(+++) THE EXPRESSIVE VOICE

Richard Thompson: The Mask in the Mirror—A Chamber Opera. The Sanaa Opera Project conducted by Stephen Tucker. Navona. $14.99 (2 CDs).

Sueños de España: Spanish Art Songs. Shudong Braamse, soprano; Teresa Ancaya, piano; Robert Phillips, guitar. Navona. $14.99.

Laments: Choral Music of Pablo Casals, Patricia Van Ness, Darius Milhaud, Thomas Tallis, and Daniel E. Gawthrop. Renaissance Men (Eric Christopher Perry, tenor and conductor; Alexander Nishibun, Kilian Mooney, and Garry McLinn, tenors; Peter Schilling, Will Prapestis, Brian Church, and Dominick Matsko, baritones; Benjamin Pfeil, bass-baritone; Anthony Burkes Garza, bass). Navona. $14.99.

Palestrina: Missa Tu Es Petrus and other sacred works. The Choir of Saint Luke in the Fields conducted by David Shuler. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     Listeners interested in some unusual vocal repertoire, handled expertly by first-rate singers, will find a wide spectrum of voices and considerable variety in their use on three new Navona recordings. The Mask in the Mirror makes impressive use of primary sources, in the form of excerpts from personal writings, to tell the story of early 20^th-century black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (whose middle name is here, oddly, misspelled “Lawrence”) and Alice Ruth Moore, the woman he married and never divorced even though the two split up. Dunbar, the son of illiterate freed slaves, is a seminal figure in American poetry written by blacks, and Moore, who was herself a writer, was college-educated but never attained Dunbar’s commercial success. She was also ashamed of being illegitimate and had a longstanding disgust with darker-skinned members of her race – describing herself as a Louisiana Creole to create the self-image she looked for with her coffee-colored skin. Dunbar, ill for many years with tuberculosis and then consumed by alcoholism after liquor was recommended to help him cope with the disease, died in 1906, before his 34^th birthday; Moore was longer-lived (1875-1935) but never as prominent as her sometime husband. Composer/librettist Richard Thompson weaves the operatic story of these two would-be literary lions into a three-act chamber opera that includes spoken dialogue as well as sung elements that are closer to Sprechstimme than to arias. Scenes look at the initial contact between Dunbar (Cameo Humes) and Moore (Angel Owens); the literary critic Dean Howells (John Polhamus), whose positive response to Dunbar became the basis of Dunbar’s reputation; and various interactions between Dunbar and Moore and involving them, separately or together, with various family members and acquaintances. This is a content-driven opera rather than a musically propelled one: the music is fine, but there is nothing particularly distinguished about it – no attempt to use tunes of the protagonists’ time, to include African-American melodic references, or otherwise to relate the musical material to the story. Therefore, listeners will inexorably focus on the words spoken and sung by the characters – and Thompson’s music is designed to make that focus possible. Unfortunately for this approach, the words are not especially distinguished – most come from letters exchanged by the protagonists – and while The Mask in the Mirror contains some bits of Dunbar’s poetry (including perhaps his best-known line, “I know why the caged bird sings”), it comes across more as a play with music than as a fully realized opera. The performers are fine, and when the music does pick up, as in a scene in a Harlem bar, it is attractive. But the words are for the most part simply ordinary: “Paul, you’re back from London already. Yes, to celebrate my latest published book.” As for the Dunbar-Moore romance, there does not seem to be very much to it: Dunbar was serially unfaithful and Moore seems to have wanted to attach herself to someone who was a better writer than she, whatever the emotional cost. There is ultimately not all that much interesting about The Mask in the Mirror except for people who know Dunbar’s work and the Dunbar-Moore story already, and are interested in hearing it surrounded by (if not exactly set to) music.

     Chinese soprano Shudong Braamse might seem a curious choice for a CD containing 19 tracks of Spanish songs – all but one of them love songs – but Braamse shows herself quite equal to the material, and her pronunciation, if not idiomatic, is more than satisfactory for this mostly lightweight material. The CD’s title actually translates not as “Spanish Art Songs” but as “Spanish Dreams,” and there is a certain dreamlike quality to several of the songs here – as well as a certain sameness both of topic and of music, resulting in a nicely sung recording that is distinctly monochromatic. There is one religious song here, a traditional Ave Maria set by Juan Cantó Francés, but all the other songs are distinctly secular – even when they contain religious references, as in Amor sin Esperanza by Manuel Fernández Caballero, in which the singer addresses “blessed Virgin Mary” for the sole purpose of requesting, “Make him love me or allow me to die.” There is a lot of this sort of traditional and naïve heartsickness and wishing for death if love is not readily available in these songs, and little to choose among them in terms of how well the composers express the longings. Teresa Ancaya provides sensitive accompaniment and occasional touches of attractive piano-only figurations, as in Rosa by Mariano Obiols Tramullas. And some of the songs’ words are unusual, as in A Mi Nazarena by Antonio Reparaz, which begins, “Although you are a nun, I would give anything for just one kiss from your lips.” But Braamse handles all the texts essentially the same way – justifiable because of the general similarity of the emotions expressed, but leading rapidly to a feeling of familiarity with the material that soon turns into over-familiarity. The occasional use of Robert Phillips’ guitar for accompaniment, as in A la Incredulidad by Francisco de Borja Tapia and O Sí o No by Mariano Nicasio Rodríguez de Ledesma, provides some welcome respite from the voice-and-piano sounds that dominate the disc. The sameness of vocal quality and musical approach throughout the CD will please fans of Braamse and listeners who may not know her yet but are interested in hearing yet another of the many fine up-and-coming soprano voices now emerging from all parts of the world. The strictly musical content of Sueños de España is thin, but the presentation is skillful, and the material is presented with sensitivity and as much depth as it can be given.

     Listeners who prefer massed male voices to individual female ones, or who enjoy the contrast between the two types of vocalizing – and who want to hear religious material intended to uplift rather than serving secular concerns – will find much to like in a CD featuring the vocal ensemble called Renaissance Men. The material on the disc is by no means confined to the Renaissance, with only Thomas Tallis’ The Lamentations of Jeremiah (as arranged by group members Eric Christopher Perry and Anthony Burnes Garza) dating to that time period. But this vocal ensemble’s fine blending, purity of tone and heartfelt expressiveness fit all the works on the disc, whatever their provenance. The Tallis is the emotional center of this recording, its five vocal parts split here among 10 men so as to reinforce the words crying out at the destruction of ancient Jerusalem. This is very serious music indeed, and the performers lead up to it with a series of somber works: Pablo Casals’ O Vos Omnes (arranged and darkened by Clifford G. Richter: the original is for mixed chorus); Psalm 3 by Patricia Van Ness; and Darius Milhaud’s Psaume 121, a very interesting setting that makes its emotional point partly through use of bitonality. The Milhaud is short, running less than three-and-a-half minutes, but is quite challenging to sing, and the high quality of the performance here is a high point of the CD (which itself is on the short side, running only about 47 minutes). The Tallis follows the Milhaud and makes for a fascinating juxtaposition. Then, concluding the disc, there is The Promises of Isaiah the Prophet, written by Daniel E. Gawthrop specifically as a response to the Tallis (the work begins in the tonality in which the Tallis ends). Gawthrop makes an interesting, if rather academic, point in this work, proffering a richness of sound to go with the essentially upbeat text and to contrast strongly with the spare, austere Tallis setting of the deeply troubled words of Jeremiah. Listeners with a strong affinity for Biblical material will find the Tallis-Gawthrop comparison and contrast fascinating, although more-casual listeners will likely get less from it. On this CD as on the one featuring Braamse, a great deal of the attraction lies in the quality of the voices and the expressiveness with which the musical material is delivered – whether that material is essentially quotidian (Braamse) or intended to elevate (Renaissance Men).

     The focus is entirely on the Renaissance and entirely uplifting on a beautifully sung and very well-recorded MSR Classics CD of some of Palestrina’s sacred music, performed by the Choir of Saint Luke in the Fields conducted by David Shuler. The ensemble’s name evokes Europe and a pastoral location, but in fact this is a New York City choir. Shuler has directed the ensemble for 30 years, and every one of the singers responds to him with intensity and flexibility in equal measure – individually and as a group. So seamless is the interweaving of voices that the massed choir sounds almost like a single voice with exceptional range. The highlight of the disc is Missa Tu Es Petrus, a so-called “parody mass” – “parody” in this context meaning simply that the work was put together from previously existing music rather than composed anew. Dating to 1572, Missa Tu Es Petrus is based on a motet of the same name – with which the CD opens, providing listeners with a perfect chance to hear the original material from which the mass was constructed. This is a rather arcane pleasure, to be sure, and indeed, a full CD of Palestrina can be as much of a chore for some listeners as it is a delight to others. This is certainly not material to be taken lightly, even though the vocal scoring is thin by modern standards: Missa Tu Es Petrus calls only for two sopranos, alto, tenor and two basses. The half-hour mass is complemented by an additional half-hour of Palestrina’s sacred music, including not only the motet underlying the mass but also Sicut Cervus | Sitivit Anima Mea, Caro Mea, Canite Tuba | Rorate Caeli, Improperium Expectavit, and Surrexit Pastor Bonus | Et Enim Pascha Nostrum. The choir sounds quite comfortable with the Latin texts, whose specific meaning is not really needed for modern listeners to understand and respond to the high spiritual goals that Palestrina (c. 1525-1594) had in composing these works. The shorter motets are self-contained, but the seven sections of Missa Tu Es Petrus – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei 1 and 2 – unite into a work that is greater than the sum of its parts. Modern Catholics, and other listeners of a religious bent, will find the exploration of multiple moods easier to comprehend than will those of a more-secular inclination. And it does help to have some comprehension of the text to enjoy the way in which Palestrina interweaves restrained and tender touches with an overall feeling of quiet joy. Shuler and his choir convey the subtleties of the material, in the mass and motets alike, with warmth and precision; the antiphonal nature of Missa Tu Es Petrus comes through to particularly fine effect. Certainly this is not music for a broad audience; indeed, it reaches out even less far now that the Catholic Church has largely abandoned worship in Latin. But for those who still love that language and the music that Palestrina built around it with consummate skill, this recording will be an essay in sacred beauty.

(+++) MOSTLY SHINING, SOME TARNISH

A Ray of Light: A Book of Science and Wonder. By Walter Wick. Scholastic. $17.99.

     A gorgeously photographed book that makes science come alive with beauty and elegance – but that is marred by frequent, frustrating writing errors – Walter Wick’s A Ray of Light shows both the author’s remarkable photographic skill and flair for picture-book creation, and his need for much-improved editing or a collaborative writer. The beauties of the book abound, and are so many that very young readers can be captured and captivated by the pictures without necessarily wanting to pay much attention to the text. But the text is the reason for the photos, and it does not bode well for the writing when Wick already makes an error in his Acknowledgments: “I would also like to thank high school physics teachers Peter Moore and Joe Mancino for their experience-based wisdom and enthusiasm for the project from the very beginning; and to [thank] Bill Robertson, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University…” Yes, Wick forgets to thank while giving thanks.

     Few readers will likely care much about the Acknowledgments, but the very first sentence of the book itself shows that Wick has trouble with text: “Everything from the earth beneath our feet, [to] the water we drink, and the air we breathe is made of atoms.” The punctuation could be better, and the omission of that little “to” starts the verbiage in confusion – a real shame, since the words go with a photo that marvelously juxtaposes three stacked rocks with a beaker filled with water and a dish from which vapor is rising. The picture is striking and beautifully balanced, and leads naturally into Wick’s discussion of the difference between matter and energy, in which he aptly notes, “Although light is neither a solid, liquid, nor gas, all three kinds of matter can have a role in its creation.”

     Wick next moves into a brief discussion of incandescence (“light that comes from heat”), then illustrates light waves with some of his most compelling photos: beneath shots of a ball attached to a rod, vibrating at three different speeds so it produces visible waves in water, he shows the colors red, green and blue, explaining that the invisible waves of light create colors in a parallel manner. Followup pages show what happens when light enters a clear, water-filled box head on – compared with what happens when it enters at an angle and is refracted. This leads to a discussion of the color spectrum – and another of the periodic textual irritations: “It should be noted that a photograph, especially those [it should be “one,” or “photographs, especially those”] reproduced in a book, cannot fully capture the purity and intensity of color…”

     A Ray of Light contains much that is fascinating, even revelatory. One page shows a sort of Venn diagram of red, green and blue, explaining that even though red and green paint make brown, red and green light make bright yellow. This leads to an explanation, with still more excellent photos, of the way the color gray results from mixing equal amounts of red, green and blue or cyan, magenta and yellow – and that adjusting the balance of gray’s component colors produces all the colors in the book.

     Again and again, Wick’s photos wonderfully illustrate scientific concepts involving light, while his text stumbles along with greater or lesser effectiveness. In a page on iridescence, for instance, he writes, “If the double reflection of wave crests of any given wavelength perfectly align [it should be “aligns”], that wavelength’s color brightens.”

     Yet the book’s charm and informational quality transcend its verbal blunders. When Wick moves into a discussion and visual presentation of permanent colors – from pigments and dyes – his illustrations make the science come fully alive. He next discuses lenses, unfortunately again with some verbal confusion when writing about sunlight: “Streaming in a window, you’ll feel its warmth” – which would mean you, the reader, are streaming in the window; he intends to say, “When sunlight streams in a window.” Yet again, photos rescue the text, showing how lenses work and explaining that the human eye refracts light the same way simple lenses, such as magnifying glasses, do. Pictures also carry the day in discussing atmospheric light (with a neat explanation of why the sky is blue), showing the relative sizes of Earth and our moon and Earth and the sun, and explaining how sunlight is used to solve the mystery of what the sun is made of. A Ray of Light concludes with two dense, small-type pages giving greater detail on the science behind the book, and they will be welcome further reading for adults who go through the book with children – and for children who become fascinated by science thanks to Wick’s outstanding visualizations. Although it is a shame that Wick’s text does not measure up to the quality of his photographs, it is still wonderful to have A Ray of Light to capture young readers’ imagination in much the same way that, back in 1997, Wick’s A Drop of Water exposed young people to the wonders of a substance that only seems commonplace until you start examining it closely. Light is not a “substance” in the same sense as water, but it too is something we take for granted – until Wick shows, again and again, what a marvel it really is.

(+++) WITH A HA-HA HERE AND A HA-HA THERE

The World’s Best Jokes for Kids, Volumes 1 and 2. By Lisa Swerling and Ralph Lazar. Andrews McMeel. $6.99 each.

     “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ill. Ill who? Illustrated jokes are funnier!” And there you have the premise of The World’s Best Jokes for Kids, in which both volumes bear the subtitle, “Every Single One Illustrated.” That means these G-rated groaners, puns and corny retellings of mildly funny amusements are accompanied, one and all, by small cartoon illustrations that are supposed to make the books more fun to read than they would be if they contained only words.

     And you know what? It works! Oh, not all the time: the picture of a worried-looking man holding a long, sharp object does not add much to, “What do you call a nervous javelin thrower? Shakespeare.” On the other hand, that particular joke is one of the funnier ones here even without a picture. Other cartoons are better. One shows a puzzled-looking person staring at two round-headed birds flying above water: “Why do seagulls fly over the sea and not the bay? Because otherwise they’d be bagels.” That’s pretty good! And one shows an impossibly happy-looking character bouncing high above a bed: “What happens if you eat yeast and shoe polish? You’ll rise and shine every morning!”

     Most of the jokes are in traditional question-and-answer format in these books – but not all. One, complete with ellipsis, goes, “On the other hand…you have different fingers.” Another reads, “I really must get rid of my vacuum cleaner. It’s just gathering dust.” And a third, with a particularly cute illustration of the characters mentioned, goes, “Bacon and eggs walk into a café and order some sodas. The waiter says, ‘Sorry, we don’t serve breakfast.’”

     It is unlikely that kids (or, for that matter, adults) will enjoy everything in these books, but pretty much everyone should be able to find some amusing items. How about this one? “Where do you find a cow with no legs? Right where you left it.” Or: “What do you call a cat with 8 legs that likes to swim? An octopuss.” (And yes, the drawing is cute.) Or how about this variation on a joke that is very old indeed? “Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip? To get to the same side.” That one will likely require some explanation, at least for younger children. Adults can perhaps use another of these jokes to explain it: “Why are riddles like pencils? They’re useless unless they’ve got a point.”

     There is no particular theme to these books, and no particular arrangement of the material – everything is just thrown together helter-skelter. That means the books need not be read sequentially and can be fun to look at a page or two at a time, going forward or backward, or just skipping around. On one page you will find: “Why is it so hard to fool a snake? Because you can’t pull its leg.” On another there is this: “What type of cheese is made backward? Edam.” (That may be another item requiring some adult explanation.) And then there is this: “What has four eyes but can’t see? Mississippi.” (The joke isn’t much, but the illustration of a four-eyed something-or-other is neat.) And speaking of eyes and letters: “What do you call a fish with no eye? Fsh.” Or, to switch to one of the puns that periodically make their appearance in these books: “I entered a joke-writing competition ten times and hoped I’d win. Sadly, no pun in ten did.” That one actually needs a bit of thought before the inevitable groan – and the illustration, simply showing a person standing with eyes closed, helps not at all. But whether the pictures add to, subtract from, or complement the words, kids will likely find The World’s Best Jokes for Kids enjoyable to read, at least in small doses, and to look at, at least now and then and here and there.

(+++) LATE ROMANTIC, LARGELY LOST

Alberto Nepomuceno: “O Garatuja”—Prelude; Série Brasileira (Brazilian Suite); Symphony in G Minor. Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fabio Mechetti. Naxos. $12.99.

     The rediscovery of generally forgotten Romantic-era composers continues apace, but even within that rediscovery, some composers are less likely to be “found again” than others. This is not necessarily because their music is inferior to other music being written at the same time, but it can be because they have – by design – more of a regional focus than an international one. Thus, Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920), although unfamiliar to most classical-music listeners, is not entirely unknown in his native Brazil, where he was important not only culturally but also politically: he was heavily involved in the unrest that eventually led to the creation in 1889 of the First Brazilian Republic.

     Furthermore, Nepomuceno was scarcely unrecognized in his own time: he lived for a while with Grieg, whose friendship encouraged Nepomuceno to go further on the road he was already traveling toward nationalism in music. He was well-thought-of by Mahler, who at one point invited Nepomuceno – a conductor as well as a composer – to conduct at the Vienna Opera, although illness prevented Nepomuceno from doing so. Nepomuceno was good friends with Debussy as well as Grieg, and one of Nepomuceno’s students was Heitor Villa-Lobos.

     Yet because of his staunch devotion to Romantic forms and approaches at a time when musical tastes were changing rapidly, plus his focus on the “Brazilian-ization” of music wherever possible, Nepomuceno never became an internationally prominent composer, and his works are very rarely heard today. And this makes a new Naxos CD featuring the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fabio Mechetti all the more welcome, providing as it does the chance to hear more than an hour of some of Nepomuceno’s large-scale compositions: to the extent that he is known at all nowadays, it is primarily for chamber music, notably his String Quartet No. 3 (1890). The works conducted by Mechetti are from around the same time as that quartet: Série Brasileira dates to 1891, Nepomuceno’s sole symphony to 1893, and the prelude to his unfinished opera O Garatuja to 1904.

     There is little stylistic progress during the decade-plus in which these pieces were written; indeed, all of them are distinctly Brahmsian in sound, scoring, thematic approaches and harmony. Nepomuceno, though, occasionally shows a considerable melodic gift: notably, the second movement of Série Brasileira, called Intermédio (Intermezzo), opens and closes with a theme so catchy that it is difficult not to continue humming it as the four-movement suite continues. The suite’s concluding movement, the ebullient Batuque, is also impressive, but the other two movements are more ordinary: the first and longest, Alvorada na serra (“Dawn at the Mountains”), features distinctly Grieg-like tone painting but goes on much too long, while the third, Sesta na rede (“Napping in a Hammock”), is pleasant enough but not particularly distinguished.

     Nepomuceno’s symphony also has high points and middling ones. In the traditional Brahmsian four movements, it opens boldly and effectively, then has a moderately engaging but not particularly emotionally gripping sort-of-slow second movement, marked Andante quasi adagio. The third movement is the best and most innovative, opening and closing in fine late-19^th-century Scherzo style and containing in the middle an extended episode marked Intermezzo that goes beyond the traditional Trio and expands the movement’s emotional palette. Unfortunately, the finale, after all this, is disappointing and almost trivial in sound, marked Con fuoco but possessing little forcefulness thematically or expressively. Still, the symphony, like Série Brasileira, shows that Nepomuceno had considerable skill in orchestration, with occasional highlighting of woodwinds (flute, bassoon and others) being a hallmark of his approach to the orchestra.

     The O Garatuja prelude, designed for what was to be a lyric comedy, comes across as something along the lines of a compressed version of the symphony and suite: Nepomuceno creates themes of various types and in various tempos (presumably taken or intended to be taken from the finished opera), weaves them together skillfully, and creates a well-balanced, generally upbeat and altogether pleasant listening experience. The prelude is not substantial, but presumably the opera was not intended to be, either, and certainly Mechetti’s conducting and the orchestra’s playing – here and throughout the disc – show idiomatic appreciation of Nepomuceno’s compositional style. Indeed, the performers do a fine job of propelling this music along effectively and giving listeners plenty of opportunities to enjoy being introduced to a composer who, if scarcely innovative in any way except for the inclusion of some Brazilian material in his works, was a fine craftsman who does not deserve the near-total obscurity to which he has been relegated for a full century.

(++++) FOLLOW THE LLEADER

Where’s the Llama? An Around-the-World Adventure. By Frances Evans. Illustrated by Paul Moran. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     It probably seems as if it has been at least 30 years since parents and kids first encountered Where’s Waldo? That is only because it has been 30-plus years: the first of the immensely popular search-and-find books appeared in 1987, in England, as Where’s Wally? In the three decades since, Waldo (U.S./Canada) or Wally (England and elsewhere) has shown up just about everywhere, initially as the only person in the books and then with a growing cast of one-time characters and an increasing number of recurring subsidiary “find them, too” people (Odlaw, Woof, Wizard Whitebeard and others).

     The search-and-find concept in books for kids (and adults) was nothing new when Martin Handford created Where’s Wally? But Handford’s cleverness in the illustrations and his method of dressing Wally/Waldo in readily identifiable red-and-white-striped clothing – then putting in a variety of other red-and-white-striped objects to mislead would-be Wally/Waldo finders – made the books extra-enjoyable. And the concept spread over the years into a wide variety of other “find this or that” books by a wide variety of authors and illustrators.

     And now it has spread to, of all things, llamas. That’s llamas, plural. Yes, the Frances Evans/Paul Moran book is called Where’s the Llama? But there are no fewer than 10 llamas to be found here, in every single illustration: Beatriz, Eduardo, Rosa, Luis, Elena, Carlos, Daphne, Ricardo, Nelly, and Hector. All are introduced at the book’s start, and all are distinctive in appearance: Beatriz, the group leader, is white with a brown patch on her back and brown ears; Luis looks as if he is wearing a tuxedo and actually does wear a bow tie; Ricardo sports a Mohawk and leather jacket; Hector is a cria, a juvenile llama, and is two-tone; and so on. Unlike Wally/Waldo, the llamas are not simply visiting various spots where readers need to find them: they “are doing their best to blend in” everywhere, which means they can be even more difficult to track down than Wally/Waldo. And readers need to look for all 10 of them everywhere, so this is quite a quest.

     It is also a great deal of fun, because the book really does hopscotch around the world. It opens at Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, moves to super-crowded Miami Beach, then heads to a New York City art gallery, and so on. Evans provides hints that are not quite as helpful as they might at first seem. For instance, at an amusement park in Ottawa, Canada, “Eduardo wants to go on the merry-go-round, while Beatriz and Elena have agreed to take Hector for a nail-biting ride on the flying swings.” That offers a general idea of the places where those specific llamas should be found, but the key word is “general,” since it turns out that there are a lot of areas near the designated attractions that need to be searched.

     All the searching is fun, though, which is the whole point. The llamas go to a desert music festival, a Dutch tulip garden, a street market in Berlin, and elsewhere around the world, and they really do a good job of blending in with the locals – or rather, Moran (aided in some of the art by Gergely Fórizs, Jorge Santillan, Adam Linley, and John Batten) does a good job of blending them in. There are some major find-them challenges here, but the artists are fair: all the llamas can be found everywhere with some very attentive searching. The most-difficult and funniest illustration of all is the very last one, “Llama Land,” in which the 10 travelers have returned home to be welcomed by “llamas from all over the country” – which means, yes, picking out 10 specific llamas from a two-page illustration containing lots of them. And if the difficulty of finding the llamas in any picture turns into frustration, there is an easy solution: turn to the back of the book, where answers to all the find-them puzzles are offered. But even those answers are not just answers: each solution is accompanied by a “Spotter’s Checklist” suggesting that readers find certain other, non-llama objects or characters in each of the book’s locations. The result is that Where’s the Llama? is highly enjoyable from start to finish – and how finished is a book like this, really, when even the solutions contain more puzzles? Answer: only as finished as readers/searchers want it to be. Llesson llearned.

(+++) OLD AND NEW, HERE AND THERE

Jan Jirásek: Choral Music. Bonifantes Boys Choir & Czech Soloist Consort conducted by Jan Míšek. Navona. $14.99.

I Carry Your Heart: Music for Chorus. University of South Dakota Chamber Singers conducted by David Holdhusen. Navona. $14.99.

     The words of the past often inspire the music of the present – in fact, this has been true for “present-day” music for hundreds of years. Czech composer Jan Jirásek (born 1955) takes homage to and reinterpretation of the past to new levels in his choral works on a new Navona CD. He does this by taking traditional spiritual texts from several different religions and juxtaposing them – having the words sung by boys’ choirs, thus implying the continuing relevance of the material and also turning it into a hope for continuity into the future. This is a lot of freight for music to bear, and the recording does not quite attain the sublimity and meaningfulness for which it strives, despite the very fine performances throughout and the skillful conducting of Jan Míšek. Part of the issue here is that Jirásek pays such careful tribute to the past that his music, as music, tends to seem mired in it. The first part of the three-section CD, Missa Propria, includes three settings from the traditional Latin mass – and while they are offered with suitable deference to the material and a good sense of writing for chorus, there is nothing particularly distinctive about them. The disc’s second section, Mondi Paralleli, is more interesting and gets to the heart of what Jirásek is trying to do. Here the composer starts by setting additional material from the Christian liturgy, then has the boys’ voices add these words to ones from Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. For example, the Latin Miserere and Jewish Avinu malkenu are combined in one section, the Latin Te Deum laudamus and Buddhist Om ah hum in another. These mixtures, however well-intentioned, come across as curiosities rather than strong arguments for a kind of multi-religious ecumenism. The elements of Mondi Paralleli are interesting and often partake of a more-contemporary feeling than those of Missa Propria, but the sincerity of Jirásek’s settings never translates into a strong philosophical/spiritual argument. The third part of the CD is called Tam, kde sláva nepřestává and speaks directly and specifically to Jirásek’s Czech heritage. Here the voices – accompanied at times by percussion – explore specifically Czech elements of religious life and how they are interwoven with the nation’s history and its current circumstances. For anything but a Czech audience, this is very rarefied material indeed, unlikely to have much impact or emotional resonance – although here, as throughout the CD, Jirásek’s very effective choral writing is a greater attraction than the religious and cultural points he is trying to make.

     There is no specific intellectual or emotional point being made by the University of South Dakota Chamber Singers under David Holdhusen on another new Navona CD, this one titled I Carry Your Heart (the name of a work by Connor Koppin – one of the 18 tracks on the disc). This is a hodgepodge of a recording that is clearly intended to focus on the quality of the chorus and its capabilities in presenting music by a variety of contemporary composers. It is therefore a disc that will appeal to listeners interested in fine choral singing for its own sake – but the disparate approaches and topics of the music make the whole thing seem more than a trifle disconnected. There are some spiritual elements here, for example, not in traditional Mass sections but in Sicut Cervus, a psalm setting by Jonny Priano, whose Lullaby and Remember are also sung on the disc. Along similar lines are two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer: Die Onse Vader, an Afrikaans version by Zander Fick, and Otche Nash, a Russian Orthodox version by Alexander Gretchaninoff. But these items are widely separated on the CD, appearing pretty much at random among pieces drawing on African-American spirituals and on works based on the poetry of e.e. cummings and Sara Teasdale. Languages vary pretty much at random, too, with, for example, Hebrew (Dirshu Adonai by Kenneth Lampl and Kirsten Lampl) immediately followed by Stacey Gibbs’ arrangement of Sit Down Servant, and the aforementioned Sicut Cervus preceded by another Gibbs arrangement, Ain’t That-a Rockin’. For listeners simply interested in the polished sound of the ensemble and the smooth, often quite lovely touches in certain of the tracks (e.g., solo voice, percussion, solo quartet, two violins), this recording will be a pleasant potpourri. It does not seem to aspire to be much more than that – and that will be enough for fans of fine choral singing. Listeners hoping for something better-organized or more clearly thematic, though, may be disappointed at the rather disjointed totality of the material.

(++++) TO BE CONTINUED

Will Giraffe Laugh? By Hilary Leung. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $7.99.

Mr. Wolf’s Class #2: Mystery Club. By Aron Nels Steinke. Graphix/Scholastic. $9.99.

     Hilary Leung has assembled a delightful cast of board-book characters and is marching them one by one through simple, funny and very pleasantly drawn adventures, the latest being Will Giraffe Laugh? Each of the books has a question as a title. So far, she has produced Will Bear Share? And Will Sheep Sleep? And Will Ladybug Hug? Everything starts with some sort of mild, age-appropriate trouble, and everything is happily resolved by the end of the book. In the case of Giraffe’s book, the title character is first seen in bed – half in it, anyway – looking rather sleepy-eyed and being described as “grumpy.” So his five friends – Bear, Sheep, Ladybug, Crocodile and Frog – decide to cheer him up. Easier said than done! Bear tries a juggling act that ends with a toilet plunger on Giraffe’s head. Crocodile opts for sock puppets, one of which manages to get onto, and almost into, Giraffe’s nose. Sheep tries making a balloon animal, but it gets loose, flies in a crazy pattern, and slams right into Giraffe’s eye. “Ouch! No.” Frog goes for funny faces, using his long and sticky tongue to advantage. But it is too long and sticky, and Giraffe ends up wrapped in it. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.” Ladybug gives Giraffe a pretty flower – which makes Giraffe sneeze. Everyone fails and everyone is miserable – so miserable that Giraffe feels really, really bad and decides to cheer up the whole group. That goes about as well as expected, with Giraffe falling down a slope into a mud puddle. But that is funny, and now everybody laughs, Giraffe included. The only slight problem comes at the very end, after everybody jumps into the mud to join Giraffe: sighting a tasty bug, Frog sends out his long, long, sticky, sticky tongue, and – oops – everyone ends up wrapped in it. The tongue even spells out the word “oops.” The whole romp is delightful, and it fits well with the three earlier books in the series – although each of them is entirely independent. The only real question is what Leung will come up with for the two friends who do not yet have their own book titles. For one of them, there is a pretty straightforward guess: Will Crocodile Smile? But what rhymes with “frog”? Hmm. How about Will Frog Blog?

     The titles are not in question for Aron Nels Steinke’s graphic-novel series about assorted wide-eyed animals attending school together: each entry is Mr. Wolf’s Class. Thankfully, the second book in the series, Mystery Club, is a good deal better than the first and gets a (+++) rating. The first book was so focused on the everyday realities of going to school that it was simply dull: nothing happened to or with the animal characters to distinguish them or to offer human readers any experiences beyond the ones they would themselves have in fourth grade. That may have been Steinke’s point, but if so, it did not work. Fourth-graders did not need to read the first book – they were living it. Third-graders who picked it up would get little to look forward to in fourth grade. And fifth-graders would not have wanted to read it – it would have been old news to them. Mystery Club is somewhat more interesting and somewhat funnier, too: the two different ways in which Mr. Wolf gets accidentally spattered with drinks are high points. Most of what happens here, as in the first book, is strictly quotidian: tardy slips, gym class, hall passes, outdoor activities, and classroom work. The Mystery Club designation has to do with some students getting together to try to figure out what happened to a missing Frisbee, whether the girls’ bathroom is haunted, and why a teacher from the previous year is no longer at school. The answers are inconsequential: the toy was accidentally thrown over a fence, the bathroom is just fine, and the teacher retired. But Steinke uses the “club” notion simply to show ways in which students – whether they are human or just happen to be a mixture of animals – relate to each other. In the main, Steinke bends over backwards to make the cast diverse (it is hard to be sure who is male and who is female) and politically correct (one student has “two mothers”). But there is an oddity here in a subplot: all the animals work and play happily together, but all are worried and frightened by rats, which appear occasionally during the story and are themselves dressed in the same sort of human clothing as everyone else. There is no explanation for the omission of rats from the all-inclusiveness and 100% toleration of the book – and the attitude is even less understandable when it turns out, at the book’s conclusion, that the rats as well as the classmates throw birthday parties for each other. The other off-putting oddity here has to do with the drawing style. Steinke draws a number of characters, including Mr. Wolf, in cubist profile, with both eyes and mouth clustered on the same side of their noses. This is fine and is a standard cartooning style. But Steinke sometimes has difficulty with it and runs into perspective trouble. On page 83, Mr. Wolf’s smile and the eyes behind his glasses are positioned in such a way that his nose, sticking out to the left, looks like a gigantic wart. On page 126, there is a similar error involving Mr. Wolf’s eyes and smile: kids can put a finger over the sticking-out nose to see what looks like a properly drawn cartoon face. And on page 153, the story’s final one, three birthday-party rats all have the same perspective mistake, the one in the center most of all: that one’s appearance is truly grotesque. Steinke is not drawing the characters this way for purposes of deliberate exaggeration, since the same characters appear elsewhere in correct proportion and with their features spaced and oriented properly. It may be that Steinke is still finding his way as a cartoonist in these graphic novels, just as his characters are supposed to be finding their way through the everyday world of fourth grade.

(+++) FOR THE SOUND OF IT

Stas Namin: Centuria S-Quark Symphony. London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lee Reynolds. Navona. $14.99.

John Psathas, arranged by Omar Carmenates: Percussion Project, Volume 1. Navona. $14.99.

Matthew Burtner: Glacier Music—Ecoacoustics of Glaciers. Rivanna Quartet (Daniel Sender and David Sariti, violins; Ayn Balija, viola; Adam Carter, cello); Albemarle Ensemble (Kelly Sulick, flute; Shawn Earle, clarinet; Katy Ambrose, horn; Greg Howard, Chapman Stick); Brandon Bell and Trevor Saint, percussion. Ravello. $14.99.

     The pleasures of hearing some compositions lie primarily, if not entirely, in the way the music sounds. Even when a traditional orchestra is used, even when a work has an intellectual framework and reason for being, sometimes what is most attractive about it is simply the way in which its composer brings instruments together and uses them to produce particular effects. That is the case with Stas Namin’s Centuria S-Quark Symphony, a single-movement, 47-minute work heard on a new Navona CD as played by the ever-reliable London Symphony Orchestra, here conducted by Lee Reynolds. Namin has produced a percussion-heavy orchestral work, filled with fanfares and multiple themes that are scattered around a piece written more or less in sonata form. But even though the form is discernible, even though the early part of the music is tonic and leads into greater and greater dissonance and atonality over time as Namin tries to communicate a rising tide of discord, the music works best when simply heard as a very extended presentation of multiple themes and sections – sometimes by instrumental groups, sometimes by individual instruments – in which the composer explores the very wide variety of sounds that a symphony orchestra is capable of producing. Namin wants the piece to be fraught with meaning: the title combines a word for “prediction” with a reference to subatomic “strange quarks.” His basic idea, structurally, is to introduce theme after theme, explore each individually and in combination with others, then eventually have the themes overlap to such an extent that they are virtually bereft of individuation and become, in effect, a massive gout of mixed sound. Having built to this point, Namin stops everything – literally: the orchestra goes silent. And then he starts things all over again, as if to indicate that even if matters deteriorate to the point of explosive dystopia, something new and presumably better will arise from the ashes and maybe, just maybe, lead to a better conclusion. It is very philosophical and all that, but the music does not really support the underlying thesis particularly well. Namin extracts a wide variety of sounds from his large orchestra, and the basic progress (if it is progress) from tonality to atonality, from concord to discord, is clear enough. But the symphony goes on and on, extended far beyond the point of audience involvement, and it rises to so many climaxes – punctuated again and again by vast percussive outbursts – that it becomes difficult to figure out its overall arc. On the other hand, if listened to simply as an exploration of orchestral timbre, without regard to the underlying meaning that Namin is trying to convey, the work is reasonably effective: it becomes a series of episodes, each building to a climactic point, none having inherently greater importance than any other. Listening to Namin’s Centuria S-Quark Symphony this way may undermine the composer’s intentions in writing it, but it makes the work’s considerable length and its episodic nature much easier to accept and enjoy.

     Sound for its own sake is also very much the province of the collaborative Percussion Project, Volume 1, in which Omar Carmenates arranges a variety of works by contemporary Greek composer John Psathas for various forms of percussion. Two of the pieces, Corybas and Aegean, were original for piano trio. There is a Piano Quintet that Psathas intended as a tribute to four other composers: Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke, Jack Body, and J.S. Bach. There are four Drum Dances (originally for drum kit and piano), Muisca (originally for guitar), Matre’s Dance (originally for violin solo), and Jettatura (a piece whose title refers to a Greek superstition about the “evil eye” and is itself a work that Psathas says was intended to protect him against it). The various performers handle the percussion-ization of all this material with considerable skill. Carmenates himself is a major participant, playing vibraphone, percussion and marimba at various times. Others featured are Daniel Koppelman (piano), Justin Alexander (drum set), Ryan Patterson (marimba), Emma Gierszal (marimba), and Justin Lamb (marimba and vibraphone). This Navona CD will clearly appeal to listeners already familiar with Psathas’ music and interested in hearing some of his works in novel instrumentations. But it will be less clearly appealing to an audience that does not already know Psathas. Some of the percussion arrangements are affecting and quite successful: Corybas, based on a Macedonian dance with very complex rhythms, is fascinating. But some of the arrangements are at best capricious and unconvincing, such as the Piano Quintet. Others are all right but not especially compelling, such as Drum Dances. The three movements of Muisca offer a pleasant but ultimately over-long opportunity to hear the interwoven sounds of vibraphone and marimba. Matre’s Dance is nicely rhythmic, but it too overstays its welcome. Jettatura, whatever its talismanic properties, is another interesting exploration of marimba and vibraphone sonorities, while Aegean has a pleasant delicacy about it but lacks the rhythmic inventiveness of Corybas. As a whole, the disc is best listened to as a sonic exploration: anyone who is not already a fan of Psathas’ music will at least find here some nicely balanced and often interestingly conceived percussion mixtures that are intriguing to hear on their own, whatever their original provenance.

     Sonic display is the whole point of Matthew Burtner’s Glacier Music on a new Ravello disc. These five electroacoustic works combine acoustic and electronic instruments with recorded sounds of glaciers from Burtner’s native Alaska. Burtner sees this music as a celebration of glaciers and an appeal to preserve them despite a warming climate that is causing them – some of them, anyway – to disintegrate more quickly than they otherwise might. To environmental activists, the sounds of water and snow, intermingled with those of the instruments (including the Chapman Stick, which is a bit like a guitar, a bit like a piano, a bit like percussion, and electronic into the bargain), may represent a clarion call to conservation. To others, the sounds of running and trickling water are as likely to seem intrusive into the instruments’ audio (and may make those with full or weak bladders head for the bathroom). Two of the works here are very extended indeed: Muir Glacier, 1889-2009 lasts 26 minutes, and Sound Cast of Matanuska Glacier goes on for 23. The overall sound of the music is minimalist, with very slow or no development; indeed, much of Burtner’s material is difficult to classify as music at all, consisting as it does almost entirely of recorded natural sounds. The shorter pieces come across somewhat better simply because they do not drag on and on at a pace best described as, well, glacial. Sonic Physiography of a Time-Stretched Glacier runs 11 minutes; Syntax of Snow goes on for only nine; and Threnody (Sikuigvik) lasts a mere five. It is easier to imagine these pieces accompanying films about glaciers or museum exhibits on the water-and-ice cycle than to think of them as concert works in any meaningful way. As tributes to Alaskan glaciers, they are effectively imitative and interpretative; as environmental works, they are unlikely to convince the not-yet-convinced or to show those committed to Burtner’s way of thinking anything specific to be done about glaciers. Heard simply as sound, though, they certainly have their moments. Syntax of Snow is aurally the most interesting piece, combining a glockenspiel with amplified sounds made by touching, grabbing and performing gestures on and in snow. As a whole, this is a CD of very limited audience reach: only those who pick up on its environmental message – and who also appreciate minimalist, background-style music – will be likely to find it appealing.

(+++) CLASSICAL WITH A DIFFERENCE

Hakan A. Toker: Arrangements of works by Beethoven, Satie, Henry Mancini, Hubert Giraud, Bach, Paul Desmond, Dvořák, Mozart, and Nat Simon. Hakan A. Toker, piano. Navona. $14.99.

Peter Lieuwen: Music, Volume 3—Sarumba (2015); Chamber Symphony (2013); Quad Concerto (2015); Concerto Alfresco (2013). MSR Classics. $12.95.

Music for Horn and Piano by Sixten Sylvan, Jean-Michel Damase, Leslie Bassett, and York Bowen. Ian Zook, horn; Eric Ruple, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     The type of enjoyment associated with classical music is often thought to be so rarefied that it is available only to a small subset of listeners, the remainder needing the more immediately accessible approach of various forms of pop music as their everyday fare. But classical music was everyday “popular” music for a long time – even opera was the equivalent of a multimedia extravaganza – and every once in a while, glimmers of fun peep through in ways that may, just may, garner a new audience for classical works. Sometimes this happens because people hear Carnival of the Animals (which was even made into a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon), or encounter Walt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia, or hear familiar themes by Rossini from William Tell or The Barber of Seville. At other times, it can be attractive to encounter deliberate sendups of the classical-music world, whether through Peter Schickele’s “PDQ Bach” or through the playfulness of Hakan A. Toker – the latter being the subject of a new Navona recording. Toker’s treatment of classic scores ranges from sendup to genuine reinterpretation, and he knows musical approaches – classical, jazz and improvisational – well enough to make most of the works here sound intriguing and some of them genuinely new. Elise’s Got the Blues, based on Beethoven’s piano miniature Für Elise, is fairly straightforward as soon as Toker starts hitting “wrong notes.” And Gnossienne Czardas, after Satie, is mostly a slightly iconoclastic take on a composer who was an iconoclast already. However, Moon River Invention, based on Henry Mancini, is delightful, with “invention” here referring to the musical form so often used by Bach: this is a work that Bach could have written if he had come up with the familiar Mancini theme. Toker next takes to the harpsichord, not for Bach but for Sous le Ciel de Versailles, based on music by Hubert Giraud that will likely be less familiar to listeners than the Mancini tune. For the rest of the CD, Toker combines his own piano playing with contributions from other instruments and performers. He turns directly to Bach for Toccata & Fugue in Blue, which handles Bach along more or less the same lines as Beethoven and which includes drums played by Hakan Çetinkaya. Next is Take Five or More, based on Paul Desmond’s highly catchy, already jazzy tune, and combining piano with tabla, played by Gürkan Özkan. Then comes a trio called When My Ma’ Sings to Me, based on Dvořák and including both double bass (Mehmet Sönmez) and drums (Çetinkaya again). And then Toker expands into three forays into full-fledged chamber music, the first two based on Mozart. Rondo Turchissimo opens with the original Rondo alla turca piano solo and rapidly expands into a colorful mixture with a very definite Turkish flavor, undoubtedly made extra-effective by Toker’s own Turkish ethnicity. Included here are B-flat clarinet (Aykut Sütoğlu), zurna (Vedat Dinletir), kanun (Bilal Kızıllar), ud (Tolga Karaslan), double bass (Sönmez again), and hand percussions (İsmail Darıcı and Çetinkaya). The piano original sneaks in cleverly from time to time. This piece is the high point of the CD. What follows is Rondo alla Latino, which starts from the same Mozart music and gives it the flair of Latin dance – to somewhat less intriguing effect that the prior arrangement. Here the instrumentation is strictly Western, including two trumpets (Ömer Dağaşan and Enes Nalkıran), French horn (Begüm Gökmen), trombone (Burak Dursun), tuba (Ertan Şahin), hand percussion (Darıcı), and drums (Çetinkaya). The final piece is based on Nat Simon’s very familiar Istanbul Not Quite Constantinople, and this arrangement too has a distinct Turkish flavor, combining piano with B-flat clarinet (Sütoğlu), kanun (Kızıllar), ud (Karaslan), double bass (Sönmez), and hand percussion (Darıcı). This piece sounds as if Toker is trying a bit too hard for rather obvious exotic-to-Western-ears sounds, but it has pleasant moments and is very nicely constructed – as are all the works on the disc. The downside to offbeat (sometimes literally off-beat) material like this is that it is unlikely to have much staying power. All these Toker arrangements would be fun to experience in a live performance, but they will likely wear thin fairly rapidly in recorded form: it is hard to imagine most listeners returning to them again and again, as they likely would (and probably already do) to the originals on which Toker builds. The whole CD is certainly fun to hear, but for most people, probably only once or twice.

     Deviations from classical-music traditions are far more modest and handled with far more seriousness in the third volume of the MSR Classics series devoted to music of Peter Lieuwen (born 1953). Lieuwen is a skilled orchestrator who is not afraid to create works that are defiantly tonal and pleasantly melodic. His style is filled with syncopation and rhythmic variety, and if his more-lyrical material is somewhat straightforward and unconvincing, at least he is not afraid to try to pack some emotion even into 21^st-century music. Two of the four works on this CD take classical models in somewhat new directions. Sarumba, a mostly dancelike work with a vaguely Latin beat (or series of beats) combined with underlying ostinato passages, is written for two violins and chamber orchestra – a combination that can be found as far back as Vivaldi but has scarcely been in favor in more-recent classical works. It gets an enthusiastic performance from violinists Emeline Pierre and Lavard Skou Larsen; Larsen also conducts the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss. The other work here that somewhat pushes boundaries is the Quad Concerto, which, as its name states, is for four instruments – in a combination that not even Vivaldi tried. They are clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, along with orchestra; here, Larsen conducts the SOLI Chamber Ensemble and Moores Symphony Orchestra. Lieuwen uses the varying sonorities of the four soloists well, and there is some attractive percussion writing here, too, although this single-movement work never sounds quite as interesting or intricate as its combination of solo parts would seem to imply. The two other Lieuwen pieces here are more straightforward. Chamber Symphony is a pleasant but not very involving three-movement work portraying, as its movements say, “Nature,” “Love,” and “Cosmos.” The evocative titles notwithstanding, the music meanders pleasantly without striking emotional chords as strongly as Lieuwen sometimes does in other works. Part of the issue here may lie with the performance by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra under Franz Anton Krager: the ensemble plays adequately but without any strong sense of involvement in the material. The fourth work on the disc, Concerto Alfresco for trumpet and orchestra, comes across better: as the title implies, this is outdoorsy music with a considerable amount of flair, performed enthusiastically by trumpet soloist Allen Vizzutti – and here, Krager’s direction (of the Moores ensemble) seems better-attuned to the music, although the orchestral material in this case is somewhat bland. Lieuwen’s music, whether created within traditional classical bounds or a bit beyond them, is easy to listen to and shows the hand of a skilled craftsman throughout; but it does tend to be superficial rather than deep.

     Compositional skill is also in evidence in the four three-movement horn-and-piano sonatas performed by Ian Zook and Eric Ruple on another new MSR Classics release. The CD bears the title “Musica Incognita” in deference to these works being so little known. Indeed, the sonata by Leslie Bassett (1923-2016) has never been recorded before, even though it dates back to 1954. To some extent, the neglect of these works is understandable: the horn-piano combination is not often heard in recitals, and neither these pieces nor their composers could be said to be among the best-known of the 20^th century – although works by York Bowen (1884-1961) have been cropping up with increasing frequency on recent recordings. Bowen’s work here, composed in 1937, is impressive in its warmth and its careful use of the horn, which by and large partners the piano rather than dominating it. The first two of Bowen’s sonata’s three movements are deliberate in pace, the third being much brighter. Zook and Ruple, who play off each other admirably in addition to playing well together in unison passages, produce a convincingly expressive performance. The Bassett sonata is less immediately appealing. Its dissonances seem contrived, and Bassett does not use the horn’s capabilities to as good effect as does Bowen. The instruments tend to sound as if they are playing separate pieces in isolation rather than as if they are making music together. The sonata by Swedish composer Sixten Sylvan (1914-2001), which dates to 1963, is better-proportioned. The first movement’s horn part recalls the instrument’s longtime hunting associations; the second gives Zook plenty of opportunity for warmth; and the finale, which also has considerable feeling of hunting calls, nicely balances the horn and piano while allowing the character of each instrument to come through. The latest sonata here, by Jean-Michel Damase (1928-2013), dates to 1996 and shares with Bassett’s work some of the tendency to present very different material in the two instruments. But Damase does so more convincingly, juxtaposing sections in which horn and piano go off in different directions with ones in which they respond to and complement each other. Damase’s sonata has a rather deliberate feeling throughout, even in the finale, despite that movement being marked Allegro vivo. This is music that horn players may take to heart more readily than everyday listeners will. Indeed, that is true of the entire CD except for the Bowen sonata, which will be the work of greatest interest to the many listeners who will be unfamiliar with this “Musica Incognita.”

(++++) IMP-PERFECTION

Perfect. By Max Amato. Scholastic. $16.99.

     There are so many variations on the “opposites attract” and “apparent enemies can turn out to be fast friends” themes in picture books for young children that it is always surprising when an author comes up with a new one. That is just what Max Amato has done in Perfect. Starting with photographs of a pencil and an eraser – the pink-parallelogram type, not the kind on the pencil itself – Amato gives these characters simple but expressive faces with a few lines and shapes, then sets them against each other. They are, after all, opposites: the pencil makes marks on pages and the eraser removes them. They are also expressive opposites: the eraser narrates the book, while the pencil expresses itself entirely by drawing – or, from the eraser’s viewpoint, by messing up all the nice clean pages.

     Any child who has read books about unlikely friendships will see where the book is going, but that will not matter: the fun is in how it goes there. The pencil (whose drawing portion is the only part that Amato shows, thereby avoiding the issue of whether it has an eraser of its own on top) repeatedly spoils things for the self-satisfied eraser. “No pencil can mess with me,” the eraser says at one point on a left-hand page, and sure enough, the facing, right-hand page is completely white, just as the eraser likes it. But turn the page and the eraser lets out an exasperated, “Hey!” The reason is that, on the next right-hand page, the pencil has drawn a really silly caricature of the eraser, complete with the “No pencil can mess with me” comment.

     The eraser runs through that drawing, of course, erasing most of it, but cannot quite catch the pencil, which draws a squiggle that soon develops tornado-like intensity and blows the eraser right off the page. The eraser lands on a later page filled with shading that the pencil has done – and before the eraser can remove any of it, an army of huge, angry-looking pencils suddenly shows up. They are in fact simply drawn by the pencil, but the drawings are soon chasing the eraser toward what turns out to be a thick forest drawn, of course, in pencil and by the pencil. “I’ll never be able to fix all of this,” the eraser laments, giving way to frustration with a series of inarticulate shouts. But then – in some of Amato’s cleverest drawings – the eraser figures out how to erase part of the pencil shading that is all over the page, creating through the erasures (that is, with white space) a rocket ship in which the eraser can ride speedily around the page, erasing more and more of it and finally escaping onto a couple of nice, tidy white pages.

     Unfortunately for the eraser, at this point the realization dawns that being “perfectly clean” is not really all that much fun – and Amato shows the character, in a small size, right in the middle of an otherwise completely white page, wearing an unhappy frown. This is clearly the setup for a rapprochement. The eraser shouts “Hey!” and the pencil obligingly drops down from the top of the page, creating a squiggle pattern above the top of the now-smiling eraser. And then the pencil does more and more shading, filling the page with darkness similar to what previously went into the forest. And then the eraser uses the same technique as before to remove some of the dark area, this time to create the letter “P.” And that becomes the first letter of the word “Perfect,” which appears on the book’s final page as eraser and pencil, reconciled and now obviously enjoying each other’s company, look smilingly out at the reader. There is nothing very unusual in the underlying plot of Perfect, and even the idea of animated drawing tools is not new: crayons, pens, paintbrushes and other objects have featured in plenty of children’s books. But Perfect is nevertheless special, thanks to the clever ways in which Amato builds the book around the real-world characteristics of pencils and erasers. The pages on which the pencil creates shapes and shades really look as if they have been done in pencil, and when the eraser passes through penciled areas, little eraser bits are left behind, as they would be with a real eraser. Perfect is fun and funny, and kids will enjoy seeing the ways in which the two characters get on each other’s nerves for a while and then decide they are better off cooperating than remaining in conflict. That is a simple message, to be sure, but certainly a worthwhile one – and all the better for being so entertainingly presented.

(++++) SCIENTI-COMICS

Some Clever Title: A “FoxTrot” Collection. By Bill Amend. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.

Mother Is Coming: A “FoxTrot” Collection. By Bill Amend. Andrews McMeel. $18.99.

     There is no shortage of nerd comics online. The best of them is xkcd by Randall Munroe, but others also have much to recommend them, such as SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) by Zach Weinersmith. However, in the days before there were any Internet comics, or even any Internet in the sense in which we know it now, there was one comic strip that fearlessly (OK, maybe fearfully) carried the tattered banner for science geeks everywhere. That was Bill Amend’s FoxTrot, which dates all the way back to, believe it or not, 1988. FoxTrot was an unusual mixture of hoary suburban-family humor with highly sophisticated (especially for its time) play with math and physics concepts (Amend has a degree in physics). The strip had the usual three-kids suburban family: feckless father whose inability to light a simple barbecue grill was a recurring thematic element; down-to-earth mother whose obsession with healthful eating was her recurring theme; older, sports-focused high-school-age brother; early-teen, fashion-obsessed sister; and math-and-physics whiz kid brother whose antics quickly became the focus of the strip and its most unusual element by far.

     FoxTrot was genuinely funny, and Amend skillfully walked a fine line between too much geekiness for the strip to resonate with non-nerds and too little for it to be distinctive. And it is not quite fair to speak of FoxTrot in the past tense, because it is still around. But it is scarcely the same: Amend discontinued the daily strip at the end of 2006 and since then has produced it only on Sundays – during years when the newspaper industry, where FoxTrot thrived, has shrunk to near-unrecognizability and papers’ comic strips have shrunk along with it. The antics of father Roger, mother Andy, and kids Peter, Paige and Jason have continued in much the same vein in the years since FoxTrot became a once-a-week offering, but the strip’s continuity has disappeared, and it would now be quite difficult for someone who has never read FoxTrot to piece together its underlying approach from the Sunday-only strips.

     It is worth trying, though, at least when those strips appear in collections such as Some Clever Title and Mother Is Coming, which allow readers to absorb and enjoy more than 130 of the Sunday appearances per book and get a sense of the characters’ personalities somewhat akin to what readers of the dailies used to obtain. The mixture of FoxTrot themes has not really changed very much. Some strips offer traditional suburban-family humor, as when Roger announces that he put the charcoal in the grill upside-down and flames burst through the bottom of the unit, or Roger tells Peter about his plan to climb a ladder and lean out far enough to cut a tree branch that is next to a power line – asking Peter to talk him out of doing it. Or Paige carefully selects sherbet by color until she has eight scoops held in an arched rainbow shape between two cones, announcing that this is her way of getting rainbow sherbet. Or Andy has “the talk” with Paige – not about sex, but about Paige’s desire to have her mom stop posting on Paige’s Facebook wall. And that Andy-Paige talk is also a mild version of the real heart of the strip, which involves the many ways in which Jason confuses and upsets and occasionally charms family members and/or readers through knowledge, behavior and antics that have very definitely kept up with the latest trends in nerdiness.

     For example, Jason is a longtime World of Warcraft devotee (as is Amend), and the game makes fairly frequent appearances that will mean little or nothing to the uninitiated. Jason is a comic-book fan as well, and readers need to be fans themselves to understand a strip such as the one in which a super-long arm stretches past Jason and others who are standing in line for a cartoonist’s autograph: “Wait your turn, Reed Richards,” Jason says, and if you do not know that is the name of super-stretchable Marvel character Mister Fantastic, the strip will be unintelligible. Some Jason behavior is a bit more mainstream, as when he and friend Marcus create geographical features such as Lake Jason and Marcustown National Park in the hope that Google Maps will be taking satellite photos at just the right time. Then there are the references to TV series such as Dexter, about a blood-spatter expert who is also a serial killer: Jason pours cran-grape juice into a topless blender, turns it on, and analyzes the resulting kitchen splatter patterns as a tribute to the show. Or take Game of Thrones: it provides the title of Mother Is Coming as well as cartoons in both these collections. And then there are the math strips: Paige has her rainbow sherbet, but only Jason would ask for ice cream in a hexagonal prism, dodecahedron or ring torus rather than an ordinary cone. And only Jason would bring math tests with perfect grades for show-and-tell – a different perfect one every time. And it takes Jason’s mind to come up with “trig or treat,” in which he and Marcus maximize their Halloween candy haul by telling people “you can either give us lots of candy or listen to us do trigonometry problems.”

     To be sure, FoxTrot has plenty of non-Jason humor, and some of it is really first-rate, such as the strip in which Peter discovers the apps that Andy, who is a writer, has on her phone: Instagrammar, Angry Words, Pendora, Nouncloud and Prefacebook. That entry is both nerdy and suburban-humor-y – a rare combination and a delightful one. FoxTrot itself is a rare and delightful combination of comic-strip tradition with the pioneering spirit of a strip whose focus on math and science was trailblazing 30 years ago and remains unusual even today. Some Clever Title and Mother Is Coming may not entirely make up for the absence of continuity that FoxTrot had as a daily offering, but these full-color collections show just how good Amend still is, even at reduced frequency (insert pun relating to electromagnetic radiation here).