments in A Song for Ella Grey, but they are of the “awwwww” type typical in contemporary tales of doomed teenage lovers, not possessing the intended resonance of the old tale of Orpheus, a story whose updating and adaptation here seems forced and too self-enamored to be fully effective. Almond writes as well here as always, but he is so determined to impress on readers how important and significant the story is that he keeps showing his manipulative authorial hand as the events unfold. The result is that, ultimately, Orpheus and Ella Grey have much less substantiality here than Orpheus and Eurydice do in the tale on which this one is based.

     Almond’s highly serious book is very much in character for him, but a much lighter treatment of love – one suitable for gift-giving or for sharing with young children – is somewhat out of character for Jim Benton, an author whose specialty is a wry, funny, slightly snide look at positive emotions (such as joy in the Happy Bunny books). Benton wants to be more positive in Love Is Everywhere, and he deserves some credit for trying, but positivity and Benton do not go particularly well together. This is an oversize board book in which Love is seen in the form of a big pink heart with, at times, wide-open eyes, arms and hands, or teeth. The heart peeks out here and there in both rain and shine (turning yellow to represent the bright sun), and Benton tries hard – a little too hard – to keep the short poetry in the book as amusing as the words in his more-sarcastic productions: “You might not always see my love, but it goes everywhere./ Even if you go out walking in your underwear!” (The illustration here has a young child walking down the street in briefs while the pink heart, on the sidewalk behind him, is  giggling.) The problem here is that the words tend to come across as somewhat forced: Benton does not do straightforward cuteness very well. For instance: “Underneath a turtle could be where [love] might hide./ Or among some pink flamingos (providing you’re outside).” The most Benton-ish scene here has a sleeping girl snoring “louder than a bear,” while her toys laugh or cover their ears, the moon outside the window looks bemused, and the “love heart” is thoroughly enjoying itself. But really, Benton does not do sweetness very effectively, and the final two-page spread – showing bunnies, snakes, flowers, trees, clouds even hills smiling and/or cuddling – is just asking for some of the more-usual Benton sarcasm. So give Benton credit for trying to change his image a bit in Love Is Everywhere, but do not look here for his trademark silliness or his usual willingness to confront the sappy and overdone rather than becoming sappy and overdone himself.

(+++) GENTLY AND WARMLY

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2; Berceuse, Op. 57; Mazurkas—Op, 17, No. 4; Op. 24, No. 1; Op. 63, Nos. 2 and 3; Op. 68, Nos. 2 and 4. Adolfo Barabino, piano; London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lee Reynolds. Claudio Records. $16.99.

French Music for Harp—Works by Fauré, André Caplet, Philippe Schoeller, Marcel Lucien Tournier, Debussy, and Bruno Mantovani. Sivan Magen, harp. Linn Records. $21.99 (SACD).

Beethoven: Symphony No. 8; Schumann: Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra; Liszt: Les Préludes; Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries. Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Barenboim. EuroArts DVD. $19.99.

Prokofiev: Cinderella. Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev. Mariinsky Blu-ray Disc+DVD. $42.99.

Jan Jirásek: Czech and Moravian Christmas Carols. JITRO Czech Children’s Chorus conducted by Jiří Skopal. Navona. $16.99.

     There is an underlying gentleness to Italian pianist Adolfo Barabino’s performances of Chopin, and it permeates his fourth release on Claudio Records – even in the Second Piano Concerto, which it can certainly be justifiable to interpret in more dramatic fashion than is heard here. Barabino opts for a lyrical approach, bringing out the warmth and lucidity of the music and in so doing making this early work (the first of Chopin’s two concertos to be composed, although the second to be published) more forward-looking than it usually appears to be. There is a certain meandering quality to the interpretation, both Barabino’s and that of the London Symphony Orchestra under Lee Reynolds: the music is never exactly directionless, but it does not have as much get-up-and-go as in other readings. The result is a pleasant but not exceptional recording – and a disc on which the solo piano music is more attractive than the piano-and-orchestra offering. In the Berceuse recorded here, and the six Mazurkas, Barabino’s laid-back style is more effective. In these short works he brings out all sorts of nuances, voices and emotional expressions, keeping the rhythms fluid and the pacing sensitive and sensible. The Chopin recordings by Barabino present a not-always-coherent mixture of pieces, as this volume shows: the discs seem to be aimed at people who are, or will become, fans of Barabino, and simply want to hear how he handles Chopin. They are not for listeners interested in a single disc with the two concertos, or a disc focusing on the mazurkas, and so on. This makes them of limited appeal to all the listeners who already have recordings of Chopin by the many fine interpreters of his music. Barabino’s offering here is mainly interesting for the warm, singing quality he imparts to these disparate works.

     Warmth and beauty are much in evidence as well in Sivan Magen’s recital of French harp music on the Linn Records label. The works here span more than a hundred years and are offered in a way that will be most attractive to those simply wanting to hear how fascinatingly varied harp music can be. United by a sensibility that sees the harp as highly expressive and emotionally varied, the pieces are otherwise quite different in their technical requirements and structure. The musical bookends here, the works that open and close the SACD, are by Fauré: Une chatelaine en sa tour, Op. 110, and Impromptu, Op. 86. Between them are Divertissements à la Française and à l’Espagnole by André Caplet (1878-1925); Esstal by Philippe Schoeller (born 1957); Sonatine, Op. 30 by Marcel Lucien Tournier (1879-1951); the second and third movements of Estampes by Debussy, in Magen’s own arrangement; and Tocar by Bruno Mantovani (born 1974). The mixture of Impressionism and contemporary sensibility here proves interesting in that it shows how little the communicativeness of the harp has changed in more than a century: even the deliberately modernistic works have something old-fashioned about them, and the delicacy of the harp comes through in every piece, with harpist Magen – like pianist Barabino – searching for the lyrical elements in every work, finding them and accentuating them. The recording bogs down a bit from time to time, with an hour of solo harp lacking the aural diversity of an hour of music for the piano. And not all the works are equally effective: Tournier’s Sonatine, for example, is well-made in traditional three-movement form, but its stop-and-start central slow movement seems always on the verge of going somewhere without ever arriving; and Schoeller’s Esstal seems rather self-indulgent in the way it suspends delicate high elements above sustained bass tones. As a sampler of expressive harp music with a French accent, though, the recording is an attractive one.

     There is attractive playing as well on a new EuroArts DVD featuring the Berlin Philharmonic – and no wonder, given the consistency of this orchestra’s excellence. The video recording of this April 1998 concert at Staatsoper Unter den Linden, however, raises yet again the question of whether a DVD of an orchestral concert adds much to it, in comparison with a CD – indeed, whether it adds anything at all, or perhaps even detracts from the music. The issue is inherent in the visual medium: at a concert, each audience member decides where to look and when, how and on what to focus visually as well as mentally and emotionally; but with a recording, the visual impression is dictated by whatever the video director chooses to highlight at any given time – so viewers must go, visually, where the presentation takes them (unless they close their eyes, which defeats the purpose of having a video!). In this particular case, the visuals add nothing to the quality of the performances, even when four horn players (Dale Clavenger, Stefan Dohr, Ignacio García and Georg Schreckenberger) stand in front of the orchestra as soloists in Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra. There is nothing particularly visual about the tonal warmth and interpretative skill of the soloists, nor is there anything especially interesting to see in Daniel Barenboim’s conducting when the video focuses on him. There is, however, much worth hearing here: the Schumann has attractive bite and bounce, and the rest of the music – all of it quite familiar – is presented with sure-handed skill in top-quality performances that never hint at the frequency with which these musicians have played these works over many years. Barenboim brings little that is interpretatively new to Beethoven’s Eighth, and the Liszt and Wagner showpieces are really designed more for impact than for musical profundity, at least when taken out of their symphonic-poem and operatic contexts, respectively. Taken as a whole, this is a very well-played concert with some genuinely exhilarating moments for the ear – if not for the eye.

     On the other hand, the Mariinsky Ballet & Orchestra recording of the Alexei Ratmansky choreography of Prokofiev’s Cinderella definitely needs visuals to be effective. Just how effective a viewer/listener finds it will depend on how he or she reacts both to the music and to Alexei Ratmansky’s choreography. The music is highly chromatic (unlike that for the composer’s more-accessible Romeo and Juliet), and many numbers do nothing to advance the action. The characters are not particularly gripping, either: the good ones are dull and the evil ones simply grotesque. The usual setting of Cinderella is at an 18^th-century court, either French (because the story comes from Charles Perrault) or Russian or both. Not so for Ratmansky, whose design dates to 2002. The time of the action here is the 1920s/1930s; the set is urban, steel-framed and austere; there is a bit of a feeling of the film Metropolis about the proceedings; and the choreography, in addition to classical ballet, uses contemporary movements and a touch of mime. The grotesquerie is certainly present: the corps de ballet prances about at the ball in a twisted, vaguely unsettling manner that leads to an awkward conga; Cinderella’s stepsisters move in spiky, exaggerated ways that highlight the dissonances of the score; Cinderella’s stepfather is a drunk, and her fairy godmother is a bag lady. So many elements are outré that Diana Vishneva as Cinderella commands the performance, narrating the tale with her arms and eyes as well as with the easy fluidity that she brings to all her movements. The gradually increasing confidence that she displays in Act II is especially well communicated. There are charms aplenty here, but also questionable elements. For example, the four seasons are men in bright face paint and over-the-top wigs, and the Prince is dressed at the ball in a cheap-looking white suit. There is a sort of Stalinist feeling to the overall production that does not wear particularly well, although it certainly sets off Vishneva’s lovely, elegant movements: they clearly do not fit in this world. Valery Gergiev directs the production with his usual intensity, and it is good that the score is given largely uncut (although the Andantino of the Summer Fairy is dropped and replaced by the Grasshoppers and Dragonflies variation). The Mariinsky Orchestra plays with wit and bite, the cackling of the woodwinds and declamatory sound of the brass being particular highlights. This is an unusual Cinderella that will certainly not please everyone, but those willing to adjust to its oddities – which include some start-and-stop dance moves that look sloppy until it becomes clear that they are deliberate – will find it a salutary experience that is well worth both seeing and hearing.

     The gentleness and warmth of Prokofiev’s Cinderella exist almost wholly within the title character. Those seeking such feelings on a more extended basis – and looking for some seasonal music that differs significantly from the usual – will be pleased with a new Navona CD entitled Czech and Moravian Christmas Carols. That title may make it seem as if these are traditional carols of a particular region, but not so: the 20 works here were written by Jan Jirásek (born 1955), a well-known creator of film music who has also composed in various classical forms. For these modern carols, all written in Czech, Jirásek keeps the music determinedly tonal and simple, exploring multiple emotions among the carols – but only one feeling at a time. He complements the superb voices of the JITRO Czech Children’s Chorus under Jiří Skopal with neat little instrumental touches: a bit of percussion here, a smidgen of brass there, and various electronic and toy-instrument sounds both here and there. Although there are certainly devotional elements in some of the music, the overall impression is one of playfulness: the wonderfully sweet-voiced children’s chorus is at its best in the lighter carols, the occasional solo voice emerging from the group (as in, for instance, Hey Happy Tidings) adding to what is almost the sense of a playground group bouncing about enthusiastically, barely able to contain itself while experiencing the pleasures of the season. The only real weakness of this disc is that there is a bit too much of it: 67 minutes of similar-sounding singing, with instrumental effects that initially seem highly unusual but that soon become repetitious, is just too much to listen to straight through. Of course, no one has to do that: interspersing some of these Jirásek carols with some more-traditional ones from other recordings will enhance the delights of all the music and help make the Christmas season a time for tidings of great joy.