(++++) NAMES UNKNOWN, MUSIC REDISCOVERED

Georg Schumann: Symphony in F minor, Op. 42; Overture to a Drama, Op. 45; Overture “Joy of Life,” Op. 54. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by James Feddeck. CPO. $16.99.

Georg Schumann: Symphony in B minor, “Prize-winning Symphony”; Serenade for Large Orchestra, Op. 34. Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Christoph Gedschold. CPO. $16.99.

Imre Széchényi: Complete Dances for Orchestra. Budapest Symphony Orchestra MÁV conducted by Valéria Csányi. Naxos. $12.99.

     Highly respected in his own time and completely unrelated to Robert Schumann, Georg Schumann (1866-1952) was director of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin for half a century, from 1900 to1950. He was a violinist and pianist of more than usual skill and a well-respected composer in his time. And he has disappeared from the concert hall and from the knowledge of nearly all musicians and listeners – a most unfortunate state of affairs, as two CPO discs of his symphonic works demonstrate. Schumann was not a great composer, true, but he was a sensitive one who produced excellent late-Romantic music that fits firmly in its time and certainly deserves as much attention as the orchestral works of, say, Charles Villiers Stanford in Schumann’s time or Ferdinand Ries somewhat before it. Nor is that “damning with faint praise,” since both Stanford’s works and those of Ries are distinctly under-appreciated but have regained a measure of performance frequency, while those of Schumann have not. Perhaps these recordings will change that, because there is a great deal to admire and enjoy in Schumann’s music. His F minor symphony of 1905 is a kind of “variations symphony,” structured interestingly from essentially a single subject that is expanded and developed throughout the whole piece – not as an idée fixe in Berlioz’ mode or a leitmotif in Wagner’s, but as a kind of “source kernel” forming the structural basis of the symphony’s four movements. The symphony is on the cusp of later musical developments without ever quite reaching into the future, being highly chromatic and almost but not quite atonal in some sections (notably in a lower-string theme in the slow second movement). The influence of earlier composers is certainly present, among them Beethoven and Robert Schumann, and the Scherzo has nearly Brucknerian heft – although here that is a bit too much for the work, this third movement being longer than the finale. Actually, there is something Brucknerian about the finale itself, in an impressive chorale near the conclusion. Expansive without being massive, the symphony has a somewhat Brahmsian darkness about its scoring but a style that is certainly its own. It is very well played by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under James Feddeck, and nicely complemented by two concert overtures that show Schumann’s abilities in more-compressed form. Overture to a Drama (1906) is not attached to any specific drama, just as Brahms’ Tragic Overture is not about any specific tragedy. Schumann builds the overture very effectively, with themes having clear emotional resonance (dramatic, warm, turbulent, etc.) and playing effectively against each other in modified sonata form. In contrast, the Overture “Joy of Life” (Lebensfreude) (1911) is packed with multiple themes, a dozen or more, and they tumble over one another in just the sort of joyful cascade that the work’s title indicates. Near the end, a popular song called Freut Euch des Lebens (“Let us cherish life”) appears, producing a distinct resemblance between what Schumann creates here and what Brahms does with Gaudeamus igitur in his Academic Festival Overture. Indeed, these two Schumann overtures, although not created as a pair as Brahms’ were, serve to showcase Schumann’s compositional skill in similar fashion.

     Schumann’s ability to handle a full orchestra emerged early. He created his B minor symphony in 1886, when he was just 20 and a student at the Leipzig Conservatory, and the piece won the top prize two years later in an orchestral competition among 57 entries – hence “Prize-winning Symphony,” although Schumann himself did not give the work that designation. There is considerable maturity already evident in this symphony, along with some felicitous touches, such as Schumann’s use of a short introduction to each of the four movements. True, this is a much more derivative work than the later symphony in F minor – the B minor is distinctly Mendelssohnian – but there is nothing that actually sounds duplicative of Mendelssohn’s music: there is only a flavor, not identical ingredients. The performers here, Christoph Gedschold and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, treat the music well, paying particular attention to the effective contrasts that Schumann offers among themes that range from the dancelike to the hymnlike to the gypsy-influenced. There is even a slight hint here of the chromaticism that Schumann would explore more fully in later works, through the juxtaposition in the finale of the keys of B and B-flat. This CPO disc pairs the symphony with Schumann’s Serenade for Large Orchestra of 1902, and if the symphony has ties to Mendelssohn, the serenade distinctly reflects Richard Strauss in Ein Heldenleben mode. In fact, the work’s structure is quite similar to that of Strauss’s 1898 tone poem, which Schumann may well have known. Schumann arranges the serenade as a five-section work telling the story of a rejected lover. But there is nothing depressive or even deeply sad here – this is a work more of wistfulness than despair. True, that limits its emotional impact, but it prevents the work from sounding dour. Again and again, Schumann introduces light and slightly sarcastic music said to come from “opponents and ridiculers” who presumably upbraid the would-be lover for his failings or rejoice in his discomfiture. But they do so with a much lighter and less snide touch than do those of the artist’s critics in the Strauss tone poem. The warmest part of the work is its third, which is an actual serenade in which the clarinet carries along a lovely theme and is supported, in one of many felicitous touches of instrumentation, by a harp. The imprecise program of the work leaves plenty for listeners to think about in terms of whatever may have happened and what the whole matter may mean – but really, a program is not especially necessary to enjoy the music fully (as it is needed for Ein Heldenleben). Schumann gives this half-hour piece much of the sumptuousness and emotional effectiveness of his symphonies, and that is a great deal. Nothing on these CDs suggests that Schumann is an undiscovered genius, but everything on them shows him to have been a skilled composer with command over a wide range of moods and a strong ability to carry listeners along the dramatic arc of his works. His music is a reminder of the many pleasures to be found in well-crafted pieces by composers who were overshadowed by the handful of greats whose works are heard again and again, sometimes to the point of over-familiarity.

     The pleasures of the less-known extend to the realm of light music as well as that of major concert-hall pieces, as is clear from a new Naxos CD of dance music by Count Imre Széchényi of Sárvár-Felsővidék (1825-1898), an important diplomat in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and an almost exact contemporary of his friend Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899). Széchényi was neither a great composer nor a prolific one – this world première recording of his dance music includes just 18 works, arranged in six groups of three. But Széchényi was an assured stylist in the standard non-waltz dance forms of his time, producing 11 polkas, five polka-mazurkas and two mazurkas. The works as presented here are grouped as two character pieces followed by a generally more-extended concert work. And they have much of the lilt and charm of the music by Strauss himself and his many competitors – although Strauss was quite far from considering Széchényi’s music competitive, even programming some of it in his own concerts. Széchényi has a pleasantly light touch in his works, giving them more humor than many other dance composers provided (he dubs one Polka prétentieuse) and using some of the pieces to call up specific scenes (Polka hongroise and, for the snowy clime of St. Petersburg, where Széchényi wrote most of his music, Neige-Polka). The Budapest Symphony Orchestra MÁV under Valéria Csányi performs these semi-precious musical gems with fine polish and a sure sense of style – providing further evidence of the extent to which the Strauss family overshadowed a very large number of fine composers who, if they did not produce really first-rate material, did offer audiences in their time and ours a great deal of verve and enjoyment.

(++++) THE INVENTIVE PIANO

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Études dans Touts les Tons Majeurs, Op. 35. Mark Viner, piano. Piano Classics. $18.99.

Dizzy Days: Ragtime. Sam Post, piano. Blue House Productions. $15.

Messiaen, Debussy, Ligeti, György Kurtág, Andy Akiho and Scott Wollschleger: Piano Music. Jenny Q. Chai, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Alla Elana Cohen: Book of Prayers, Volume 1 Series 7 and Volume 2 Series 4; Sephardic Romancero, Series 2; Three Film Noir Pieces; Third Vigil—Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Spiral Staircases; Querying the Silence, Volume 1 Series 2. Sebastian Bäverstam, cello; Alla Elana Cohen, piano. Ravello. $14.99.

McCormick Percussion Group: Kid Stuff—Music of John Liberatore, Seunghee Lee, Hilary Tann, Ciro Scotto and Matt Barber. Eunmi Ko, solo piano; McCormick Percussion Group conducted by Robert McCormick. Ravello. $14.99.

     Exceptionally fine and thoughtful performances of some of the most difficult piano works ever written are offered by Mark Viner for Piano Classics on a CD of Alkan’s Études dans Touts les Tons Majeurs. Probably the second-most-difficult set of études ever composed – the first being Alkan’s Études dans Touts les Tons Mineurs – these major-key pieces call on every possible pianistic technique and a few that are not possible with modern pianos, such as the now-standard Steinway D that Viner uses. Like the other greatest pianists of their times, Alkan composed for the instruments to which he had access, obviously not for instruments that did not yet exist. In Alkan’s lifetime (1813-1888), piano keybeds were shallower than they later became and than they are today, and actions were lighter. This made possible speeds and fingerings that are simply not attainable on modern pianos – and Alkan, being brilliant at pushing instruments of his time to their limit, did more than most composers to produce works requiring extremely intimate understanding of those instruments’ capabilities. Modern pianists without access to historic pianos, or without experience playing them, have to figure out ways to produce Alkan’s effects on instruments not designed to produce them. Viner succeeds wonderfully at this, offering readings of remarkable clarity, brilliant lightness, exceptional finger work, and altogether amazing control. This is a pianist who really studies what he plays and really thinks through its complexities, which are enormous in Alkan’s music, before sitting down for a performance. As a result, this recording is beautifully nuanced from start to finish – which is saying a lot, since these dozen études take nearly 70 minutes to perform. Pretty much every one of them is a highlight: the amazingly quicksilver No. 4 in C, the rhythmically pounding No. 5 in F (Allegro barbaro, which despite the key signature is performed entirely on the white keys), the tone-poem-like No. 7 in E-flat (L’incendie au village voisin, in which you can practically feel the heat of the fire that Alkan conjures), the astonishingly delicate No. 8 in A-flat, the pounding intensity of No. 9 in C-sharp (Contrapunctus), and the deeply weird and disturbing conclusion of No. 10 in G-flat (Chant d’amour – Chant de mort). Several great and daring pianists have brought their skills to recordings of Alkan’s music over the decades, from Raymond Lewenthal to Marc-André Hamelin; now, superbly technically accomplished younger pianists, such as Vincenzo Maltempo and Viner, have discovered the exceptional joys and peculiarities of Alkan’s music and come up with their own ways to amaze and delight listeners with it.

     The music itself is of far less interest on a new CD featuring another excellent young pianist, Sam Post – but the presentation on the disc is so striking and unusual that the recording is a fascinating one. There are a dozen ragtime or ragtime-like pieces offered here, eight of them by Post himself, two by William Bolcom (one offered both as “Take 1” and “Take 2”), and one by Scott Joplin. Post and Bolcom have so effectively absorbed Joplin-style ragtime that their works could have come from the same era, if not the same composer. That is both a strength here and a weakness: it shows remarkable sensitivity to and understanding of ragtime music, but it makes the dozen musical tracks sound disconcertingly similar – the only really different one, interestingly, being Joplin’s, since Gladiolus Rag is one of his slower, quieter and more-thoughtful pieces. Post’s own Three Dedicated Rags: 2. Mournful comes closest to Joplin’s in spirit. The most intriguing Post composition here is Kinhaven Sonata Finale, in which the piano is joined by a clarinet (played by Lauren Cook) to interesting rhythmic and sonic effect. But the three-quarters of an hour of music is not in itself the sole attraction of the disc. After the pieces have been played, Post takes listeners on a verbal journey through ragtime that neatly complements the aural one they have already experienced. In nine snippets of discussion over a total time of half an hour, Post explains how he came to his personal enjoyment and performance of ragtime and delves into the structure of this musical form – with demonstrations. This is a kind of aural “chalk talk” designed to communicate Post’s own enthusiasm for ragtime and to engage listeners more deeply by giving them a broader and deeper understanding of what they have heard earlier on the CD and will hear elsewhere when they encounter similar music. Along the way, Post provides some insight into his own compositional method and interests, as well as the way he approaches performance of music in this genre. To be sure, half an hour of talk on top of three-quarters of an hour of music may seem like an imbalance to anyone primarily interested in simply hearing and enjoying the type of music offered here. But Post’s infectious enthusiasm and his willingness to share personal opinions and information make the spoken part of the CD, which is called “Ragtime Reflections,” a genuine complement to the musical material rather than merely a supplement to it. The result is an unusual combination of entertainment and educational value, and a disc worth hearing either for the pure enjoyment of the performances or for the elucidation of the thinking that prefaced and then went into the playing.

     Another piano-focused CD with a fascinating underlying premise features Jenny Q. Chai. Chai’s MSR Classics recording, however, is even more rarefied than Post’s, because it focuses on something that the vast majority of listeners do not, will not and cannot experience: synesthesia, the blending of senses in which, for example, a work written in a particular key has the sound of a specific color or range of colors. Chai experiences synesthesia, and intends with this disc to communicate elements of it – as she experiences them – to listeners. The intention is admirable, but the concept does not work particularly well. This should not really be a surprise, since Chai herself acknowledges that even people with synesthesia do not experience it the same way – two composers may, for example, have entirely different experiences associated with the identical key. Move beyond that reality to attempting to bring a sense of synesthesia to listeners who do not personally experience it, and you are in a realm in which performer and audience are essentially speaking two different languages. Music itself can and does bridge language barriers – it is nearly the only thing that does – but expecting it to bridge experiential, sense-based barriers as well is a bit much. Furthermore, it is hard to comprehend why Chai chose the specific pieces on this (+++) recording, since they have little apparent interrelationship except, it seems, for someone who experiences synesthesia. Probably the best-known composer who had synesthesia and tried to make artistic use of it was Alexander Scriabin, but this disc includes nothing by him. Since the CD runs only 49 minutes, there would have been plenty of room for one of Scriabin’s highly unusual late sonatas, but Chai comes at synesthesia from a different angle. She offers one extended work, Messiaen’s Cantéyodjayâ (1949), which combines Hindu rhythms with the structural elements of sonata and rondo. The rest of the material here is much briefer. Included are two short pieces by Debussy, two by Ligeti, four by Kurtág, and one each by Akiho and Wollschleger. In a few cases, the composers’ intentions can be seen as synesthesia-related: Akiho’s piece, which is for prepared piano, is called Karakurenai (Crimson), and one of Kurtág’s is Shadow-Play. Certainly Chai plays all the works with enthusiasm and apparent enjoyment, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of her desire to have listeners experience this material in a way similar to her own. But that desire is not in itself enough: taken strictly as music, the pieces here have little relationship to each other or among themselves, and without the binding element of Chai’s synesthesia, they simply come across as parts of one of the innumerable personal-preference recitals offered by so many performers. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and listeners who share Chai’s attraction to these particular composers and these specific works will enjoy her sensitive, knowing handling of the material. But nothing here really gets listeners into the mind and experience of someone for whom what is heard ties inevitably and inexorably to senses beyond hearing.

     The mystical elements of Scriabin’s synesthesia and of a work such as Messiaen’s Cantéyodjayâ are present in somewhat different form in the spiritual/mystical music of Alla Elana Cohen on a new (+++) Ravello CD. Here the piano sometimes appears solo, played by the composer, and sometimes is paired with a cello (Sebastian Bäverstam). There is also one work here, Sephardic Romancero, Series 2, for cello alone. All the pieces here are multi-movement ones, but in all cases the designations are simply “Movement 1,” “Movement 2,” and so forth. Any connection among movements is therefore left to listeners to discern. Some of the pieces have distinct extramusical relationships: Three Film Noir Pieces for solo piano are not about just any film noir but specifically about Cat People and Curse of the Cat People, whose atmosphere the short works attempt, not very successfully, to replicate. The other solo-piano work, Spiral Staircases, is connected to a film about a mute woman trying to verbalize her needs and wishes. This work, although somewhat more intense than Three Film Noir Pieces, is neither more nor less emotionally trenchant. The solo-cello work, Sephardic Romancero, Series 2, is intended to draw spiritually on Sephardic Judaism; as with the solo-piano pieces, familiarity with Cohen’s inspiration is necessary for full understanding of the music, which to the non-initiate simply sounds like a fairly typical contemporary work in which extremes of the cello’s range are repeatedly tested. The four remaining works on the disc – the ones for both cello and piano – require less specific knowledge of Cohen’s source material, all being intended in one way or another to deal with spiritual issues such as grief, loss, and connection with the divine. Although close listening reveals some differences among the pieces – greater dissonance in Book of Prayers, Volume 1 Series 7 than in Book of Prayers, Volume 2 Series 4, for example – many of the pieces are interchangeable, using the same musical language when supposedly expressing different feelings. The result is that listeners will not easily perceive any significant distinction between Querying the Silence, Volume 1 Series 2, intended to connect with personal feelings of loneliness, and Third Vigil, a cello-and-orchestra work heard here in a version for cello and piano and intended to address grander questions of humanity’s place in the cosmos. Because of a certain sameness throughout the music, this is a disc that listeners who already know and like Cohen’s music will appreciate, but one that listeners unfamiliar with her work will likely find too uniform in sound to be attractive.

     Matters are far more down-to-earth both for solo piano and for percussion ensemble on a new Ravello CD featuring the McCormick Percussion Group. The piano, itself a percussion instrument, fits neatly into the ensemble and stands out when needed: Eunmi Ko is clearly comfortable both within a larger group and out in front of it. The five works on the CD, as handled by the ensemble under Robert McCormick’s direction, share a certain ebullience and experimental sound, although the general lack of distinctiveness among the composers makes this a (+++) disc. Still, it is fun for those who fancy fine percussion work in pieces that are, by and large, far from pretentious. John Liberatore’s This Living Air clicks and bounces pleasantly and has some nice instrumental touches. The third of its four movements, “This Light That Pours,” shows an unusually delicate side of percussive sounds. Seunghee Lee’s Pung-Kyung is more typical of contemporary works in its abrupt contrasts and minimalist “background music” sound. Hilary Tann’s five-section, single-movement Solstice is more attractive, thanks to a wider-ranging aural palette that encompasses solemnity, verve and delicacy. In contrast, Ciro Scotto’s Dark Paradise is mostly quiet, reserved to the point of being withdrawn, and so similar in sound and volume throughout that it seems to go on forever. The most successful piece here is Matt Barber’s Kid Stuff, subtitled “Five Figments for Piano and Percussion,” which bounces and meanders all over the place, through both the piano and the percussion group – pulling out blended and contrasting sounds willy-nilly and encompassing within its five movements pretty much all the techniques and sonic approaches of all the other works on the disc. The movements’ titles here actually do provide some connection with the music: “Chimera,” “Night Owl,” “Quench,” “Cuddleys” and “Goofball,” with the penultimate section offering gentle rocking and a rather sweet sound that contrasts effectively with the outgoing ebullience of the concluding part. This disc will be a lot of fun for listeners who simply want to hear well-played percussion for its own sake. None of the works reaches out successfully for significant musical or emotional meaning, but all, especially Tann’s and Barber’s, are pleasant-enough divertissements to showcase some highly skilled performers and a wide variety of intriguing sounds.

(++++) ANIMALS ALL ABOUT

Bobo and the New Baby. By Rebecca Minhsuan Huang. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99.

Horses. By Seymour Simon. Harper. $17.99.

Water. By Seymour Simon. Harper. $17.99.

101 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles. By April Jones Prince. Illustrated by Bob Kolar. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $8.99.

     There are plenty of books for kids about sibling rivalry when a new baby arrives, but not nearly so many about “dogling rivalry,” which is essentially what Rebecca Minhsuan Huang charmingly explores in Bobo and the New Baby. Bobo is an absolutely adorable dachshund with a doggone good life that basically includes snoozing, digging, eating, chasing and, um, snoozing again. His humans, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, spoil him and take him everywhere, and that is just fine with Bobo. But somehow Mr. and Mrs. Lee have neglected to warn Bobo in advance that they are about to bring home a new member of the family. Well, Bobo is only a dog, right? But dogs have feelings, too, and when the two humans return with a third, miniature human, suddenly Bobo is very, very excited and happy – his enthusiasm beautifully communicated in one of Huang’s most-delightful illustrations. Unfortunately, Bobo’s happiness gets him scolded: “‘You will scare the baby,’ says Mr. Lee,” and poor Bobo, who never meant any harm, is left downcast and dejected and just plain miserable. He walks away into a room whose darkness reflects his unhappy mood, leaving behind the three people in a room that is full of light. And now, whenever Bobo wants attention – even to go for a walk – Mr. and Mrs. Lee tell him “no,” because the baby is eating, sleeping, needs changing, or something else. Poor Bobo! And then, to make matters worse, Bobo sees a bee that has gotten into the house, and knows he has to protect the baby. So he chases the bee everywhere, making quite a mess, and just as he leaps to catch it, Mr. Lee comes in and tells him to stop because he will “hurt the baby.” Mr. Lee’s shadow completely covers the poor, sad little dog, whose downcast eyes tell the whole story – up to this point. But then Mrs. Lee spots the bee and realizes that Bobo was only trying to help, and Mr. Lee understands, too, and apologizes, and so Bobo is formally introduced to the baby, and the four members of the family are last seen happily relaxing together. For a story aimed at young children, Bobo and the New Baby is a surprisingly realistic look at how dogs may feel when a baby is brought home. It was created by Huang as a counterbalance to a true story of a couple who got rid of their dog once they brought home a baby – a terrible thing to do to a loving, loyal family member who just happens to belong to a different species. Huang’s book, in addition to being a sweet story in and of itself, can be a valuable teaching tool for kids and adults alike, hopefully making it possible for more stories like Bobo’s to have endings as happy as this one.

     Children looking more for facts and beautiful photography than for a warmhearted fictional story (even one with a real-life tie-in) will enjoy the new, updated edition of Seymour Simon’s Horses, a book originally dating to 2006. Simon has written hundreds of books – more than 300, a remarkable number – and manages again and again to provide a well-thought-out, clearly presented set of facts that he mixes with attractive photographs to help young readers learn about the natural world. Horses, like dogs, are longtime human companions, and Horses starts by pointing out the animals’ usefulness ever since they were tamed some 5,000 years ago. Pictures of fossils show how prehistoric horses gradually evolved into the animals we know today, and then Simon moves to more-recent times to explain how horses came to America and how wild herds grew from horses that escaped captivity. The photos of horses, with and without people, tell all by themselves a great deal of the story here: one horse is seen attached to a cart that it is supposed to pull (and Simon notes that pulling strength is still called “horsepower”); two are shown nuzzling each other; two are shown competitively rearing up on their hind legs to assert dominance; and so on. Again and again, Simon inserts small and fascinating facts that neatly complement the photos: horses can see in almost a complete circle; they can see yellow and green, but not all colors; they can sense when people are angry or scared, possibly by detecting changes in humans’ smell; a foal can walk less than one hour after birth; and so on. His discussion of the way a horse moves is especially interesting, since the way horses’ legs move together varies depending on the animal’s gait. The strength of horses is also amazing to learn: some teams of two can pull 50 tons, as much as the weight of 10 elephants. There is also an explanation of the difference between horses and ponies. Simon’s books are formulaic in layout and fairly standardized in narrative, but because they are books of facts for young readers, that is all to the good: a book like Horses is involving, educational, easy to read and understand, and very helpful in giving information about an animal that has been enormously important to human civilization for thousands of years.

     Even more important to humans – and to horses and all other living things – is water, the subject of a brand-new Simon book whose layout and writing style are every bit as accessible as those in Horses. Here too, Simon includes plenty of interesting facts about something that we usually take for granted: “Water is the only substance on Earth that is found naturally in all three states of matter: as a liquid (water), as a solid (ice), and as a gas (water vapor).” “Water…dissolves more substances than any other liquid. Even rocks are dissolved by water, though it may take many years.” “Almost two-thirds of an adult’s weight is water and nearly 80 percent of a newborn baby’s weight is water.” Coupling this recitation of well-selected facts with fascinating photos – such as one of an insect standing on water, illustrating the principle of surface tension – Simon in Water explains the water cycle, the way ocean levels change during periods of worldwide cooling and warming, the way water in rivers can carve valleys and shape the ground, the areas where ice and snow exist year-round (about 10% of Earth’s surface), the existence of frozen deserts in the Arctic and Antarctic, and more. Simon has a well-honed talent for covering a lot of material in a small amount of space – and making the facts interesting by including relevant photos, such as one of a scuba diver near a school of beautiful tropical fish opposite a page explaining just how heavy water is and just how much pressure there is in the oceans, whose average depth is two-and-a-half miles. Informative and intriguing, fact-packed but presented in a simple-to-understand way with easily followed style, Water is a first-rate introduction to what is, so far as we humans know, the basis of life: “When we look to find life on distant planets or moons, the first thing we look for is water.”

     Indeed, although we cannot be 100% sure about the possibilities of life elsewhere in the universe, we do know that water is crucial to life on Earth – all kinds of life, from the smallest to the largest, from life as we know it today to life as it was long, long before humans existed. And way back before the first horse, and even before the first horse’s ancestor, Hyracotherium, which lived 55 million years ago, the world was dominated not by mammals such as horses (much less humans) but by reptiles, most famously by dinosaurs. A book that is at once simple and surprisingly comprehensive in discussing and showing what is known about many extinct reptiles is April Jones Prince’s 101 Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles. This oversized, unusually shaped board book, with pages cut to resemble the spinal scales of the Stegosaurus on the cover, relies heavily on Bob Kolar’s clear and simple illustrations to show young readers how different the many types of ancient reptiles were. And they were very different indeed: Kolar’s pictures use the latest scientific findings to indicate, for example, the distinction in head shape between superficially similar long-necked dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus and Barosaurus, or between flying reptiles (which were not dinosaurs) such as Dimorphodon and Pterodaustro. Those long, complicated-looking names are given pronunciation guides throughout the book: Prince breaks each into syllables and shows just which of those syllables carries an accent. The repeated refrain of the book goes, “Every dino has a name./ No two dinos were the same!” Sometimes this is varied – for non-dinosaurs – to, “Every reptile has a name./ No two reptiles were the same!” This encourages kids to look closely at Kolar’s pictures to find out just how the various sort-of-similar-looking creatures really did differ in important respects. The book also serves to familiarize interested young readers with dinos that are far less frequently mentioned than “superstars” such as Tyrannosaurus rex: the same group of powerful meat-eaters includes Herrerasaurus, Troödon, Tarbosaurus, and others, all of them shown as clearly as current scientific knowledge allows. This is a short book, but it is packed amazingly full of information – and the end, which spreads pictures of dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles out over two pages and invites kids to examine and count all of them, is a fine summation of the entire book and an intriguing invitation to examine each of the creatures more closely while counting all of them.

(++++) INSIDE INFORMATION

Heart and Brain 3: Body Language. By Nick Seluk. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

Lady Stuff: Secrets to Being a Woman. By Loryn Brantz. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

     Where better to turn for the secrets of life than comics? At least they can’t do a worse job of exploring and explaining the vicissitudes of everyday existence than all the professional gurus out there. And cartoonists’ distinctively skewed perspectives can sometimes offer insights that just can’t be communicated through any means except silly drawings and pithy writing. Take The Awkward Yeti as an example. Said yeti, a big-eyed, perpetually befuddled, bow-tie-wearing blue-fur-covered biped, is the nominal presenter of Nick Seluk’s Heart and Brain, a comic sequence whose third collection, Body Language, is the best so far. The idea here is that The Awkward Yeti’s organs have a life of their own, intertwined with but somewhat independent of his life, and they pursue their own agendas based on which body parts they are – and find themselves in conflict with each other from time to time, thereby causing all sorts of systemic distress for the person, or creature, in whom they live. This all makes a lot more sense in cartoon form than in descriptive words – which is the whole reason to turn to comics like this one for tips on living life better. Or more amusingly, anyway. The primary “frenemies” in the Heart and Brain collections are, of course, the methodical and results-oriented brain and the emotionally driven instant-gratification-seeking heart (the latter always accompanied by a butterfly that sometimes takes part in or accentuates the action). Brain is a big pink brain wearing square eyeglasses (the same ones The Awkward Yeti wears, naturally); Heart is a not-anatomically-correct heart-shaped red character with big googly eyes and a nearly perpetual smile (yes, smile: Heart has a small, expressive mouth; Brain has none). Some of Seluk’s cartoons are single panels, such as one showing Heart and Brain struggling together to carry a gigantic rock labeled “Self Doubt” up a hill whose top has the word “Goal” on it – as Brain says, “Maybe it would be easier if we put this down.” Other cartoons are multi-panel sequences, such as one in which Brain makes a budget, Heart flicks on a lighter to burn it, and Brain explains that a budget will make Heart happier “in the long term by taking care of needs before wants.” So Heart turns the lighter off – until Brain says “you just won’t be able to buy whatever you want whenever you want it,” and Heart flicks the lighter on again. Then there are peripheral characters who appear from time to time. A great one is Gut, who is all instinct and given to flatulence and to phrases such as, “It’s all a conspiracy, you know,” and “Just trust me, I know.” There is cute and happy Fat, who refuses to go away even when The Awkward Yeti asks him to, and who explains, “I make you CUDDLY!” There is Muscle, who suffers a cramp that Brain tries unsuccessfully to cure with a stretch. There is Tongue, whose main concern is, of course, eating, and who says, “If nobody sees you eat it, it didn’t happen.” There are Eyes, and Teeth, and Stomach, and even Gall Bladder, each with a unique personality. But it is Heart and Brain who hold The Awkward Yeti’s body, and Seluk’s cartoons, together, often in very surprising ways – as when Heart pours a jar of “new experiences” into Brain, picks him up and shakes him hard, then turns a wheel that opens a spigot into which liquid flows from Brain into a container labeled New Ideas. Think about that one a bit. In fact, think about a lot of the Heart and Brain cartoons – that’s what they’re there for.

     Loryn Brantz’s Lady Stuff is there for a different purpose: to help readers appreciate the oddities of everyday life, or at least let them know they are not alone when experiencing them. Brantz takes her own day-to-day experiences and interprets or reinterprets them through her cartoon self. This frequently leads to a version of before-and-after panels: “How I look at the beginning of the day” shows a neat, nicely made-up, well-dressed cartoon woman, while “How I look at the end” shows a smelly garbage can with eyes and a frown. Or “Bathroom floor before I brush my hair” shows a clean tile floor, while “bathroom floor after I brush my hair” shows brown, messy hairlike squiggles everywhere and the word “UGHHHHHHHHH.” In other panels, Brantz offers “Life Ambitions” (that being the title of one section in Lady Stuff) – for instance, one panel says “Follow Your Dreams” and shows her cartoon self wrapped tightly in a comfy blanket and saying, “I’m a professional blanket burrito.” Another panel, in “dress for success” mode, shows cartoon Brantz in a full-body hoodie, trying to become a “professional napper.” Another starts with her being advised to “find a job doing something you’re passionate about” and continues with an Internet search for career options in napping, taking baths and eating cheese. And then there is the admonition that starts, “When life gives you lemons,” which Brantz concludes, “make a small bed out of them and take a nap” (and she looks mighty comfortable doing just that). The book also includes “Mating Habits,” one of which is an amazingly funny multi-panel seduction technique built around guacamole, and “Self-Care,” in which one panel is a food pyramid with wine at the base, cheese and chocolate in the section just above it, wine above that section, and “more wine” at the top. There is even a touch of perception here about animals: excitement when a dog jumps onto cartoon Brantz’s lap, but super-wide eyes and the comment, “I have been chosen,” when a cat does so; and a dog walk during which cartoon Brantz is thinking, “This is nice,” while her dog is in utter ecstasy and thinking, “This is the best time of our lives!!!!!!!” Brantz may not have a clue about better ways to live, but she has plenty of clues about how ladies (and, for that matter, gentlemen) do live, and that is plenty funny enough to fill Lady Stuff with wry chuckles, available to readers as needed. Which, life being what it is, will be frequently.

(++++) LANDS STRANGE AND FAMILIAR

Wed Wabbit. By Lissa Evans. David Fickling Books. $17.99.

Shards #1: Sisters of Glass. By Naomi Cyprus. Harper. $16.99.

     Preteen readers, ages 8-12, have many fictional lands they can visit and many fictional journeys and adventures they can have in them – with many different things to learn and many different ways of learning them. This is true even though the stories’ outcomes are, by and large, fairly similar in their level of uplift and in the way they conclude with protagonists learning about their strengths and weaknesses. Just how different the tales can be is shown in comparing a hilarious and inventive new book by Lissa Evans with a much more serious and much more formulaic one by Naomi Cyprus. Evans’ is called Wed Wabbit and revolves around a red rabbit, sounded out with the “w” sound by four-year-old Minnie (short for Minerva), sister of the central almost-11-year-old character, Fidge (short for Iphigenia). Fidge’s dad, whom she resembles physically and in her neat, orderly and organized personality, has died, so the family includes only the two girls and their decidedly ditzy mom, whom Minnie resembles. Minnie is obsessed with book-and-toy characters called Wimbley Woos, garbage-can-shaped things that come in various colors with differing personalities and abilities: “Yellow are timid. Blue are strong./ Gray are wise and rarely wrong.” And so on through green, pink, orange and purple – seven colors in all. The Wimbley Woos speak only in verse, just one irritant for Fidge when she meets them. Yes, meets them. Minnie is injured in a car accident (not terribly seriously), so Fidge has to go live for a time with Uncle Simon and Auntie Ruth, whose son, Graham – Fidge’s cousin – is an extreme hypochondriac, hilariously spoiled, very smart in an in-your-face way, and altogether unpleasant. At Graham’s house, Fidge soon falls down some cellar steps – along with Graham himself – and the two find themselves in the actual land of the Wimbley Woos. Yes, this sounds like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it does have some of that resonance, but it is much funnier in a slapstick way (if less thoughtful and elaborate). The Wimbley Woos, it soon develops, need Fidge to rescue them from something – which turns out to be an exaggerated, evil version of Wed Wabbit. While Fidge struggles to figure out what is going on, Graham – separated from Fidge after the cellar-steps incident – is dealing with his “transitional object,” a rather rigid and dogmatic (but sensible) plastic carrot from a supermarket giveaway that calls itself “Dr. Carrot” because the small platform on which it stands says “DR” (standing for the store, “Douglas Retail”). The Lewis Carroll elements of Wed Wabbit merge surprisingly well with some from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as Graham (who, of course, eventually learns the error of his intelligent-but-misguided spoiled-brat ways) and the sensible, clever Fidge try to understand their predicament and figure a way out of it. The charming stuffed Ella Elephant, rather given to over-dramatization, adds additional humor to the proceedings, and the Wimbley Woos’ riddles prove crucial to the plot: Fidge and Graham need to solve them and deal with Wed Wabbit in order to get home. The oddity of the Wimbley Woos, the well-balanced characterizations of Fidge and Graham, and the consistently funny writing and sure pacing of Evans’ book make Wed Wabbit weally wonderful.

     Also well-written but much more conventional in plot – and more strongly directed at preteen girls rather than at both girls and boys – Cyprus’ Sisters of Glass is the first entry in a series called Shard. The sequence’s title makes perfect sense, since it is a shard of glass – in the form of a mirror – that lies at the heart of a traditional prince (here, princess) and pauper, good-vs.-evil plot. Princess Halan is heir to a kingdom where magic is crucial – it is even called the Magi Kingdom, no reference to Disney apparently intended – but she herself lacks magical powers, even though every ruler before her has had them. She dreams of escape from the palace and of living somewhere where she will not constantly feel the pressure of her inadequacies and inabilities. Into her life, quite unexpectedly, comes Nalah Bardak, a Thauma (magic user) who lives in a land where magic is strictly outlawed on pain of penalties ranging up to death. Like other Thauma, Nalah lives quietly: she helps her father make glass knickknacks to sell at a local market. But these are not as well-crafted as the ones made by the family of her friend Marcus Cutter, because his family is rich and has connections that allow them to use some magic to produce beautiful Thauma crafts. Hoping to better her own family’s lot, Nalah secretly accepts a commission from an old family friend named Zachary Tam, who wants an illegal mirror to be re-created. Nalah succeeds – but as soon as he gets the mirror, Tam kidnaps Nalah’s father and escapes to another place through it. So Nalah, aided by Marcus, goes after Tam on a rescue mission. This is how Nalah and Halan meet – their names being a reversal of each other is an overly obvious clue to their intertwined importance and to what is going on in their worlds. The tale is told in alternating chapters, but the voices of Nalah and Halan do not sound sufficiently different for this common device to be particularly effective: the girls’ backgrounds stand in for any genuinely differing personalities that Cyprus might otherwise need to develop. On the other hand, the determination and independence that both girls possess will be attractive for the intended readership, and Cyprus does a good job of creating settings that differ from the usual vaguely medieval European ones so common in fantasies for young readers: here there is a distinctly Middle Eastern flavor to the geography. But the basic story of similar characters from two different worlds, joined by unexpected events and needing to fight the good fight for their respective homes, is nothing new, and Cyprus handles it competently but without any really unusual angles. Sisters of Glass is an effective enough genre entry to deserve a (+++) rating, but it breaks no new ground and is content to remain in the same action/adventure territory where many fantasy novels for preteens, and indeed for adults, reside comfortably but without much distinction or distinctiveness.

(+++) YUM?

Best Food Writing 2017. Edited by Holly Hughes. Da Capo. $16.99.

     The First World indulgence that is food writing is by definition an exercise in wretched excess. With so many people worldwide living at subsistence levels, there is something faintly obscene in the notion of a magazine called Bon Appetit or an article about a restaurant in a neighborhood where median household income is $217,070 per year – a piece titled “In New York City, What’s the Difference Between a $240 Sushi Roll and a $6.95 Sushi Roll?” And concerns such as “Who Owns Southern Food?” and “I Want Crab, Pure Maryland Crab” are so rarefied, even by First World standards, that the audience for writing of this sort is an exceptionally self-limited and self-indulgent one. That does not, however, preclude the possibility of there being good writing on the topic, and it is that sort of writing that appears in Best Food Writing 2017, as it has in earlier editions of this book for more than 15 years.

     There is pervasive irony in the way some of the writers represented here try so hard to be inclusive, for-all-people, neatly liberal and diversity-aware. One piece here is actually called “Can S.C. Barbecue Family Rise Above Their Father’s History of Racism?” Even food is all about politics; even food has the good guys and the bad guys…sorry, that’s “the good people” and “the bad people.” Yet there is a recurring sense of noblesse oblige about the articles, such as “What’s True About Pho,” whose author is described as “making a pilgrimage of sorts” by visiting Vietnam to learn about the dish. Very, very few people anywhere in the world, never mind outside the richest nations, can ever make a pilgrimage for the sake of noodles in broth. This author, Rachel Khong, who pointedly explains that it “seems relevant” to mention that she is “not Vietnamese” (all that burden of political correctness!), and who always refers to Ho Chi Minh City as Saigon, is determined to find ways in which differences in pho have deep meaning: “The meat in Saigon is more varied; here there is tendon and tripe in addition to the less colorful cuts found in the North [in Hanoi]. …As it turns out, pho is always a product of place and history, and of people. …Just as straitlaced Northern pho says something about the North, and Southern pho says something about the South, and pho says something about Vietnam, American pho says something about us.”

     This is a typical approach for the authors in Best Food Writing 2017: find the meaning in food and in eating; never regard what is consumed merely as the necessary fuel to keep the body going. John Kessler, writing after a move north to Chicago, says, “Home. That’s surely what I miss when I miss Southern food. I get it. When I mutter that the grits at some trendy brunch place suck, I’m also saying that it shouldn’t be 42 degrees outside in May, that I miss my backyard garden and my friends, and that I fret I will never experience in Chicago that sense of food and place, of season and cook, that was the soul of every meal at Cakes & Ale in Decatur.” Food has a soul in Best Food Writing 2017; it is scarcely mere nutrition. Food is a highly competitive area, too, as Gustavo Arellano writes: “The luxe lonchera revolution has seen the children of immigrants push their mother cuisine to all sorts of levels, picking and choosing from other cultures to create dishes of dizzying heights.” And it is extremely political, and not only in the United States. Writing a piece called “The Last European Christmas,” Marina O’Loughlin laments the coming British departure from the European Union: “Brexit – ugly word, ugly situation – shines a light onto these family holidays that helps me see them with new eyes. …I don’t know what a Brexit-flavored Christmas would consist of, stripped of its elements from elsewhere. Ashes, I suspect.” Best Food Writing 2017 is all about people who have plenty of time and plenty of money to contemplate the societal implications of food, and plenty of inclination to make eating an integral part of the ever-widening sphere of discourse in which everything, everything, is political – and in which there are always good and bad sides, winners and losers. The first of the five sections of the book is called “The Way We Eat Now,” and there is something rather sad in realizing that the title is accurate – not for everybody, not even for a majority of people, but for the self-proclaimed cognoscenti who hold forth on what is good and right and admirable and forward-looking and inclusive and politically correct. Readers with sufficient leisure to see food in this context will encounter a considerable amount of piquant writing here; those not enamored of the underlying assumptions will find the book rather over-seasoned with self-importance and arrogance.

(++++) SYMPHONIES THAT LOOK BACK AND AHEAD

Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Chen Reiss, soprano; Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano; Netherlands Radio Choir and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam conducted by Daniele Gatti. RCO Live. $21.99 (2 SACDs).

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6. Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $18.99.

Martinů: Symphonies (complete). ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Cornelius Meister. Capriccio. $24.99 (3 CDs).

     Mahler made it quite clear that his “Resurrection” symphony, in addition to looking ahead at life beyond death, looked back at his own earlier work: the first movement is a reworking of what he originally planned as a tone poem called Totenfeier (actually originally misspelled “Todtenfeier”), which was supposed to picture the hero of his Symphony No. 1 being laid to rest. To emphasize the break between this movement’s topic and mood and those of the rest of the symphony, Mahler called for a pause of at least five minutes between the first two movements of the “Resurrection.” That is very rarely, if ever, done in concert performances. But some recordings make it comparatively easy, as does the new one featuring Daniele Gatti and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam on the orchestra’s own label, by putting the first movement by itself on one disc and the remaining ones on another. This turns the necessary two-disc arrangement of the lengthy symphony into a way of fulfilling the composer’s intention for it, provided that listeners actually spend five minutes after the first movement’s conclusion contemplating what they have just heard. Gatti provides plenty to think about: the typically splendid playing of the orchestra in this live recording is here at the service of an emotionally charged, strongly paced and well-organized interpretation that engages both through drama and through lyrical beauty. And then the character of the music really does change tremendously, as Mahler knew it would, to something so bucolic that the second movement seems to inhabit a world altogether different from the first. For Mahler, though, and for attentive listeners in general, these movements are really parts of the same world, one that Mahler contemplates in all its splendor and sorrow before turning to a finale whose thoughts – rewritten by the composer from Friedrich Klopstock’s ode, Die Auferstehung – are of the expectation of a world to come. The symphony actually moves from death to affirmation, despite its “Resurrection” title, because the concluding choral section (which begins very quietly, in a Mahlerian masterstroke) is more a generalized paean to the continuation of something human beyond death than it is a portrayal of any of the beliefs of the Catholicism to which Mahler had recently converted. Ultimately, this symphony is life-affirming, and that is how Gatti handles it: the funereal first movement, the pastoral but ultimately feckless second and third, the deeply sorrowful Nietzschean fourth, all give way – after the final movement begins with every bit as much intensity as the first one possesses – to brightness, positivity and peace. Soloists, chorus and orchestra all deliver beautifully in this reading, and the result is a work that looks ahead not only to humanity’s eventual fate but also, in retrospect, to the direction in which Mahler himself would take his next two symphonies.

     Tchaikovsky’s final symphony is not thought of as forward-looking at all – after all, the composer died nine days after the first performance, and indeed the Pathétique has for years been considered a kind of “suicide note,” especially since Tchaikovsky himself said it had a program that he chose not to reveal. But David Bernard insists that the usual view of this symphony is incorrect, and makes the case in a new Recursive Classics recording with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony that Tchaikovsky’s Sixth is the composer’s reconsideration of his earlier work and a look ahead toward new visions that he did not live to fulfill. Trying to put this approach across in performance is no easy task, made even more difficult by working with a nonprofessional orchestra. But this is not just any nonprofessional ensemble: it plays very much on a professional level, much as other top-notch nonprofessional groups do in other great music cities (such as the Kensington Symphony in London). The Park Avenue Chamber Symphony is not as small as its name indicates – it is a midsized orchestra – and while not all its sections are equally smooth, it is mostly capable of giving Bernard what he asks for in this interesting interpretation. The orchestra’s sound is clean and rather cool, the opposite of what might be expected for Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, and the result is a performance in which the structural elements of the music are clearer than usual, unclotted by overweening emotion and expectation of trauma. The first movement is beautiful without sounding cloying, and the second flows with natural grace instead of being almost tripped up by its unusual 5/4 rhythm. The third is somewhat problematical: Bernard sets a very fast pace that the orchestra barely manages to hold, resulting in some less-than-perfect intonation and, at the movement’s very end, a touch of actual sloppiness; the horns have a particularly difficult time of it here. But the propulsiveness of the music makes it clear why Bernard sees this movement as Tchaikovsky’s look back at the pacing and approach of his earlier symphonic finales (especially that of the Fourth). As for the Sixth’s finale, here Bernard bends over backward to avoid having the music sound despairing – indeed, the gong to which other conductors give prominence for its doom-laden sound is distinctly downplayed here, as Bernard emphasizes the rhythmic vitality of the movement rather than the despondency that other conductors embrace. The result is that the final fading away of the music comes across as rather tepid emotionally, the future to which it looks ahead – if there is one – never being particularly clear. The overall interpretation is an unusual one that will likely be of most interest to listeners who have heard many more-mainstream approaches to the symphony and are ready to see it, as Bernard does, in a new light.

     Like Tchaikovsky, Bohuslav Martinů wrote six symphonies (Tchaikovsky actually started a seventh but did not complete it); but the time periods in which the composers worked were quite different, and Martinů had his own balance of looking back with looking ahead. As Brahms hesitated to create symphonies because he always looked back at Beethoven, so Martinů likely hesitated because of the work of his Czech countryman Dvořák. Indeed, Martinů (1890-1959) waited even longer to create a symphony than did Bruckner, a notorious late starter. It was not until World War II, when he was in his 50s, that Martinů began writing full-fledged symphonies – but once he started, he churned out five in a row, one per year from 1942 to 1946. They are thus all wartime or early postwar works, and all to some extent reflect the uncertainties and worries of the war years and concerns about what would come after the war’s end. The works are also all American, written during Martinů’s exile in the United States; but unlike Dvořák’s famous Symphony No. 9, Martinů’s are neither from nor of the New World. They are all identifiably and audibly Czech works, but written in a mid-20^th-century musical idiom stamped with Martinů’s personality – and also possessed of such similarity of communicative tone that it can be hard to distinguish one from the next. This is true even though, analytically, the works are different from each other in many ways – for example, Nos. 1, 2 and 4 are in four movements while Nos. 3 and 5 are in three. But the movement count seems less significant than the fact that Martinů takes about the same amount of total time to make his points in all the works, each of which is about half an hour long except for No. 2, the most compact at 23 minutes. Martinů himself named Symphony No. 3 as his favorite, and listeners to the fine new Capriccio recording featuring the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Cornelius Meister will likely agree: this symphony is denser, more sinewy and more tightly packed emotionally than the others. Those others also include Symphony No. 6, an outlier that dates to 1954 and is known as “Fantaisies symphoniques.” Despite the title, it mostly resembles the five earlier symphonies, being written in three movements lasting about 30 minutes – although there is a certain lightness and flow here that justify the work’s label. Meister explores each of the works thoroughly and knowledgeably, bringing out a kind of essential cragginess that periodically contrasts with lyricism and lightness. To the extent that Martinů looked back at earlier Czech symphonies and sought to move ahead past them, it can be said that he succeeded: all six of his symphonies are stamped with his own unmistakable style. But if he was looking in these works toward a future in which either the symphony or his own music would undergo further change, his vision faltered: as Meister’s performances show, Martinů’s symphonies explore the concerns of their time to considerable effect, but do not leave the impression of looking substantially beyond it.

(++++) CELEBRATING WINDS

Sousa: Music for Wind Band, Volume 17. Guildhall Symphonic Wind Band conducted by Keith Brion. Naxos. $12.99.

Frank Martin: Music for Winds. Massachusetts Chamber Players conducted by Matthew Westgate. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Music for Wind Quintet by Mike Titlebaum, Paquito D’Rivera, Astor Piazzolla, Martin Kutnowski, and Leonard Bernstein. Ventus Machina (Karin Aurell, flutes and piccolo; Christie Goodwin, oboe and English horn; James Kalyn, clarinet; Ulises Aragon, French horn; Patrick Bolduc, bassoon). MSR Classics. $12.95.

French Flute Music. Michelle Batty Stanley, flute; Margaret McDonald, piano. Navona. $14.99.

     Keith Brion continues his fascinating survey of the music of John Philip Sousa, using wind ensembles worldwide, by conducting a student wind band in the series’ 17^th volume. And the Guildhall Symphonic Wind Band, from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, proves as adept with this repertoire as the professional and military bands that Brion has conducted in previous Naxos volumes. Furthermore, this band gets an interesting assignment: there are no famed Sousa marches here, and in fact no marches at all, even though one work – a world première recording – bears the rather awkward title, March of the Pan Americans—Part I. This, it turns out, is the first of two works Sousa wrote in 1915 to present, in alphabetical sequence, the national anthems of various independent countries of the Americas as of that year. The result is that Costa Rica, Cuba and Honduras, for example, are represented, while Canada (then closely allied to Great Britain) is not. This is the longest but least of the five pieces heard on this recording. The other four span a period of 40 years and are much better showcases for Sousa’s wind-scoring skill. The Smugglers—Quintet of 1882 is drawn from one of the composer’s earliest operettas and is nicely arranged for five wind players. The Salute of the Nations to the Columbian Exhibition (1893) was written only a year after Sousa formed his own touring band and was designed to showcase the band’s skill at the Chicago World’s Fair, where the band got equal billing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – a major milestone. Like March of the Pan Americans, this work is packed with tunes associated with specific countries, but The Salute of the Nations to the Columbian Exhibition treats the material more symphonically and more impressively. And there is greater variety and musical interest to the material, thanks to the inclusion of music from France, England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Russia, Scotland and Spain as well as the United States. Also on this CD is The American Maid—Suite (1913), taken from a later Sousa operetta that was distinguished for including film footage in the stage presentation (a real rarity at the time). And then, most amusingly, this disc includes Humoresque: A Mingling of the Wets and Drys (1922), a gentle sendup of Prohibition (of which Sousa, who enjoyed the occasional alcoholic drink, did not approve). Listeners who recognize all the tunes in this pastiche will find the work very funny indeed, and even those who do not know all of them will surely recognize some: Tea for Two, How Dry I Am, Brown October Ale, The Old Oaken Bucket, and Auld Lang Syne all make appearances, along with the Soldiers’ Chorus from Faust. The upbeat nature of the music and the good humor with which Sousa puts the tunes together are amply reflected on this disc in performances that show just how skillful Sousa was in wind compositions that go beyond the marches for which he is famous.

     Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) wrote only one wind-focused work that has retained a fair degree of popularity: Concerto pour sept instruments à vent, timbales, batterie et orchestre à cordes (1949), which, as its title indicates, includes percussion and strings as well. But it turns out that Martin had more skill in wind composition than is generally realized, as Matthew Westgate and the Massachusetts Chamber Players show on a new MSR Classics release. None of the three works heard here is likely to be particularly familiar to listeners – indeed, none of Martin’s music is exceptionally popular – but all three show solid grounding in composition for wind instruments and an ability to meld and contrast their varying sounds with skill and effectiveness. The earliest piece here is Concerto Pour les Instruments à Vent et le Piano (1924), whose two movements are very much of their time in the way they combine piccolo, flute, E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, alto saxophone, two bassoons, two trumpets, two horns, two trombones, percussion and piano, and in Martin’s use of dissonance and rhythmic variation. Zwischen Rhone und Rhein (1939), the official march of the Swiss National Exhibition, is strong and forthright and makes an interesting contrast with Sousa’s music for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The longest and most substantial piece here is Concert Suite from Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943, a rather peculiar assemblage of 10 short movements in which, unsurprisingly for a wartime work, references to death are pervasive. Indeed, eight of the movements have “death” in their titles: Death with the Old Man, Dance of Death with the Mother and her Child, Dance of Death with the Athlete, Death with the Rich Man, Dance of Death Alone, Dance of Death with the Young Girl, Dance of Death with the Self-Murderer, and Dance of Death with the Beautiful Lady. Only the opening Introduction: March of the Drums and an Intermezzo halfway through the suite omit the word, but death is never musically distant from any of the material here. Yet the work is not entirely lugubrious, although neither is it as clever as somewhat similar works by Sibelius (Valse triste) or Saint-Saëns (Danse macabre). Martin’s scoring is for four clarinets, five saxophones, two trumpets, two trombones, contrabass, percussion and piano, and it is the skillful use of the saxophones and the clarinets’ lower register that stands out. There is a burnished quality to the wind writing here, and Martin’s adept way with the different instruments’ sounds makes this a very interesting piece that transcends its time. Indeed, although it was written at the height of World War II, the dance-and-mime show from which this suite is taken was based on 15^th-century murals that showed Death more as a benign force than as a terrifying character – and that underlying benignity comes through in Martin’s music.

     Wind-focused anthology discs, like most anthology offerings, tend to be more of a mixed bag than CDs exploring a single composer’s work in greater depth. These discs are often more about the instruments and performers than the music, and frequently include commissioned pieces designed to show off those instruments and those performers. Such is the case with a (+++) MSR Classics CD featuring the Canadian ensemble that calls itself Ventus Machina. The recording includes two under-10-minute pieces commissioned by the ensemble, Short Set (2016) by Mike Titlebaum (born 1968) and Tonadas y Mateadas (2015) by Martin Kutnowski (also born 1968). Both the pieces are pleasant, largely inconsequential offerings that nicely show off the ensemble members’ abilities and provide the players with opportunities to showcase their performance skill both individually and together. The seven-movement suite, Aires Tropical (1994), by Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, is a considerably more interesting work, its brief dance movements nicely contrasted as to rhythm and instrumental combinations. Also here are two nicely done arrangements of comparatively familiar music: William Scribner’s of Milonga sin Palabras (1981) by Ástor Piazzolla and Richard Price’s, from 1989, of three excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 Broadway hit, West Side Story. Ventus Machina handles everything with panache and suitable enthusiasm, but the disc has the feeling of a pastiche rather than a well-ordered exploration of relevant repertoire. Still, it will be enjoyable for listeners looking for a collection of rather light material handled by a skillful wind ensemble.

     A (+++) Navona CD with a wind focus is specifically for listeners interested in the flute at its most graceful and lyrical. There are 12 pieces here by seven French composers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries who are scarcely household names – but a few of whose works are reasonably well-known. The composers are René de Boisdeffre, Philippe Gaubert, Émile Bernard, Émile Pessard, Alphonse Catherine, Victor-Alphonse Duvernoy, and Joseph-Henri Altès. The music is presented in no particular order – Gaubert’s three works, for example, are second, sixth and last on the disc – which adds to the “potpourri” feeling of the production. This is the sort of release for which it is best just to sit back and let the music flow, which it does very nicely indeed. Michelle Batty Stanley has fine breath control and offers subtlety in playing and a strong sense of the long, lyrical lines that make a number of these works appealing. Margaret McDonald provides apt, careful backup, although the music here is so flute-focused that the piano has less a partnership than a strictly supporting role. But, again, this will be of little consequence to listeners whose interest is simply in hearing a succession of well-crafted, pleasant flute works from a particular country and time period. The most-substantive work here is Gaubert’s Sonata No. 1, which explores multiple moods in its three movements. But other pieces that simply dip into a single feeling are every bit as pleasant to hear, if not exactly emotionally trenchant. The Arabesque and Barcarolle by Catherine and the Romance by Bernard, for example, fall into the unpretentious-salon-music category. Taken all together, these works come across as enjoyable, rather shallow background music, or as pieces that are easy to absorb and enjoy without requiring listeners to do more than let the well-crafted, well-played wind tunes wash a cascade of note sequences over them.

(++++) MISCHIEF AND MAYHEM

Dog Man #4: Dog Man and Cat Kid. By Dav Pilkey. Graphix/Scholastic. $9.99.

Three Little Monkeys. By Quentin Blake. Illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark. Harper. $18.99.

Pancakes for Breakfast. By Tomie dePaola. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $7.99.

     Sometimes books try too hard, pack too much in, overextend themselves, and nevertheless can delight many of their intended young readers – at least those who are not aware that the authors have bitten off somewhat more than they can comfortably chew. The fourth Dog Man novel by Dav Pilkey continues an ambitious approach started in the third, A Tale of Two Kitties. Pilkey has George Beard and Harold Hutchins, the two supposed creators of the book, reading well-known literature in fifth grade, and being inspired by it to produce Dog Man adventures that pick up from and reflect the classic novels the kids encounter in school. This works reasonably well in A Tale of Two Kitties, based loosely (very loosely) on Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. But it is much more of a stretch in Dog Man and Cat Kid, which is based loosely (very, very loosely) on John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It is highly doubtful that fifth-grade students would read Steinbeck’s final novel, a complex interweaving of the stories of two families that is fraught with Biblical references and filled with moral failings, sexual malfeasance and philosophical musings based on varying interpretations of the tale of Cain and Abel. Certainly this book adapts poorly, if at all, to a child-oriented graphic-novel format and to the Dog Man series in particular – with the result that when Pilkey most directly brings in elements from Steinbeck, such as the Hebrew word timshel (“thou mayest,” a crucial concept in East of Eden) and the chapter title “An Aching Kind of Growing” (a direct quotation from Steinbeck’s book), Dog Man and Cat Kid comes perilously close to skidding off the rails along which Pilkey is guiding this sequence. But it never quite does skid off, and that is one reason young readers will find the book perhaps puzzling at times but not really off-putting. Furthermore, the story here, shorn of its existential angst and its sometimes forced parallels to Steinbeck, is entirely age-appropriate and often absolutely hilarious. The basic tale has to do with evil cat Petey’s clone, created in the previous book but emerging as a kitten who, it turns out, respects and loves Dog Man and does not want to be evil. In Dog Man and Cat Kid, Petey shows up dressed as Mary Poppins to “take care” of “Li’l Petey,” as the kitten is known, so Dog Man can go to work. Petey soon reveals himself to the kitten and insists that biology is destiny (not quite in those words), so Li’l Petey must learn to be evil because he is, after all, Petey’s duplicate. The flip side of this nature-vs.-nurture debate comes from Dog Man, and of course the good wins out over the bad eventually, but what makes Dog Man and Cat Kid so delightful is the hilarious way it gets to its obvious “good is better” conclusion. Much of the book involves an attempt by movie company Gassy Behemoth Studios to make a Dog Man film starring actors who are nothing like Dog Man or other “real” characters: hyper-muscled “international action hero Ding-Dong Magoo” as Dog Man, Italian beauty Yolay Caprese as Australian reporter Sarah Hatoff, “comic superstar Scooter McRibs” as Petey, and Samuel J. Johnson (think Samuel L. Jackson) as Chief – a character constantly spouting parodies of famous (and very profane) remarks drawn from the movie Snakes on a Plane, such as “I have HAD IT with these DOG-GONE ACTORS in this DOG-GONE LIMO!!!” Throw in parodies of Batman (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and a hilarious recurring gag in which a studio guard is repeatedly and very inventively dumped into a deep hole dug by Dog Man to try to get into the building, and you have a book of parodies within parodies within parodies, filled with action and brimming with so much silliness that East of Eden mostly fades far, far into the background. And that is where it belongs in a series like this. The fact that it shows up at all tends to be confusing, but Pilkey’s sure-handed comedic gifts make up for his overreaching for a Steinbeck connection.

     The connection that readers will most readily make with Quentin Blake’s Three Little Monkeys is likely to be with the mischievous simians of Esphyr Slobodkina’s classic Caps for Sale. And there is in fact a kind of classic style to Emma Chichester Clark’s attractive and often elegant illustrations here: the backgrounds and settings are especially well delineated. But unlike Slobodkina’s mischievous but basically well-meaning monkeys, the three kept as pets by Hilda Snibbs in Blake’s book are genuinely monkey-like in their behavior – which means they make enormous messes whenever Hilda leaves the house, which she does repeatedly and without making the slightest attempt to confine the monkeys to a room or area where they are less likely to do damage. That is the weakness in this (+++) book: Snibbs is so dim, such an uninteresting and unaware character, that even young readers may tire of her repeated departures, before each of which she admonishes the monkeys to be good, which of course they are not – leaving Snibbs to return home to mess after mess, always apparently surprised that the monkeys have behaved like, well, monkeys. Why does Snibbs even have the monkeys? Blake does not say. And is there any lesson learned in the book, any change of pace or change of habit for Snibbs or the monkeys? None at all – Three Little Monkeys simply concludes that problems galore are “the sort of thing you have to expect if you have three little monkeys.” Blake is a fine illustrator – and was Clark’s teacher – but as an author, he is less adept, providing in Three Little Monkeys a story that is not very involving and does not really go anywhere. On the other hand, the creative ways the monkeys find to mess up Snibbs’ apartment are amusing and suitably monkey-like, and Clarke does a fine job depicting them. The book comes across as an attempt at an artistic collaboration between two illustrators, a sort of teacher/student merger in which the skills of both are brought neatly together. Blake has written other books, but only for his own illustrations – this is the first time he has created a story for someone else to picture. The joint venture is not wholly successful. But that is really an adult analysis – the young readers for whom the book is intended will enjoy the monkey mischief portrayed repeatedly in Three Little Monkeys, and may find it funny that Snibbs never does anything to limit the monkeys’ access to things they can mess up. But never underestimate children’s wisdom: Snibbs is so unaware of the inevitability of what will happen when she leaves the monkeys alone yet again that even kids may find their enjoyment of the monkeys tempered by a feeling of being fed up at the dullness of the human being.

     No such concerns affect the handling of mischievous pets in Tomie dePaola’s (++++) Pancakes for Breakfast, originally published way back in 1978 and just as much fun as always in a new paperback edition. This is a wonderful, nearly wordless story – almost the only words are in the included recipe for pancakes – in which a woman, living out in the country, wakes up dreaming of pancakes and sets about gathering the ingredients needed to make some. She carefully measures the flour, then discovers she has no eggs, so she walks to her chicken coop to get some, followed by her dog; then she needs milk and has to go milk her cow, this time with her cat watching. The scenes of rural life are beautifully handled by dePaola, done in cartoonish style but nevertheless exhibiting plenty of understanding of the real world in showing the egg basket and nests of the chickens, the timbers of the cow’s barn, and the snow-covered yard through which the woman walks back and forth with her animal companions. Eventually she puts the pancake ingredients into an old-fashioned butter churn – adults may have to explain what it is to young readers today – and she sets about mixing everything, spending nearly half an hour at the work (as a clock on the wall shows) and ending up thoroughly tired out. But the batter is ready and the woman is happy – until she finds she is out of maple syrup and needs to go get some from a neighbor. And so she does, with visions of warmth dancing in her head as she contemplates cooking the pancakes and serving herself a big, delicious stack of them. Unfortunately, when she gets home, she finds that the dog and cat have, quite understandably, gotten into the pancake batter, the remaining milk and eggs, and even the flour – there is nothing left for her, and dePaola shows a vision of the distraught woman imagining winged pancakes flying away. But before the story can have an unhappy ending, the woman smells something and walks through the snow one more time, finding that her next-door neighbors have just finished making, of all things, pancakes! And so, thanks to country hospitality, she gets her big stack of deliciousness at last. And on the book’s final page, the plump-bellied and satisfied trio – woman, dog and cat – can be seen resting peacefully beneath a wall hanging with the only non-pancake-related words in the book: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Modest in scale and charming from start to finish, Pancakes for Breakfast remains a joy four decades after its initial publication because of its modest scope and dePaola’s skill in conveying emotions and human-animal interactions without the need for any words at all.