(++++) FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES

Owl Always Love You! By Sandra Magsamen. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $7.99.

Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag. By Rob Sanders. Illustrated by Steven Salerno. Random House. $17.99.

     Although many kids’ books are designed to reach the widest possible audience, others are self-limited to specific groups by design. Sandra Magsamen’s sweet little board books, especially the ones with bound-in cute shapes or characters aimed at enhancing the very simple narratives, are for the very youngest children and are intended to be as participatory as possible for infants up to age three or four. A perfect example is Owl Always Love You! Projecting from the top of the book, tightly bound into the back cover, is a smiling mostly-green owl with huge eyes, an upside-down triangle for a nose, and a heart-shaped bright red mouth. This little plush animal virtually duplicates the larger of two owls shown on the book’s cover – the attachment to the story is handled to perfection. And there is more: the bound-in plush owl is actually a finger puppet, so the adult reading the book can make it move back and forth and seem to look down into the book’s pages – its eyes already are cast downward, as if toward the illustrations, so this works quite well. The text, simple as it is, is neatly worked into the appearance both of the larger owl and of the smaller one on the cover, whose body is mostly yellow. Within the book’s pages, only the littler owl is seen; the bigger, parental one looks down from above the binding and participates in the story to the extent that the adult reader arranges things. The tie-ins between the words and the use of the finger puppet are very well done. For example, Magsamen writes, “If you fly up high in a tree, I’ll fly there, too, to see what you see.” The illustration shows the little yellow owl near the top of a tree, looking up at such an angle that the finger puppet’s eyes, looking down, seem to stare directly at the in-book picture. Everything is handled with this level of skill in Owl Always Love You! The result is a book that only looks simple: it fits the age level at which it is aimed perfectly, it is designed for the specific circumstances of an adult reading lovingly to a very young child in a participatory environment, and it is created in such a way as to fit into that environment as smoothly as possible.

     The target age range is older, ages 5-8, and the subject matter much weightier, in Rob Sanders’ Pride, but this too is a self-limited book intended for a specific and narrow audience. It is for gay couples who have children living with them, and perhaps for traditional families whose children interact regularly with such couples or have expressed curiosity about them. Despite the age range Sanders writes for, this is not an introductory book about gay rights or the LGBTQ+ community – it is strictly for those who know the topic already and are completely accepting of it. It is a book of hagiography, making activist Harvey Milk and rainbow-flag designer Gilbert Baker into larger-than-life heroes, painting their lives in colors as bright as those of the flag itself while brushing off any opposition to their ideas and activities as mean-spirited if not downright evil. There is plenty of precedent for handling stories like this in this way: books for African-American children and families often portray white people, especially those who lived in the days of legal segregation, as typecast, one-dimensional evildoers. Sanders and illustrator Steven Salerno do not go quite that far, but Pride states directly that the only motivation of Milk and Baker was “to protest inequality and unjust laws,” making it hard for young children to understand how such laws could exist. In one especially dramatic illustration, Salerno shows Milk addressing a huge and completely faceless crowd – only Milk is seen as an individual, with all the crowd members, whether favoring his views or opposing them, simply being blobs of color. The text here says, “Some people listened. A few agreed. Most did not.” But how is that possible, children may ask, when the only thing Milk was talking about was ending “inequality and unjust laws”? Adults will have to fill in a considerable amount of background for young readers of an inquisitive bent. That necessity, and the extremely (and deliberately) unbalanced nature of the narrative here, result in a (+++) overall rating for the book. However, the limited audience at which Pride is directed will have no qualms about rating it (++++) – for that audience, the book will come across as Sanders and Salerno intend, as an assertion of pride in the rainbow flag and the people who brought it into being.

(+++) ANGST AND APPLE PIE

How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents. By Jimmy O. Yang. Da Capo. $27.

     The title’s implication, and the author cover photo showing Jimmy O. Yang waving a small American flag with one hand while holding a beer in the other, sitting in a chair with a football on the floor on one side and snack foods spilling onto the floor on the other, certainly combine to imply that How to American will be a romp of some sort. But this turns out, rather quickly, to be misleading. Yes, Yang is a comedian, and yes, his chosen profession initially got little parental support – the book’s back cover even includes a quote from “Jimmy’s Dad” to the effect that “Jimmy is not funny.” But this is not a comedy book per se, and certainly not the sort of written-out version of an existing comedy act that sometimes passes for a book by an entertainer whose job is to generate laughter. Instead, How to American is a memoir, and at times a surprisingly affecting one.

     Yang was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States just before starting high school. Amusingly, he learned English by watching Black Entertainment Television and seeing rap videos – and he got into standup comedy after college with stories like the one about his white friends asking him to order Chinese food in Mandarin, even at Panda Express from a server named Consuela. When it comes to trying to break into comedy, Yang’s experience is not really all that unusual, although his way of commenting when things go well is a bit offbeat: “The crowd ate it up like it was orange chicken with a side of chow mein.” The financial reality, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward: “I didn’t get paid a single penny that night, but I did score a six-pack of Bud Light.” Other “nonmonetary payments for a stand-up set,” Yang explains, include “weed,” “high-fives,” “unsolicited career advice,” and “one food item from the left side of the menu.”

     Professionally, Yang’s career took off after he landed a role on the HBO series Silicon Valley. But How to American is not simply a success story filled with self-praise – it is more interesting and amusing than that. Each chapter is a how-to of some sort: “How to Get High,” “How to Strip Club DJ,” “How to Hollywood,” etc. Within many chapters are subsections with titles such as “Too Cool for Prom, but Not Really,” “I Got Arsenio Canceled,” and “Lap Dance Salesman.” The material within the chapters and subchapters is not particularly revelatory, so what makes the book worth reading is the way Yang describes what has happened to him. For instance, discussing “ten extra minutes on stage” at one point, he explains, “It’s like being on a first date and completely running out of things to say, so you sit there twiddling your thumbs wanting to kill yourself, except instead of one girl judging you, it’s a hundred drunk people judging you on a brightly lit stage.”

     It is the self-deprecating sense of humor, more than Yang’s eventual success at landing the role of Jian Yang on Silicon Valley, that is really of interest here, although the book may have particular appeal for fans of the show who want the inside story, such as it is, of one of the program’s stars. It is, to be sure, sometimes a bit hard to know just how seriously to take what Yang says, since some of the occurrences he describes are so clichéd: “I was so flustered, I forgot how to be nervous.” “I was suddenly thrown into a fantasy world.” What is not difficult, though, is to empathize with Yang, his attempt to fit in after a move to a new and strange country, his friendly writing style that makes it difficult to do anything but like him, his eventual success, his willingness to say things such as, “The day you buy your 55-inch flat screen and throw away your old Zenith tube TV is one of the best days of your life.” There is nothing profound in How to American, nothing revelatory about life in general or Hollywood in particular; but there is a great deal about what it feels like in the 21^st century to be a recent immigrant to the United States (a legal immigrant; no big sociopolitical stances here), and to have the pluck and luck to succeed in a new country. For today’s immigrants, unlike so many of those who passed through Ellis Island more than a century ago, there remains a strong tie to “where I came from” rather than a desire to escape fully from “the old country” – or at least this is so for Yang. He encapsulates the feeling in one of his most-sensitive sentences, after a visit to the place where he was born: “When I came home to LA from Hong Kong, I felt like I had left my real home to come back to the place I called home.” Yang is not a deep thinker, but that is a deeper thought than many memoirs ever produce.

(++++) ROMANTICS, MORE OR LESS

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4. Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Robin Ticciati. Linn Records. $27.99 (2 CDs).

Korngold: Violin Concerto; Bernstein: Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium.” Liza Ferschtman, violin; Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jiří Malát (Korngold); Het Gelders Orkest conducted by Christian Vásquez (Bernstein). Challenge Classics. $19.99 (SACD).

Verdi, Puccini and Massenet: Opera Scenes and Arias. Marie-Josée Lord, soprano; Orchestre symphonique de Laval conducted by Alain Trudel. ATMA Classique. $16.99.

Ricky Ian Gordon: Too Few the Mornings Be (Eleven Songs for Soprano and Piano); Jake Heggie: Eve-Song. Emily Sternfeld-Dunn, soprano; Amanda Pfenninger, piano. Navona. $14.99.

Haydn: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. Zuill Bailey, cello; Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Robin O’Neill. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

     Even when music of the Romantic era is as familiar as Brahms’ symphonies, there is room for a conductor to find something new to explore, something new to express through the music. And Robin Ticciati finds quite a few new things to say in his Brahms cycle on Linn Records. His Symphony No. 1, in particular, is a triumph, with the 50-odd members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra producing a sound of heft without heaviness, giving Brahms a clarity of expression – especially in the middle voices – that is genuinely revelatory. Ticciati chooses quick tempos, but does not hesitate to let the music breathe and expand when that is appropriate: his introduction to the finale is truly exceptional. And the use of small-bore trombones and 19^th-century trumpets results in absolutely first-rate balance of brass against strings, again adding to the clarity of the musical lines and the effectiveness of the work’s overall expressiveness. Were it not for a touch too much rubato in the main portion of the finale, this would be a genuinely superb performance – in fact, it very nearly is one despite the occasional excesses. The other three symphonies are also packed with excellent moments, despite some less-than-excellent decision-making. Ticciati makes an egregious mistake – in sports it would be called an unforced error – in No. 2, by omitting the repeat of the exposition in the first movement, resulting in a movement that is not the longest in Brahms’ symphonies, as it should be. It is possible this was done to ensure that Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 would fit on a single disc, but if so, that was a poor decision, since the timings of Ticciati’s readings mean the repeat could have been accommodated by pairing No. 1 with No. 4 and No. 2 with No. 3. More than that, though, this omission is a significant one in terms of the scope and balance of the symphony, apart from the esthetic harm done by depriving audiences of re-hearing the wonderful first few minutes of the symphony’s opening movement. The rest of No. 2 is excellent, with the second movement warm and sensitive and the finale particularly perky – rendering the first-movement problem all the more stark. Symphony No. 3 is the only one in which the comparatively small string section seems to work against the music: the warmth that pervades this work is insufficiently evident in this quick and rather cool performance, and the touches of rubato are on the intrusive side – although the finale is an effective capstone. Rubato also does little good in the first movement of No. 4, although here the rest of the symphony is at a very high interpretative level: the second movement is simply lovely, the third has all the liveliness one would hope for from Brahms’ sole symphonic scherzo, and the variations in the finale are pointed, elegant and beautifully balanced. This is, in totality, a very, very good Brahms cycle, and one in which niceties and insights of all sorts percolate through continually – although, unfortunately, so do touches of fussiness and excess.

     The spirit of the Romantic era remains very much in evidence in the violin concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which is a bit surprising for such a late work: Korngold (1897-1957) had moved somewhat beyond this style by 1945, when he created this piece, although it certainly reflects the way his earlier music sounded. It also reflects his many film scores: the concerto is riddled with quotations from them, and they fit into the musical flow quite naturally and without drawing attention to themselves in the way that, say, the quotations in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 do. The pacing of the concerto’s first two movements is relaxed, while the third is bright, upbeat and makes quite delightful use of pizzicato passages. Liza Ferschtman plays the work very well, with considerable flair in the finale, on a new Challenge Classics SACD that also includes an interesting Leonard Bernstein piece from 1954: Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium.” This is a five-movement set of character pieces exploring various participants in Plato’s gathering: first Phaedrus and Pausanias, then Aristophanes, followed by Eryximachus, then Agathon, and finally Socrates and Alcibiades. The serenade is scarcely as accessible as Bernstein’s works for more-popular audiences, and a full appreciation of the music does require knowing something of the underlying impetus for the music. Even without that knowledge, though, listeners can readily appreciate the ebullience of the third-movement Presto, the beauty of the fourth-movement Adagio, and the many felicitous instrumental touches in a score that uses only strings, harp and percussion along with the solo violin. Bernstein’s lyricism is different from Korngold’s and seems less directly tied to the Romantic era, but both these works are attractively expressive and provide Ferschtman with plenty of opportunities for both virtuosity and warmth. The two orchestras and conductors offer able if rather bland backup, with the more-polished sound of the Prague Symphony Orchestra being more engaging.

     The orchestral backup is actually one of the positive distinguishing features on a new ATMA Classique recording mostly featuring opera excerpts sung by soprano Marie-Josée Lord. Bernstein makes an appearance here, too: Lord’s encore is Somewhere from West Side Story, and this piece gives the singer a chance to delve further into the pop-music scene in which she has been focused for several years. In opera, Lord has been best-known for her Puccini, and the excerpts here from La Bohème, Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica (a Lord specialty) justify the high regard in which she was held when she first emerged as a classical soprano. The three Puccini arias are placed between four works by Verdi and four by Massenet, with the CD’s overall theme encapsulated in its one-word title, “Femmes.” It is indeed a disc focusing on important female characters in opera, although scarcely unique in that regard – indeed, sopranos (and mezzos) produce material of this sort all the time. Lord does a more-than-respectable job with the oversize emotions of her heroines, and there are a few surprises here, notably the fact that O patria mia from Aida is more affecting and altogether more convincing than the more-familiar Ritorna vincitor. The other Verdi works are from La Traviata: the opera’s prelude, in which the Orchestre symphonique de Laval shines under Alain Trudel, and the rather odd combination of E strano with the vivacious Sempre libera – which could use a touch more abandonment and, ideally, an underlying sense of desperation, rather than the rather too-happy treatment it gets in Lord’s enthusiastic rendition. The Massenet excerpts include two from Hérodiade and one each from Le Cid and Thaïs, and Lord handles everything with suitable emotional heft and understanding. This is, on balance, a (+++) disc that will primarily be of interest to existing fans of the soprano – especially ones interested in seeing how she has returned to a level of classical focus after appearing for a while to be more comfortable in the popular-music field.

     Another soprano-focused CD with a very distinct feminine slant is a new (+++) Navona release featuring works by Ricky Ian Gordon and Jake Heggie: the disc’s title is, very simply and directly, “She.” Although both composers are men, both pieces here focus on women and are performed by women. Gordon’s Too Few the Mornings Be is a set of 11 settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, most of them quite short and all of them reaching out in Dickinson’s inimitable epigrammatic and inquisitive tone. “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” is especially impressive, particularly in this context, but all the settings are nicely done, with pianist Amanda Pfenninger having a sure sense of when to fade into the background so soprano Emily Sternfeld-Dunn can dominate the vocal-instrumental conversation, and when to move more forward to reinforce the poems’ emotional messages. As for Heggie’s Eve-Song, to words by Philip Littell, it shows a composer best known for his operas producing a dramatic and complex portrait of a single person – the biblical Eve – through music so variegated that the eight movements collectively reinforce the notion of Eve as the mother of the entire human race. Like Dickinson, Littell’s Eve has more questions than answers; but beyond that, she has strong viewpoints, considerable enthusiasm and a refreshing sense of humor that goes well beyond anything biblical. She also shows a level of kindness that gives this musical portrait a distinctly modern sensibility: Eve is as multifaceted as Heggie’s music (which draws on everything from chant to jazz) can make her. There is an underlying sense of advocacy in Eve-Song, a kind of “cause” mentality to the work in a quasi-sociopolitical sense, asserting an Eve quite different from the “first sinner” found in Genesis. Stripped of this somewhat overdone gloss, though, Eve-Song is an interesting interpretation (or reinterpretation) of the character and a work in which both Heggie as composer and Sternfeld-Dunn and Pfenninger as performers are able to explore both femininity and feminism.

     If the Gordon/Heggie CD has largely moved beyond musical Romanticism, Zuill Bailey’s new Steinway & Sons recording of Haydn’s Cello Concertos in C and D has fastened onto the Romantic sensibility and applied some of it to music written before the Romantic era existed. Bailey favors a big sound, and his Matteo Goffriller cello is quite capable of producing it – but the sound tends to overawe some of Haydn’s music in these concertos, as if the notes are not quite up to the declamatory quality that Bailey brings to them. This is scarcely a full-blown Romantic interpretation: Robin O’Neill leads the Philharmonia Orchestra with some sensitivity to period style, although this is not describable as a historically informed performance. And Bailey’s always-formidable technique is as impressive here as it is in the sorts of Romantic works for which it is better fitted. Haydn was not a cellist and, indeed, not especially adept at composing concertos, certainly not when compared with Mozart: Haydn’s are pleasant, nicely balanced and extremely well-constructed, but generally lack the flair that Mozart brought to his. What Bailey does in this (+++) recording is supply some of that flair – but whether he does so appropriately in terms of the scores will be a matter of opinion. This is quite a short CD, only 48 minutes: it contains the two concertos and nothing else. It thus comes across as something of a “souvenir” disc, the kind of thing that Bailey’s fans might pick up on their way out the door after a satisfying concert. That is perfectly fine, and certainly the actual cello playing here is refined, tonally beautiful and carefully balanced against and matched to the first-rate support of the orchestra. But there is a bit of an underlying mismatch between the way Bailey approaches this music and the way Haydn wrote it: this is Classical-era material, and even though Bailey shows some restraint in handling it, his performances leave the impression that he is keeping a desire for full-blown Romanticism in check only by force of will.

(+++) IN SEARCH OF CONNECTIONS

Moments of Truth: Music of Karl Blench, Martin Vogt “Haywyre,” Monteverdi, Fleetwood Mac, Billie Holiday, Ives, Steve Paul “Elliott” Smith, Bach, and Bob Dylan. Axiom Quartet (Dominika​ ​Dancewicz​ and Ingrid​ ​Gerling, violins; Nina​ ​Bledsoe,​ ​viola; Patrick​ ​Moore,​ ​cello). Navona. $14.99.

Gregory Wanamaker: Des Ondes et les Temps; …Unsettled, Unphased…; Elegy; Ragahoro Breakdown; Of Light and Shadows; Out of Mind, into Body; Counterpunch. Navona. $14.99.

David Taddie: Wayward Country; A Rift in Time; Triptych; Tracer; Category 5 (Echoes); Caterwaul Dreams; Licorice Stick Groove; Convergences. Ravello. $14.99.

Zvonimir Nagy: Angelus; Litanies of the Soul; Prayer; Two Canons; Preludes for a Prayer. Zvonimir Nagy, organ. Ravello. $14.99.

     A great deal of music is about connecting: composer connecting with audience through performers, performers connecting with each other to produce the effects sought by composers, audience members connecting through shared experience with the communicative power flowing both from composer and from performers. Because different music connects with performers and listeners in different ways, there are all sorts of opportunities for concert promoters, recording producers and performers themselves to put sequences of works together in ways designed to elicit a sense of a whole greater than the sum of its parts – that is, to combine works in new ways so as to produce new insights, new ways of connecting with an audience, new ways of getting listeners to connect with their own inner selves. This is exactly what the Axiom Quartet tries to do on a new Navona CD called “Moments of Truth.” That title encapsulates the rather grandiose aim here: to explore what “truth” is and can be in the hands of string players and the minds of composer and listeners. The works on the CD are so different, so disconnected from each other, that its intent is a definite overreach. To try to pull the musical strands together, the quartet plays short pieces by Karl Blench – who also did the arrangements of all the longer music – in between the primary selections. This is a clever but only marginally successful approach: really, nothing Blench writes for the quartet to play ties together an excerpt from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac. Blench calls the 29-second connecting work After Monteverdi, but all that does is affirm the piece’s position on the disc. Likewise, after the quartet plays the Billie Holiday/Arthur Herzog Jr. Don’t Explain, Blench’s 66-second Before Ives is a somewhat less than wholly effective transition to a version of The Alcotts from Ives’ Concord Sonata. Still, the attempt to extract or display various forms of truth, musical and otherwise, from such disparate material, makes for a disc that is intriguing throughout and often fascinating. After working through material including Bach’s Erbarme dich from the St. Matthew Passion and Bob Dylan’s Wagon Wheel, the CD eventually builds to the longest piece here, Blench’s Axiom, which is supposed to sum up and expand all the truth-seeking that has come before and point listeners – well, where, exactly? That is not quite clear, and the concluding piece is not strong enough to bear the philosophical weight with which it is freighted. So this musical search for truth, or truths, turns out to be inconclusive – but it is easy to argue that that is the proper conclusion for an exploration that never ends.

     The connections in a new Navona CD of music by Gregory Wanamaker are all sought by the same composer and all focused on woodwinds: saxophones are central to all the pieces here except one, Out of Mind, into Body, which is for solo bass clarinet. This is one of two solo works on the disc: Des Ondes et les Temps, for tenor saxophone, is heard at the start of the disc in a jazz-infused version, then at the CD’s conclusion in more experimental form. Throughout the pieces heard here, Wanamaker is looking for connections not only with listeners – to whom he reaches out in a stylistic mixture that includes folk, dance, ethnic and rock elements as well as jazz – but also among performers in the pieces for multiple instruments: Ragahoro Breakdown for clarinet and alto saxophone, Of Light and Shadows for alto saxophone and piano, and the remaining works for larger groupings of four to six players. Wanamaker is clearly a composer who feels that the same notes communicate different things when played by different instruments: Des Ondes et les Temps  is seen by the composer as a “third movement” for an earlier two-movement piece for solo flute, while Elegy is here arranged for five instruments but was originally written for clarinet and alto saxophone. Wanamaker’s musical language also extends beyond traditional instruments and into electronics in Out of Mind, into Body and the second version of Des Ondes et les Temps. A great deal of the music here is athematic and virtuosic, and will be of special interest to saxophonists and other wind players but perhaps less so to audiences – although jazz fans will quickly pick up on the many riffs and variation techniques that Wanamaker borrows from that style. The shorter pieces here, including Elegy and Counterpunch, make their points rather more effectively than do the longer and more-elaborate ones, which tend toward the repetitive. But some of the longer works, although they are inclined to meander and be overextended, provide effective contrasts of sound: Of Light and Shadows is the clearest example of this. Wanamaker’s skillful writing should help him connect effectively with saxophonists and lovers of contemporary wind music. But emotional connections between these works and a wider listenership are somewhat harder to discern.

     Another single-composer CD, a Ravello release featuring music by David Taddie, looks not only for connections with an audience but also for connections with computers and electronics. Traditional instruments are only one aspect of the material here, being entirely missing in one piece, Caterwaul Dreams – an imaginary entry into cats’ dreams that sounds pretty much like what you would expect from its title – and otherwise appearing only in combination with computer sounds or electroacoustic accompaniment. A great deal of the connection here is between Taddie and the performers: he wrote the pieces for specific people (not necessarily the ones who perform the works here) and accommodated their particular abilities, needs, desires and orientations. Thus, every work here is a highly personal one that connects composer and performer intimately – but direct connections with a larger audience are less clear and will likely depend on how much individual listeners enjoy hearing the mixing of specific instruments with particular forms of electronic sounds and samplings. Certainly there are quite a few combinations among which to choose. Wayward Country is for alto saxophone (Michael Ibrahim) and computer. A Rift in Time is for violin (Andrea Schultz), cello (Michael Finckel), and computer; its title refers to the terrorist murders of September 11, 2001, which occurred as Taddie was finishing the piece. Triptych, the longest work on the disc, is for flute (Nina Assimakopoulos) and electroacoustic accompaniment, and here the communication is taken to a new level: the work includes words written and spoken by Assimakopoulos, whose text expresses her reactions to the electronic elements of the piece – which includes specific sounds that she asked Taddie to introduce. Tracer is for piano (Keith Kirchoff) and electroacoustic accompaniment. Category 5 (Echoes) is for flute, alto flute and piccolo (Francesca Arnone), plus violin (Mikylah McTeer) and computer. Licorice Stick Groove is for clarinet (Marianne Gythfeldt) and electroacoustic accompaniment. And Convergences is for harp (Julia Kay Jamieson) and electroacoustic accompaniment. There are plenty of convergences on this disc, not just in the piece of that title, and plenty of communication as well. However, a general audience is not likely to pick up the many nuances that Taddie introduced into these pieces at the behest of the people for whom he wrote them, so the communicative potential of the music is likely, for most people, to be somewhat muted.

     There is just one instrument rather than a multiplicity of them on a new Ravello CD featuring music written and performed by Zvonimir Nagy – but the instrument here is one that is often spoken of as including all instruments: the organ. An instrument of longstanding association with spirituality and organized religion, one thought to facilitate connection between the soul and God, the organ receives less attention from contemporary composers than do many other instruments – even when the organ itself is quite a new one, as is the case here, with Nagy playing a Jaeckel organ built as recently as 2015. The primary connection invited by these Nagy works is not with an external spiritual figure but between an individual and his or her inner self: these are minimalist, meditative works that could be used as aids to inward contemplation but that tend to be difficult to listen to attentively. The CD runs just over an hour, and is almost impossible to keep in the foreground of one’s awareness if heard straight through: Nagy’s aim appears to be quiet and relaxation, the use of music to induce an internal focus and a connection with one’s sense of spirituality and inner peace. The works all have a sameness about them, although on analysis they can clearly be seen as different in design. Every work on the disc calls by its title on the organ’s traditional liturgical function, even if the music itself does not. Angelus is gentle and develops slowly and quietly. Litanies of the Soul features first and last movements that move upwards and downwards, respectively, plus three internal movements that are slow and quiet. Nagy’s Two Canons are not strictly canonic, using the imitative form to produce somewhat more-complex sounds. Prayer is a short piece whose material ties to Preludes for a Prayer, the longest work here: a seven-movement suite in which the final movement is essentially a lengthy version of the first, while the five inner ones meander through quietude until the sixth becomes briefly more animated before the last one returns to tranquility. Like minimalist music in general, these Nagy pieces are ones in which the composer seems almost to be absent: minimalism facilitates connections within listeners, with the composer as enabler rather than someone who determines what, specifically, will be communicated. In reality, all music encourages listeners to find elements of themselves with which the sounds resonate, both literally and figuratively. But composers have traditionally wanted to guide audiences toward particular experiences, to connect them with what musical creators want hearers to experience. Nagy and other minimalists are content to ask listeners to feel connectedness of some sort without insisting on just what the nature of their feelings and experiences will be.

(++++) HUMANS AND OTHER CRITTERS

Herding Cats: A “Sarah’s Scribbles” Collection (No. 3). By Sarah Andersen. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

Fly Guy #18: Fly Guy and the Alienzz. By Tedd Arnold. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.

     Sarah Andersen continues to offer her skewed and often perceptive take on the life of a modern young woman in the third Sarah’s Scribbles collection, Herding Cats. Actually, what Andersen – or her cartoon avatar – mostly herds is her own uncertainties, insecurities and irritations at the ups and downs of everyday life. Andersen pictures herself as a big-headed, rectangular-bodied character with huge eyes that are decidedly not anime-like but that are very expressive. The Sarah’s Scribbles drawings can include just two panels or as many as seven, depending on what mini-story Andersen is telling. One five-panel example has her enjoying some simple, silly things in life, from a flower crown to a choker she thinks is cute, while outside-the-panel voices criticize everything – leading to a plaintive, super-bulging eyes comment in the final panel, “I just want to enjoy being alive.” Another five-panel sequence, “How to Put a Shirt Back When Shopping,” starts by showing her neatly re-folding the shirt and putting it back on a pile, only to decide self-consciously, “You ruined it,” followed by “You ruined everything,” followed by a final panel showing everything everywhere in flames: “How did you mess up this badly?” This sort of wry self-awareness permeates Sarah’s Scribbles. One sequence shows “Present Me” and “Future Me” with a pile of work between them – until “Present Me” shoves all the work onto “Future Me” and runs away. On another page, “an old song you used to like” returns to bring happiness – but turns out to be dragging a gigantic ball labeled “terrible memories.” And there are several instances recognizing the extent to which both real and online life seem increasingly unfriendly nowadays: Andersen is happy and feels “we’re actually making progress” when a character with a U.S. flag (sort of) for a head mentions “pre-2016” that same-sex marriage has been declared legal – but then, “post-2016,” a panel shows everything burning and people screaming and fighting as Andersen cries out, “What is happening?” Elsewhere, Andersen releases anger that she describes as “petty,” only to find out that it is boomerang-shaped and comes back three years later to smack into her with renewed force. The unique style of Andersen’s art makes it amply communicative with only a few words – which, however, means that the final part of Herding Cats, an extended essay that is “a guide for the young creative” and has only a few illustrations, is the weakest part of the book. This is a well-meaning discussion of the importance of staying true to your creative impulses even if your parents disapprove, even if Internet trolls try to take you down, even if you self-sabotage by diving into depression upon hearing one single item of yours described as “bad thing” when everything else you do is described as “good thing.” But the illustrations (good thing, good thing, good thing, good thing) are so much better than the mediocre text (bad thing) that the essay makes it clear, as does the rest of the book, that where Andersen excels is in visual, not textual communication.

     Another character with gigantic, bulging eyeballs on a disproportionately small body is Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy, whose adventures are aimed at kids rather than adults. The latest of them, Fly Guy and the Alienzz, is more elaborate than many of the earlier ones. Fly Guy and the boy who keeps him as a pet, Buzz (whose eyes are also huge and bulging), get together to make a movie using Buzz’s cell-phone camera. Arnold is clever here in showing Buzz doing things that a young reader of this book could actually do to make his or her own movie. Buzz shows Fly Guy how he drew three green aliens, “cut them out, and glued them on sticks, like puppets.” There is a “secret hero fort” made of cardboard and a “solid-gold spaceship” that is clearly shown to be a flashlight with cardboard tail fins taped to it. The movie starts with Fly Guy and Buzz Boy (also cutouts on sticks) captured by the aliens, with Fly Guy escaping as Buzz Boy is tied up. Then things get complicated as Arnold brings in other characters – Dragon Dude and Fly Girl – as Fly Guy talks in his usual buzzy manner (“Oopzz!”). Eventually space pirates steal the aliens’ solid-gold spaceship, so the aliens are marooned on Earth and decide to become good guys, while Buzz and Fly Guy are left to think up a movie sequel. This is a lot to pack into 30 pages, but Arnold does a good job of pacing the story and keeping it and the characters consistent. There is a lot of Fly Guy material out there, including fact books as well as adventures with Buzz, and kids who enjoy Arnold’s characters will appreciate the fact that they stay true to type from book to book and continue to be amusingly offbeat.

(+++) HERE WE GO AGAIN

Argeneau Novel No. 27: Twice Bitten. By Lynsay Sands. Avon. $7.99.

     In the 26^th novel of Lynsay Sands’ long-running Argeneau series, Immortally Yours, the lead female character has been a strong, appealing, sexy and determined vampire for more than a century. As the plot progresses, she re-encounters a strong, appealing, sexy and determined male who, it turns out, is her “life mate” – a Sands invention that helps explain, in the context of paranormal romance, the intensity of characters’ physical attraction and connection. But there are complications standing in the way of their happily-ever-after – and “ever after” means a loooooong time when it comes to immortals. The primary one is that someone is trying to kill the female protagonist. So female and male protagonist must team up for purposes of protection and link up for purposes of extreme sexual pleasure, until eventually the nefarious doings are uncovered and the life mates are mated, presumably, for life (or, as it were, for life after death).

     Fast-forward to the 27^th Argeneau novel, Twice Bitten. Here, the lead female character has been a strong, appealing, sexy and determined vampire for more than a century. As the plot progresses, she re-encounters a strong, appealing, sexy and determined male who, it turns out, is her “life mate.” But there are complications standing in the way of their happily-ever-after. The primary one is that someone is trying to kill the female protagonist. So female and male protagonist must team up for purposes of protection and link up for purposes of extreme sexual pleasure, until eventually the nefarious doings are uncovered and the life mates are mated, presumably, for life (or, as it were, for life after death).

     To be fair to Sands and the Argeneau series, there are a number of differences between No. 26 and No. 27. And to be fair to fans of this long-running, multi-character sort-of-vampire sequence, the stylish writing and reasonably hot sex scenes in Twice Bitten will more than satisfy expectations, just as the sex itself more than satisfies the participants in it. More-recent Argeneau novels have started to seem a tad repetitive, more inclined to plot duplication with different characters filled in than were earlier Argeneau books. It is really true that Twice Bitten follows what has become a fairly standard plot of immortal and life mate meeting when one of them is in peril and the two must work together to survive while discovering their unbreakable physical attraction. But it is also true that Sands is good at varying plot details enough so that the similarities seem less important, except perhaps to book reviewers – but in truth, books that fit their series snugly, in series that fit their genre with precision, are in a sense beyond criticism, since they do not pretend to be anything more than they are and do not reach out to anyone except readers who are already enamored of their approaches and/or authors.

     To keep Twice Bitten distinctive but clearly connected to the Argeneau series, Sands focuses not only on female protagonist Elspeth Argeneau Pimms but also on her mother, Martine, as cold-hearted and determinedly intense a character as Sands has created anywhere. Elspeth, who is more than 140 years old, finally gets away from her mother’s iron-fisted supervision in Twice Bitten (the Elspeth-Martine relationship was explored earlier in the Argeneau series, but Twice Bitten is self-contained). Martine can control not only the minds of mortals (a standard sort-of-vampire trait in this series) but also those of younger immortals – the twist being that nearly every immortal is younger than Martine, who was born before the fall of Atlantis set the long-long-ago machinery of the series into motion. Elspeth has gotten away by moving from England to Canada and setting herself up with a nice apartment and a pleasant, elderly landlady named Meredith MacKay. This would be fine, except that Martine decides to visit her daughter and, uh-oh, perhaps move across the Atlantic herself. And on the very day that Martine shows up at Elspeth’s apartment, Meredith’s grandson, Wyatt, shows up as well. Elspeth finds him vaguely familiar – and Wyatt remembers Elspeth quite clearly, having fallen in love with her four years earlier. But she does not remember him, not really, and this is a major puzzle for Wyatt, who is not yet versed in the machinations of the Argeneau ethos. And soon enough, Wyatt has other things to worry about, since brutal attacks on Elspeth put him quickly into protective mode – where he goes with alacrity, since he turns out to have a background in “special ops,” that catch-all “tremendous ability for controlled violence” category. The rest of Twice Bitten involves the simultaneous search for Elspeth’s would-be assassin and exploration of the sexual intensity between Elspeth and Wyatt as predestined life mates – that “predestined” bit being rather charmingly old-fashioned in all the Argeneau novels. With the shadow of Martine looming over everything, the book has some flavor of a triangle, as Elspeth’s mother and life mate both try to protect her – in very different ways and to very different effect. Twice Bitten breaks no new ground in the Argeneau sequence, but fans of the series will not care: the book has plenty of action, plenty of sex, and enough humor (a characteristic of Sands’ writing, albeit more so in the early novels than in the more-recent ones) to provide yet another dose of the enjoyable escapism that Sands proffers skillfully, if formulaically, again and again.

(++++) TALE TELLERS

Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen—Orchestral Music. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $12.99.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Naxos. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Michael Daugherty: Trail of Tears; Dreamachine; Reflections on the Mississippi. Amy Porter, flute; Dame Evelyn Glennie, percussion; Carol Jantsch, tuba; Albany Symphony conducted by David Alan Miller. Naxos. $12.99.

     There are so very many ways to tell stories in music – and these three new Naxos releases showcase three very different ones. Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen is the quintessential music drama, a four-opera sequence in which words and music intermingle incessantly and are both equally necessary to give the story its full scope and tremendous impact. There is no theater experience quite like it – but many listeners have neither time nor inclination for full immersion, and conductors have for many years sought and found strictly musical elements that they can extract from the experiential totality and turn into concert pieces. JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic offer a mostly excellent version of 64 minutes of music that, while it scarcely encompasses all the elements of 15 operatic hours, certainly gives a strong flavor of Wagner’s skill both in drama and in orchestration (including but not limited to the Wagner tuba, which the composer created specifically for this masterful set of operas). There is something here from each of the four parts. “Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla” comes from Das Rheingold, the music’s triumphalism total in orchestral form (as arranged by Hermann Zampe) even though, in the opera itself, there is irony aplenty in the gods’ entry into the new home that they have obtained through very human forms of treachery and deceit. From Die Walküre we get, inevitably and extremely effectively, “The Ride of the Valkyries,” followed by the opera’s conclusion, “Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music” (both arranged by Wouter Hutschenruyter). This latter excerpt does not work particularly well in the absence of Wotan’s voice: the scene is a linchpin of the downward spiral of Wotan and thus of all the gods, and the lack of the vocal element leads to a musical presentation that, although well-played, is rather under-communicative. From Siegfried comes the famous “Forest Murmurs” (arranged by Zampe), as effective as ever. And there are three excerpts from Götterdämmerung: “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” (arranged by Engelbert Humperdinck, whose own works are strongly influenced by Wagner); “Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music” (arranged by Ludvík Šťastný); and “Brunnhilde’s Immolation Scene.” The last of these is the other major place here where the absence of voice is strongly felt: without the enormous emotional pull of Brunnhilde’s farewell to Siegfried and her self-immolation, resulting in flames that consume Valhalla itself, the music, although splendid, is far less cathartic than in the opera. But despite what is missing, what is here is handled with considerable skill by Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic, from the drama of “The Ride of the Valkyries” to the delicacy of “Forest Murmurs” to the intensity of the funeral music for Siegfried, where the orchestra’s brass section really outdoes itself. This CD is far from a suitable substitute for the entirety of Der Ring des Nibelungen, but it is a wonderful way to recall the operatic sequence for those who know it well, and a first-rate introduction to the music for those who have not yet had the tremendous pleasure of encountering Wagner’s tetralogy in its original form.

     Prokofiev also chose the theater for telling a number of stories, but unlike Wagner, he created scores both for operas and for ballets. Since ballet does not require speaking or singing, it tends to translate to recordings better than do purely orchestral excerpts from operas – much less tightly integrated music dramas such as Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, the quality of ballet recordings varies widely, and there are some basic issues that conductors of this sort of stage music must make when performing it without staging – notably ones of tempo. In her new recording of the complete Romeo and Juliet with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop opts for pacing that would work quite well for dancers, and that proves to be a significant strength of her performance. Alsop does not control an orchestra quite as tightly as Falletta does, with the result that, for example, the violins are somewhat lacking in precision in the fight scene in Act I. However, Alsop has a great flair for the dramatic – evident in that same scene – and when the strings are not required to produce quite as high a degree of clarity, they acquit themselves very well. Thus, the love scenes come across with exceptional beauty and warmth here; the performance of the lower strings in the love scene that ends Act I is a particular standout. Other sections of the orchestra also shine in their own way, the woodwinds being especially notable, with the orchestra’s principal flute and oboe playing with truly lovely tone. Alsop certainly picks up on and even extends the romantic drama of the score, presenting the music with passion bordering on that of film music (a category at which Prokofiev excelled) while also allowing plenty of solemnity when it is needed – plus third and fourth acts that are beautifully sad (if perhaps not really tragic) and quite tender. Individual numbers from the score that are particular high points include Dance of the Mandolins and Dance of the Girls with Lilies, but these are exceptional only within the larger context: Alsop integrates the score very well, so these highlights are clearly heard as portions of a greater whole, and the entirety of Romeo and Juliet never comes across as episodic. It is also worth mentioning that the sound quality both of Alsop’s recording and of Falletta’s is absolutely top-notch – Naxos has an outstanding producer/engineer in Tim Handley, who handled both of these releases. Alsop’s Romeo and Juliet continues her work on the music of Prokofiev – she has already recorded all the symphonies, most of them to fine effect – and shows her to be a sensitive and strongly engaged conductor of this repertoire.

     The sound is not quite as good on a Naxos CD that tells stories and engages the audience in a very different way: one featuring three 21^st-century concertos by Michael Daugherty (born 1954). Listeners will have no doubt at any point that these are concertos, since the soloists are placed quite prominently (the producer/engineers here are Silas Brown and Doron Schächter, with Daugherty himself also taking a producer credit). Aside from that, the orchestral accompaniment by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony is fine, although this ensemble is not quite at the level of either Falletta’s or Alsop’s. The main effect of Daugherty’s music here, however, comes from the stories it illuminates – something that it does through the composer’s careful selection of solo instruments as well as his ability to find new ways to explore what is essentially traditional tonality. Reflections on the Mississippi (2014), for tuba (Carol Jantsch) and orchestra, is especially successful. Its four movements, portraying scenes the composer says he remembers from youthful times spent by the great river, have sounds that genuinely go with their titles: “Mist,” “Fury,” “Prayer” and “Steamboat.” It is thanks to Jantsch’s marvelous playing that the scenes come so vividly alive: she has the great lower heft of the tuba, to be sure, but she also produces sounds of delicacy and intimacy from an instrument that all too often seems unwieldy rather than as expressive as it is here. The other concertos on this CD are both world première recordings. Trail of Tears (2010), for flute and chamber orchestra, is communicatively on the too-obvious side. Its topic is the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 1830s, and its first two movements (“Where the Wind Blew Free” and “Incantation”) are, accordingly, sad to the point of being despairing – but not particularly revelatory and not expressive in any unusual way. The finale, “Sun Dance,” is the best part of the work, representing the intensity of attempts to overcome deep sorrow and move on with life. It is a difficult and highly virtuosic movement that soloist Amy Porter handles with admirable skill. Daugherty’s use of a chamber rather than full orchestra for this concerto is an inspired touch, lending the music more intimacy than it would otherwise possess. Also on the disc is Dreamachine (2014), a rather too cutely titled concerto for solo percussion and orchestra that gives Dame Evelyn Glennie plenty of chances to display her very considerable skill. The basic idea here is to pay tribute to people who create machines of all types, including ones that never quite make it to reality. The four movements are called “Da Vinci’s Wings,” “Rube Goldberg’s Variations,” “Electric Eel,” and “Vulcan’s Forge.” The communicative power here is not quite as strong or direct as in Reflections on the Mississippi, but Dreamachine has more humor and an overall lighter touch with its subject matter than anything else on this CD. The exact machines portrayed or commented upon in the concerto are not obvious beyond the movements’ titles, and not always even then: “Electric Eel” really does sound like the creature, quite engagingly so, rather than like anything it may have inspired someone to create. The highly virtuosic snare-drum cadenza in this concerto’s finale, somewhat reminiscent in its complexity of Nielsen’s use of the instrument in his Symphony No. 5, is a high-water mark of the entire disc, even if its exact intended meaning is elusive. As a whole, the CD shows Daugherty to be a very fine musical tale-teller whose stories may not always be completely clear but whose enthusiasm for conveying them is evident at all times.

(+++) PIANO WITH ORCHESTRA AND WITHOUT

Nan Schwartz: Aspirations; Perspectives; Romanza; Angels Among Us; Brenton Broadstock: Made in Heaven—Concerto for Orchestra. Synchron Stage Orchestra (Vienna) and Bratislava Studio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kevin Purcell. Divine Art. $17.

20^th Century Masterpieces for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Volume 1—Lopatnikoff, Tansman, Malipiero, Berezovsky, Poulenc, Starer, and Creston. Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas, pianos; Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio & Television conducted by David Amos; Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos Piantini. MSR Classics. $19.95 (2 CDs).

Scriabin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 3 and 4; Preludes and other short piano pieces. Jeremy Thompson, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9; Granados: Goyescas; Janáček: In the Mists. Orion Weiss, piano. Orion Weiss. $13.99.

     Composers in the 20^th and 21^st centuries have increasingly come to see the piano as a member of the orchestra, frequently using it as more of an obbligato instrument than one leading and even competing with the ensemble as in familiar concertos. This sort of keyboard use is actually a throwback to Baroque and early Classical times, when the harpsichord was part of the ripieno, but of course modern composers handle matters quite differently. Thus, two of the four works by Nan Schwartz (born 1959) on a new Divine Art CD employ piano in a significant way, but no more so than other individual instruments highlighted in the pieces heard here. Aspirations includes piano (Lee Musiker) and tenor saxophone (Harry Allen); Perspectives uses piano (Musiker again) and guitar (Jon Delaney); and Romanza features violin (Dimitrie Leivici), while Angels Among Us includes trumpet (Mat Jodrell). In every case, Schwartz uses these instruments to color the overall orchestral sound, but never makes them the front-and-center, extended focus of these pieces. She is, indeed, a good orchestral colorist, a fact that helps rescue her music from its tendency to meander and to try too hard to be emotional and lyrical – a lot of what she writes sounds like movie music, which is not surprising in light of the fact that film music is what Schwartz primarily creates. Certainly she knows how to produce rather superficial emotional connections through orchestral sound, through the sorts of swells and dynamic passages that inevitably accompany, underline and enhance movie scenes. It just happens that the four works heard here sound as if they come from films even though they do not: it is easy to feel them moving along in four different dramatic arcs, even if they do not precisely correspond to any particular story line. Film music is generally designed to supplement visuals and dialogue, not take their place, but in this case the music is all there is – and while it certainly invites emotional experience and possesses a kind of narrative cohesion, it does not do so with any particular depth or profundity. It is music that is pleasant to hear once but will not likely bear repeated listening very well. The CD also includes the world première recording of Made in Heaven by Australian composer Brenton Broadstock (born 1952), and this too is a well-made work with many of the same roots in jazz that the pieces by Schwartz possess. Indeed, Broadstock’s piece has an overt jazz connection, being intended as a tribute to the 1959 Miles Davis album “Kind of Blue.” Hence the movement titles: “So What,” “Flamenco Sketches,” “Blue in Green,” and “All Blues.” Broadstock can scarcely expect audiences to be familiar with this specific album from nearly 60 years ago, but his music stands on its own in its jazz gestures, both expansive and pointed. It is not quite the “Concerto for Orchestra” that its subtitle indicates – the virtuosity required of the players is not really at the level demanded by Bartók and Kodály in their works with that title – but certainly the musicians have to pass themes and phrases back and forth with aplomb, as if in a jazz ensemble. Conductor Kevin Purcell handles both the Schwartz and Broadstock pieces with considerable élan, and if the music is a bit outside the comfort zone of the orchestras he leads, they certainly manage the material with professional skill – if perhaps less idiomatically than more jazz-focused groups might.

     The piano is not a partial focus but the primary one on a new two-CD MSR Classics release of recordings, originally produced in the 1990s, featuring the piano duo of Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas. These are the world première recordings of some very-little-known music that definitely deserves greater attention if it is possible to find more pianists willing to share the spotlight instead of dominating it (Katia and Marielle Labèque would be natural choices for this repertoire). In fact, Pierce and Jonas make an admirable team in these seven pieces – four labeled “concerto” and three using the dual pianos in somewhat different ways. The spirit if not the harmonies of the Baroque hangs particularly strongly over three of these works: Suite for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1928) by Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1932) by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), and Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1949-1950) by Nikolai Lvovich Lopatnikoff (1903-1976). Overtly in Tansman’s suite’s 10 movements and to some extent in the Poulenc and Lopatnikoff concertos – both in three movements that contain multiple tempo and mood changes, so they sound more like a series of shorter pieces strung together – there is a sense of awareness of the role of keyboards in the Baroque and a neoclassical interest in reviving some elements of Bach’s time in the 20^th century. Tansman’s piece, with its Perpetuum mobile, Sarabande and concluding double fugue, makes the point particularly clearly. The sensibilities of Poulenc and Lopatnikoff are quite different from each other, and the composers’ handling of the pianos and the orchestra differs as well, but both the works – which, interestingly, are very close to the same length – offer the soloists multiple ways of blending with each other and with the ensemble of which they are a part. The effects of the other works here with “concerto” in their titles are somewhat different. The three-movement Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1951) by Paul Creston (1906-1985) has a kind of classical balance both in the movements and between the solo instruments, while the four-movement Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1993) by Robert Starer (1924-2001) has movements that are pithier, and its overall feeling is on the jazzy and upbeat side. Also offered here are Dialoghi VII for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1956) by Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973), a largely athematic work of meandering form, and Fantasie for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1931) by Nikolai Tikhonovich Berezovsky (1900-1953), which unusually consists of two Allegro movements that give the pianists ample chances to show their mettle. It would be stretching things to suggest that any work here is a long-forgotten masterpiece – there is little profundity in these pieces – but there is a great deal of well-constructed and interestingly orchestrated music offered by Pierce and Jonas, who are nicely if not especially forcefully backed up by conductors David Amos (for most of the pieces) and Carlos Piantini (for the Starer concerto). The most engaging aspect of this release is the way it brings to light an entire subgenre of piano music with which even listeners well versed in 20^th-century neoclassicism are unlikely to be familiar. It will be very intriguing to hear what Pierce and Jonas have unearthed for the planned second volume of this series.

     Of course, no matter how the piano’s role changes in modern times and no matter how many ways composers find to use the keyboard, there remains an important place for the piano as a quintessential solo-recital instrument. And there are some exceptionally interesting ways to hear it in that light. Jeremy Thompson has found one – on another new MSR Classics release – by going back to the final recital given by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915). Scriabin died of septicemia on April 14, 1915, and gave his last recital not even two weeks earlier, on April 2. It was not his own pianism but that of Rachmaninoff that brought Scriabin fame – posthumously. But certainly Scriabin had a fine sense of the piano’s capabilities and a plentiful ability to delve into and extract them. Scriabin’s final recital was built around his Piano Sonata No. 3, the last in which he wrote in this form comparatively conventionally, and Piano Sonata No. 4, the first in which he moved toward a new, complex and highly personal compositional idiom. At his last performance, prior to Sonata No. 3, Scriabin played 10 short pieces – seven Preludes plus a Mazurka, Etude and Valse. Then, for the second half of the recital, he played eight additional short items – Nuances, Danse languide, two more Preludes, Guirlandes, Flammes sombres, another Prelude, and Etrangeté – before offering the very short two-movement Sonata No. 4. Thompson has resurrected the entire recital, and he handles it from start to finish with considerable understanding of Scriabin’s style – although inevitably a modern pianist sees that style differently a century after Scriabin’s death than the composer and his audience perceived it in 1915. Thompson plays very well and with genuine sensitivity, but the CD is more of a curiosity than a fully realized musical experience. The reason is that the program of the recital, which undoubtedly made considerable sense to Scriabin when he arranged it, now comes across as a kind of multiple-reverse-encores grouping, with the substantial sonatas heard only after a considerable number of lesser works whose relationship to the sonatas is not especially evident. For a composer seeking to present a cross-section of his music to a contemporary audience, and certainly not anticipating his imminent demise, the recital is an interesting one, and surely the original audience would have enjoyed seeing how Scriabin handled the various miniatures that make up most of the material he played. But the reasons Scriabin selected these specific pieces to play prior to the two sonatas are no longer clear and not especially relevant. Now Scriabin is recognized – thanks largely to Rachmaninoff’s advocacy – as a great Russian composer as well as a very unusual one, and programs including his sonatas and shorter pieces can be put together more meaningfully than this one is. This takes nothing from Thompson, whose playing is first-rate and whose notion of reproducing this final Scriabin recital is, in its own way, quite worthwhile. But the disc offers nothing especially new in the understanding and interpretation of two of Scriabin’s important works, and its presentation of 18 of his shorter ones, including several that run less than one minute, gives the disc an overall choppy feeling that renders the whole program intriguing but not especially significant.

     Scriabin fares better in a more-wide-ranging, thematic program self-released by pianist Orion Weiss. The CD’s title is “Presentiment,” and the notion here is that there is an underlying ominous quality to this music by Scriabin, Granados and Janáček. That is a bit of a stretch, due largely to the hindsight associated with the fact that these pieces were all created on the cusp of World War I: Scriabin’s in 1913, Granados’ in 1911, and Janáček’s in 1912. The Scriabin is known as the “Black Mass” sonata – a title of which the composer approved, although he did not come up with it – and certainly its harmonic instability (because of its strong reliance on the interval of a minor ninth) and its unsettling and grotesque elements (notably the march into which the opening theme is eventually transformed) produce feelings of disconnection, distress and emotional dysfunction. Weiss highlights the anxiety inherent in the music, turning it into an ominous portent of a war that was soon to come – and that would claim the life of Granados, who was aboard a ferry that was torpedoed by a German submarine in 1916. If the mood of Scriabin’s sonata seems to anticipate the martial tremors soon to engulf the world, though, the multiple moods of Goyecas do not. Weiss plays the work as a suite of six movements (omitting El pelele, which is not officially part of the suite but is usually played as its finale). He does an excellent job of turning each movement into a miniature of storytelling, somewhat akin to what Mussorgsky did in Pictures at an Exhibition even though there is no known definitive correlation between Granados’ music and specific Goya paintings. The beauty and immediacy of the music come through clearly in Weiss’s performance, and the strong improvisational feeling he gives to the Balada titled El amor y la muerte is especially apt and especially welcome. Goyescas contains more of Impressionism than does Scriabin’s dense and difficult “Black Mass” sonata, and the musical Impressionists, especially Debussy, also seem prominent in Janáček’s In the Mists. The five-or-six-flats keys and the complexity of the meters in this work create a pervasive feeling of melancholy that never quite turns into despair. Weiss emphasizes a certain sense of nostalgia, of longing for a past irretrievably lost, in this music; the interpretation nicely fits the notion of this and the other material on the CD as representing a kind of farewell to a world that is about to be shattered forever. However, it would be a mistake to take the notion of “Presentiment” in all these pieces too literally: only Scriabin’s sonata, the most forward-looking of these works and the one written closest to the outbreak of war, seems strongly to partake of a despairing prediction of imminent catastrophe. Still, all the music, however carefully composed, has about it a somewhat disjointed feeling, which could be heard as a sense of the old order passing with no sure knowledge yet of the new. Weiss has here assembled a program that is as well thought out as it is well played.

(++++) OUT OF THIS WORLD, AND ON IT

Thank You, Earth: A Love Letter to Our Planet. By April Pulley Sayre. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.99.

Olga #2: We’re Out of Here! By Elise Gravel. Harper. $12.99.

     Gorgeous photographs that highlight the many beauties and wonders of our planet are the central reason for being of April Pulley Sayre’s Thank You, Earth, a simply written book intended to remind readers how many everyday things in the world are extraordinarily beautiful if we only take the time to look at and appreciate them. When described, the pictures do not seem particularly unusual: a spider’s web, a sandpiper on the beach, some clouds, a bit of seaweed, mountains, trees, and creatures ranging from a ladybug to a sloth to birds and squirrels and turtles. But Sayre’s careful selection of photos, her thoughtful sequencing of them, and the delicacy with which she decorates the pictures with just a few apt words, make Thank You, Earth very special. “Thank you for sounds” goes with a close-up view of a yellow warbler with beak open. “For struggles” has a squirrel straining upward on a branch of pussywillows in search of some treat or other. “Thank you for rays and radials” juxtaposes an extreme close-up of a purple coneflower on which a bee is perched with an almost equally close view of dandelion fluff. “Thank you for those that crawl” includes a strange-looking red mangrove root crab and a gorgeously colored black swallowtail caterpillar. And while many photos here are super-close looks at things, others are very broad views: “Thank you for sunsets” covers two pages and shows spectacular sky colors in Arizona’s Phoenix Sonoran Preserve. The concluding sentiment, “Thank you for being our home,” simply and beautiful sums up all that has gone before, all the plants and animals and day scenes and night scenes and all the aspects of nature that make Earth and the lives on it so special. Interestingly, Sayre completely omits human beings and human creations from this “love letter,” implying in so doing that the beauties of Earth are strictly those that do not include or involve people – an omission that can open the door to discussions with young readers about the world they live in and how it intersects with and may often displace the loveliness of the world shown by the photos Sayre has selected from multiple sources and the words she has chosen to go with the pictures.

     Among the words on the cover of Elise Gravel’s second book about a girl named Olga are “Ciao, Earth!” Young readers may wonder why anyone would want to get away from all the gorgeousness in Sayre’s book. Well, that is not really what Olga wants: she is something of a grump, and she simply wants to get away from people. OK, not all people – just most of them. And she wants to take Meh with her on a journey to Meh’s planet. If Meh comes from a planet other than Earth. Meh, you see, is a somewhat piglike, pink and fuzzy creature of unknown provenance, discovered in a trash can by Olga in the first Olga book, whose delightfully offbeat title is Olga and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere. Olga is a budding scientist as well as a misanthrope, and the first book mostly involved her trying to figure out what Meh could be and deciding that there is no way to know, so Meh must be a new species, Olgamus ridiculus. Gravel’s idea in these books – in which the pictures and text are equally important even though the works are not exactly graphic novels, being more of a hybrid form – is to include some factual material along with the usual exploration-and-discovery-and-friendship stuff that is common in books for preteens. The mixture worked better in the first book than it does in the second, where the science is brought in somewhat heavy-handedly and repeatedly threatens to hijack the story and turn it (horrors) educational. Olga is considerably happier and more involved with human beings here than in the first book, even though the start of We’re Out of Here! is about her determination to get away from our home planet. As in the first book, Olga likes to wear the same sack-like dress all the time and does not like to wear socks or shoes – a fact that Gravel forgets at one crucial point, when Olga (who narrates the book) says, “I put my shoes on and ran, still wearing my pajamas,” but the picture clearly shows Olga barefoot, as usual. Anyway, the plot here starts with Olga looking into ways to explore space, then involves her investigating reports of alien beings or creatures coming to Earth, and eventually works its way around to the main point – which has to do with Meh (so called from the noise she usually makes) behaving strangely and smelling worse than usual and needing to go to a veterinarian. The vet, Dr. Spiffle, is a showoff obsessed with his Internet presence, but he does manage to give Olga some useful information: apparently this budding scientist never thought to measure Meh’s length or height, for example, but Dr. Spiffle does so. The best part of the book is the eventual discovery of why Olga’s appearance and behavior have been a bit “off,” and that discovery very definitely opens the door for future books in the series. So despite the second book’s title, readers can expect to be seeing more of Olga and Meh right here on Earth, hopefully having adventures in which the blend of amusement and information is handled as entertainingly but a bit more seamlessly than it is in We’re Out of Here!