(++++) YOUTHFUL HEROISM

Rise Up: Ordinary Kids with Extraordinary Stories. By Amanda Li. Illustrated by Amy Blackwell. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

     It was probably inevitable after Time magazine selected Greta Thunberg as its Person of the Year for 2019 that there would be extremely high levels of attention lavished on the teenage Swedish environmental activist in other quarters. But Rise Up is anticipatory: being a book, it was prepared long before Time made its decision, and its placement of Thunberg as the first of 30-plus stories of exceptional young people was determined some time ago. In fact, although the book is new in the United States, it was first published in Great Britain last year, so it has no Time connection at all – except for a fortuitous one.

     Nevertheless, Thunberg is the first person profiled by Amanda Li, indicating that she was already having the sort of impact that would justify using her story before any other in a book of this sort. In a sense, this is surprising, since Thunberg has not actually accomplished anything significant – she herself has reported being dismayed that more progress has not been made on environmental matters since she began agitating for greater attention to be paid to them, as if such deep and widespread societal changes need no more than a “just get it done now” attitude. Still, Thunberg has rallied large numbers of people of roughly her own age to the cause in which she believes, and that is an accomplishment to which the young readers at whom Rise Up is aimed should be able to relate.

     Many of the 29 young people around whom the book is built, and the several others mentioned in brief after the longer profiles, did in fact accomplish remarkable things in life, although not always while they were teenagers or preteens. For example, there is something genuinely inspirational in the tale of William Kamkwamba of Malawi, who in 2002, at age 15, hand-built a windmill to bring electricity to his impoverished home area during a time of famine. There is a story of boldness and the overcoming of tremendous danger and fear in the tale of Yeonmi Park, who at age 14 escaped from North Korea with her mother and subsequently became a human-rights activist. There is astonishing bravery in the tale of Desmond Doss (1919-2006), who as a combat medic in World War II, at the age of 26, saved the lives of 75 fellow soldiers by carrying them one by one down a sheer cliff face – and was awarded the Medal of Honor as a result. These specific people may not be household names (despite books and movies by or about them), but there are some more-familiar people mentioned in the book as well, such as Helen Keller (discussed briefly after a longer profile of Louis Braille, inventor of the system that bears his name); Frida Kahlo (included because of the horrendous bus accident that nearly killed her when she was 18); soccer star Pelé (chosen at 17 to play for Brazil in the 1958 World Cup); and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai (shot and almost killed by Taliban murderers when she was 15 – a defining moment that is unfortunately minimized by Li’s insensitively bland explanation that “they didn’t like what Malala was doing”).

     Rise Up delves into many time periods and many locations to assemble its stories, all of which are illustrated more-or-less realistically by Amy Blackwell. The tales are given in no particular order, and the book as a whole lacks cohesion as a result – especially since the types of events on which Li focuses vary so much, from stories of survival (after an alligator attack in one case, a shark encounter in another) to ones of heroism in war (the Doss tale, plus one about a young boy serving as a spy) to ones of dealing determinedly with birth defects (a rare disease causing facial deformity, a congenital bone condition). Nothing is grouped logically with anything else; narratively, the book is quite disorganized. It is the interest level of the stories themselves that sustains Rise Up, even when Li’s writing itself is subpar: “When they call her up and ask her how to become a pilot. She is always delighted to tell them how she did it.”

     A significant plus of the book is a feature that is genuinely useful for readers who will never find themselves in circumstances akin to those of the people profiled by Li. This is what Li includes after each short biographical sketch: information drawn from or related to the story she has just told, and doable by readers themselves. Thus, after a story about a thousand-mile walk by young girls in Australia, Li gives some facts about the Australian Outback and also explains how, if you have no way of knowing the time, you can use your hands to figure out how long it will be until darkness. After the Thunberg profile, Li offers readers “some small changes that make a big difference” and also suggests ways “to be an environmental activist.” After a story about climbing Mount Everest, she gives the symptoms of altitude sickness and then explains “how to perform an ice-axe self-arrest” to keep from sliding down a mountain’s slope. Some of the “how to” suggestions will be far more accessible to the book’s target readership than others, but the mere fact that Li includes things that young people can potentially do themselves gives Rise Up a level of usefulness that it would not otherwise have. Presentation flaws aside, the book does have the potential to inspire its target readership – as well as elicit young people’s sense of amazement at what some other young people have dealt with, accomplished or endured in the past.

(++++) STAGE MANAGEMENT

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker. Sveshnikov Boys Choir of the Moscow Choral School and State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov” conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).

Weber: Oberon. Clemens Kerschbaumer, Mirko Roschkowski, Dorothea Maria Marx, Grga Peroš, Marie Seidler, Dmitry Egorov, Roman Kurtz; Chor und Extrachor des Stadttheaters Giessen and Philharmonisches Orchester Giessen conducted by Michael Hofstetter. Oehms. $28.99 (2 CDs).

Albert Lortzing: Overtures to “Der Waffenschmied,” “Die Opernprobe,” “Undine,” “Der Wildschütz,” “Hans Sachs,” “Der Weihnachtsabend,” “Zar und Zimmermann,” “Andreas Hofer,” and “Regina.” Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jun Märkl. Naxos. $12.99. 
 

     Stage works do not always fit easily upon the stage. The original E.T.A. Hoffman story Nussknacker und Mausekönig (1816) is fascinating and dramatic, and it lies – like much of Hoffman's work – on the borderline between dream and nightmare. But Tchaikovsky did not know the original, and the much-watered-down version of the story on which he based The Nutcracker is always a challenge to produce: all the action is in the first act, the second is essentially just a series of character sketches, the prima ballerina and her companion do not even get a chance to show their abilities until very near the end, and the conclusion is ambiguous at best (if not dubious). But Tchaikovsky's music is so marvelous that it almost compensates for all the flaws of the story – indeed, for modern audiences, it does compensate for them, since the ballet is so often staged as a pageant for children, and the tunes provide one delight after another. Vladimir Jurowski takes a somewhat-more-serious-than-usual approach to the melodious work on a new PentaTone SACD that achieves the remarkable (if no longer unique) accomplishment of putting nearly 87 minutes of music on a single disc without loss of audio quality – another of several recent proofs that the long-accepted 80-minute disc limit is now archaic, if not obsolete. Jurowski, who offered a decidedly symphonic Swan Lake on an earlier release for the same label, heightens the drama of the first act while emphasizing the careful musical structure that Tchaikovsky brought to this part of The Nutcracker. Jurowski's tempos are carefully chosen – this remains a danceable version of the ballet, as was not entirely the case with his Swan Lake – but the focus is on dramatic contrasts, as in the strong distinction between the elements of the "Scene and Grandfather Waltz." The battle of mice and toy soldiers is delivered here with more strength than usual, and there is drama as well after the battle ends and the journey to Confitourenburg begins. The orchestra is highly responsive to Jurowski's approach, although the boys' choir sounds a bit strained from time to time. In the second act, Jurowski leads the dances with good attention to rhythm, although "Dance of the Reed Pipes" and "Mother Gigogne" are perhaps pushed just a bit too hard. The eventual pas de deux for the prince and sugar-plum fairy brings a bit of drama back to the proceedings, and the final waltz and apotheosis crown the ballet with musical strength that goes beyond the rather limp ending of the story as Tchaikovsky knew it. This is an admirable performance both for the sheer quality of the playing and for Jurowski's mostly successful attempt to make The Nutcracker more than a charming spectacle for children.

     Speaking of pageants and spectacles, Weber’s final opera, Oberon, was intended to be both – and that is a major problem in staging it, or even performing it on CD. Combine a libretto that is execrable from any traditional operatic standpoint with the fact that the words are in English (the first performance, conducted by the composer, was at Covent Garden), and the fact that Weber did not live long enough to “Germanize” either the story or the dramatic structure, and you have a work that contains some splendid music but feels somehow unfinished even though it is in fact quite complete. It is a work without recitatives: the musical numbers are interspersed with spoken words that provide most of the exposition, as was long the case in opera seria even though the form of Oberon is quite different. So what little cohesion the story has must come through via the narration. But cohesiveness is not the point here: Oberon was written to be a spectacle, incorporating a great deal of the then-current European fascination with “Turkish” music and costumes: the opera dates to 1826, two years after the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth, with its Turkish march in the finale. Weber’s opera has elements of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), which is also a Singspiel, but Weber’s forward-looking harmonies and highly atmospheric chorus of spirits and aria to the sea (“Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster”) place Oberon firmly in the realm of Weber’s own Der Freischütz. On stage, Oberon can work if handled as intended: as spectacle, replete with exotic costumes and knowingly unbelievable events as manipulated by the fairy realm in the name of testing humans’ ability to overcome obstacles for the sake of true love. Playing it straight on stage, and without irony, is necessary. But this does not solve the problem of recording the opera, and a new version on Oehms, directed by Michael Hofstetter, does not quite solve it, either. This (+++) recording features mostly adequate if not outstanding singing: Dmitry Egorov as Puck is particularly good, while Mirko Roschkowski as Hüon seems a bit overmatched by Weber’s vocal demands. The choral portions are the highlight, sung assuredly and with strength and intensity. However, the whole production is given in German (in the 1829 version by Karl Gottfried Theodor Winkler, using the pseudonym Theodore Hell), and this is an arguable approach at best – and Oehms provides neither a full libretto nor a translation for the altered spoken elements, which means that Roman Kurtz’s narration is intelligible only for listeners fluent in German. A number of musical elements do stand out, including the always-wonderful overture and Ozean, du Ungeheuer as sung by Dorothea Maria Marx, who is excellent in this difficult aria but less effective elsewhere. But the performance does not quite gel musically, and while Oberon is scarcely consistent from a dramatic standpoint (and is not really intended to be), it can be a more-rewarding musical experience than it is here. This is an opera (or, perhaps more accurately, a stage work of operatic proportions) that requires considerable attentiveness to overcome its manifest shortcomings. It gets some of that much-needed attention under Hofstetter, but could have used a bit more.

     Weber’s influence on German opera was immense, even though nowadays it is only Der Freischütz that is performed with any regularity. One composer very much influenced by Weber, and in his turn very influential for a time, was Albert Lortzing (1801-1851), whose skill in devising stage works reflected, in part, his own participation in them: he was his own librettist and sometimes the creator of tenor roles in his own operas, notably as Peter Ivanov in Zar und Zimmermann, which along with Der Wildschütz is the only Lortzing opera still heard with any regularity – in Germany if rarely elsewhere. Most of Lortzing’s operas and Singspiels were comedic, and several used a then-common technique by importing some music originally written by other composers – including Weber (as well as Haydn) in Andreas Hofer, and Mozart and Schubert in Der Weihnachtsabend. Lortzing was also a conductor, and knew very well how to entice audiences into the spirit of his stage works, as is quite clear in the nine overtures performed on a (++++) Naxos CD by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jun Märkl. The overtures neatly encapsulate Lortzing’s melodic gifts and his ability to set up the scenes not only of his comic works but also of his occasional serious ones, including Andreas Hofer, which features calls for freedom that prevented the work from being staged during the composer’s lifetime, and Regina, also unstaged for many years because of what was deemed its too-sympathetic view of issues analogous to those of the failed Viennese rebellion of 1848. There is also considerable drama in the overture to the fairy-tale opera, Undine, drawn from the same source as an earlier opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann and a later one by Tchaikovsky. Even when the overtures begin strongly – as they often do, with flourishes or emphatic chords to call the audience to attention – most soon become lighter and flow with such charm and apparent ease that every one of them is a delight to hear and could well become a curtain-raising fixture on concert programs today. Interestingly, just as Lortzing follows in Weber’s footsteps in a number of ways, so other composers followed him: Lortzing’s Hans Sachs is about the same central character used by Wagner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Wagner was well aware of Lortzing’s 1840 opera when he began sketching Die Meistersinger in 1845; indeed, the two operas share numerous plot points. Stagings of Lortzing’s works are no longer common, but on the basis of this very-well-played recording, revivals of at least some of them are worth considering – and more-frequent hearings of these sparkling overtures are very definitely worthwhile.

(++++) VOICES OF INTIMACY

Tchaikovsky: String Quartets Nos. 1-3; Quartet Movement in B-flat; String Sextet, “Souvenir de Florence.” Quatuor Danel (Marc Danel and Gilles Millet, violins; Vlad Bogdanas, viola; Yovan Markovitch, cello); Vladimir Bukač, viola; Petr Prause, cello. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Elliott Miles McKinley: String Quartet No. 8; A Letter to Say I Love You, and Goodbye, for violoncello and piano; Piano Trio No. 1, “The Shadow Dancer.” Navona. $9.99.

Leo Brouwer: String Quartet No. 6; Christopher Walczak: Four Dreams; Vũ Nhật Tân & Vân-Ánh Võ: Mây [Cloud]; Alexandra du Bois: Within Earth, Wood Grows. Navona. $14.99.

     Sibelius gave his string quartet of 1908-09 the Latin title Voces Intimae, meaning “intimate voices” or “inner voices,” and the phrase is remarkably apt for many other quartets and for much chamber music in general: small-ensemble pieces usually have, by design, a high level of personal expression and of close interconnection among their performers. Tchaikovsky’s quartets certainly do, and while they are not among his best-known works, they explore much of the same territory and are often every bit as melodious as his symphonies, concertos and ballets. Striking, robust performances by Quatuor Danel on a new two-CD release from CPO provide considerable insight into the works’ structure and elicit plenty of emotion from them. The first quartet, in D, has one of Tchaikovsky’s loveliest movements, the Andante cantabile, which truly sings in this performance as it wafts gently from instrument to instrument. Well-known as a separate piece, this movement is of course only part of the total quartet, and Quatuor Danel does an excellent job of highlighting it while also showing it in context, as a respite from the preceding Moderato e semplice that ends with considerable intensity, and a gateway to a scherzo and finale that contrast effectively with the slow movement’s gentleness. This quartet is not Tchaikovsky’s earliest surviving work in the form: there is also a single movement in B-flat that is striking in its own way and that receives a strongly propulsive performance here. The second quartet, in F, shows greater compositional maturity than this movement or the first complete quartet, with a rhythmically complex second movement and a well-wrought fugue within the rondo form of the finale. Although it is less immediately appealing than the first quartet on an emotional level, the second provides strong evidence of how much Tchaikovsky developed as a composer in the few years between the two works (1871 and 1873-74). The members of Quatuor Danel make a strong case for Quartet No. 2, excelling in particular in the contrast between ensemble passages and those given to individual instruments. And the players are even better advocates for the third and most heartfelt quartet, written in the unusual key of E-flat minor and redolent of tragedy: it is in part a tribute to Ferdinand Laub, who had played first violin in the premières of Tchaikovsky’s first two quartets but who died at age 43 before the third, which is dedicated to him, was written. Intimate this quartet certainly is, but it does not wallow in grief along the lines of the finale of the Sixth Symphony: its funerary third movement is heartfelt, but its effect is that of an extended song rather than a dirge. Again, Quatuor Danel takes the full measure of the music and keeps its darker elements in perspective: Tchaikovsky very effectively balanced them with brighter, if scarcely lighter, material, and the performers handle the contrasts with nuanced skill. Joined and complemented by Vladimir Bukač and Petr Prause, they also do a first-rate job with Souvenir de Florence, a far more upbeat work despite the fact that it too is in a minor key (D minor). When played as well as it is here, this sextet sounds almost too big to be a chamber work, so well does Tchaikovsky use the massed forces of six instruments to deliver full and warm sound – and so well does he contrast the ensemble passages with more-delicate ones for single instruments or a subset of the six. The give-and-take among the performers is at the highest level here, with themes passed back and forth with apparent effortlessness that encourages listeners to engage in the beautifully managed flow of the music among the four movements and within each individual one. The combination of individual instruments’ clarity and grouped instruments’ warmth makes this Souvenir de Florence performance, and indeed this entire release, a real pleasure.

     The string-quartet medium continues to attract 21^st-century composers with its promise of intimate communication, although modern harmonic language is quite different from that of Tchaikovsky. A new (+++) Navona release of chamber works by Elliott Miles McKinley shows this clearly. McKinley’s String Quartet No. 8 (2016) uses strong dissonance and techniques such as extended pizzicato passages as basic tools of communication. It does lapse into lyricism from time to time, but not for extended periods, even though that might be expected in its central and longest movement, marked Nocturne (lento e onirico). The dreamlike qualities of this movement are more agitated than comforting, if not quite nightmarish. The first and third movements are more disconnected-sounding and consciously “modern” in sound, although the finale makes occasional oblique, brief references to older musical forms. The overall quartet, though, does not come across as especially conversational among the players or as establishing an intimate connection between them and listeners – even though the performance itself, by the Auriga String Quartet (Erik Rohde and Hillary Kingsley, violins; Jacob Tews, viola; Isaac Pastor-Chermak, cello) is quite fine. A Letter to Say I Love You, and Goodbye (2011) has, on the other hand, a more personal feeling about it, owing partly to its use of only cello (Patrick Owen) and piano (Sarah Bob). Although not designated a nocturne, this piece has a nighttime quality about it, or at least a crepuscular one. Its extended (indeed, overextended) spinning-out of insistent warmth shows that McKinley is well aware of the uses of consonance and lyricism for communicative purposes, even if he somewhat overdoes it here: 10 solid minutes of music that sounds a bit like the accompaniment to a movie love scene is a bit much. Lying between these two works in its instrumental complement (three players rather than four or two), McKinley’s Piano Trio No. 1, “The Shadow Dancer”(2018) is a six-movement work in which each movement’s title starts with the words “Dancing in the Shadows of.” At nearly 40 minutes in all, this is quite an extended piece, each of whose movements is intended to be a tone painting of specific shadow-related or shadow-inducing elements: firstly, brilliant sunlight, soft moonlight, and shimmering starlight; and secondly, the more-inwardly-focused ideas of hope, dreams and infinity. This is a big concept, and certainly the members of the Janáček Trio (Irena Jakubcová, violin; Jan Keller, cello; Markéta Janačkova, piano) do their best to encompass it. But the work is not especially convincing, despite its lofty ambitions. The attempted nature focus of the first three movements is comparatively straightforward, and it is clearly the final three movements that are intended to carry listeners into the realm of thoughtfulness and deeper meaning. But they do not really do this: the plodding single-note-at-a-time opening for “hope,” the vaguely Debussy-like impressionism of “dreams,” and the insistently Ligeti-ish sound of “infinity” are intermittently interesting but do not add up to a convincing entirety. The music has intriguing elements, but does not establish as intimate a connection with the audience as chamber music can; nor does intimacy among the performers seem a priority in any of these works, except to some extent the cello-and-piano offering.

     A mixed bag of chamber music on a (+++) Navona CD features the Apollo Chamber Players and various guest artists in works of varying instrumental complement and provenance, using the traditional Western string quartet as a basis but also including the đàn bầu (a single-stringed zither from Vietnam) in two pieces and additional instruments in one of those. Leo Brouwer’s String Quartet No. 6 (2018) is called “Nostalgia de las Montañas” (“Nostalgia of the Mountains”) and intended as a tribute to Brazilian landscapes. Although well-crafted in standard contemporary atonal/dissonant mode, it is not particularly evocative of mountains or any other landscape. Brazilian dance forms, which would be expected in a piece of this sort, are absent, although Brouwer’s use of multiple rhythms vaguely recalls some of them. The piece seems more an esoteric exploration for cognoscenti than a reaching-out of any sort. Christopher Walczak’s Four Dreams (2016), also for string quartet (Anabel Ramirez Detrick and Matthew J. Detrick, violins; Whitney Bullock, viola; Matthew Dudzik, cello) has nothing dreamlike about it: the piece is supposed to explore aspects of the Australian Aboriginal notion of “Dreamtime,” a creation myth that has inspired a number of composers. Although no more aurally accessible than Brouwer’s work, Walczak’s is more effective at evoking communication among the performers, although what is transmitted to the audience is less clear-cut. Heard as pure music rather than referentially to a creation myth, Four Dreams includes a number of attractive musical elements and a strong sense of athematic forward motion, with the use of the viola being particularly engaging. Mây [Cloud] (2018) brings in the đàn bầu (played by co-composer Vân-Ánh Võ) to extend the string quartet, and the Vietnamese folk instrument immediately sets the tone for the piece at the ethereal and deliberately exotic-sounding opening. The Western instruments remain subservient to the sound of the đàn bầu pretty much throughout this 18-minute tone poem, which Vũ Nhật Tân says is supposed to reflect childhood experiences in Hanoi but which, in the absence of direct referents (at least for a Western audience), simply comes across as a chamber work using an unusual-sounding instrument to lead the more-often-heard ones. The sonically unfamiliar elements wear thin after a while, although it is fascinating to hear the low thrumming and odd (to Western ears) buzzing-with-overtones of which the đàn bầu is capable. Whatever its intent, the work is more intriguing intellectually than engaging emotionally. The same is largely true of Alexandra du Bois’ Within Earth, Wood Grows (2010), which uses the biggest instrumental complement on this disc: string quartet, additional viola, đàn bầu, and members of a wind ensemble and a wind-and-percussion one, all conducted by Jerry Hou. This is also a piece tied to Hanoi – it was commissioned to celebrate the city’s 100^th anniversary – and tied as well to the ancient Chinese I-Ching. As usual when works are redolent of specific references, it is necessary to know and understand those references to get the full effect of this piece – and that is unfortunate, since it is unreasonable to suppose that listeners in general will have the needed familiarities. However, beyond the attractions of a work that engages the intellect by admirably exploring the differing tones and techniques of instruments, Within Earth, Wood Grows contains in its slow-motion progress a sense of striving, of attempting to rise in some imprecise way toward some unknown future. The music meanders rather than progressing linearly toward a knowable destination, but the colorations of the instruments make the slowly unwinding journey to wherever-it-is an involving one for listeners. This is the most musically effective work on the CD and, despite its larger-than-chamber-size instrumental complement, the one that best expresses the idea and ideal of intimate communication among musicians and between performers and their audience.

(++++) THEMES AND VARIATIONS

Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby. By The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman). Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn 10: The Unicorn Whisperer. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

     Once a cartoon-driven series hits its stride, new entries in the sequence have a certain pleasurable predictability mixed with just enough uncertainty to encourage existing fans of the series to keep up with it – and, ideally, enough standalone strength so that people picking up a new series entry can decide on that basis whether to stick with the whole thing, without needing to go through all the earlier volumes in order to catch up. This is true even when a cartoonist’s work is not formally a “series,” as in the case of the offerings of The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman). There are recognizable themes that Inman trots out again and again and handles in more-or-less predictable ways: cats and dogs and their relationships with humans; babies and their relationships with those around them (parents and nonparents); bodily functions of many types; and genuinely peculiar concepts of various sorts, rendered in immediately recognizable art whose exaggerations range from the outré to the utterly bizarre and back again (yes, that implies that Inman does not have much range in his art; and yes, that implication is deliberate – but irrelevant to enjoyment of his work). All Inman books stand on their own, and each provides an equally good entry point to the world of The Oatmeal, for those who wish to venture there. It is a strange but strangely almost-real world, made more intriguing by its recognizability although less so by Inman’s occasional over-fondness for four-letter words. Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby has all the Oatmealian elements. The title refers to a specific panel sequence explaining that “babies come shrieking into this world as selfish, amniotic, jam-covered goblins” while cats “come into this world as kittens, which are independent, adorable, and not at all goblin-like.” The contrasting illustrations of a monstrous-looking baby erupting from a woman and a gigantic-eyed kitten looking sweetly at the reader make the completely inaccurate and prejudiced point very clearly (umm: kittens and human babies are born through essentially the same amniotic, jam-covered process, OK?). Accept the basic premise, though, and Inman lays things on even more thickly, with the evilly cackling baby making loud noises when upset, while the gracious cat will merely “slaughter pigeons and take 16 hour naps.” There is much more along these lines. And actually, cat-bird enmity is a recurring Inman theme: later in the book, a one-page entry has a pigeon asking a cat for a cease-fire and to “stop eating my friends and leaving them on doorsteps,” to which the cat immediately and nonchalantly replies, “No deal.” Inman is not a big fan of birds in general: another one-page entry shows two seagulls at a floating buoy, with one repeatedly saying “Yeahhhhh buoyyy!” while the other tries unsuccessfully to get it to shut up. Inman is, however, a big fan of cats, even when he recognizes the difficulties inherent in their territorial instincts, as in an extended entry called “How to Comfortably Sleep Next to Your Cat,” which works out about as well as might be expected, including “learn to sleep while being gently struck in the face” and “just accept that this isn’t your bed anymore.” Inman does have some weird perceptions and weird ways of putting them on display: it is hard to imagine any other cartoonist creating the sequence called “corgi babies,” in which he copes with babies by imagining them as adorable corgi canines (re-drawing them with corgi heads to make the point), then extends his corgi thinking to other things “that I find unpleasant,” such as a rude driver (transformed into a corgi-headed chunk of adorableness) and a “strange lump growing on my leg” (changed into a happily smiling corgi head in one of the weirdest of the many weird drawings in the book). Obviously, Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby is not for everyone. But for those who already know and enjoy Inman’s seriously skewed thinking, it fits the established mode of The Oatmeal very well indeed. And for those considering whether to spend more time with (or in) The Oatmeal, it is about as good an introduction as anything else Inman has produced.

     Aimed at young readers rather than somewhat odd adults, and written and drawn much more mildly and suitably for its target audience, the Phoebe and Her Unicorn books have also long since hit their stride, and the 10^th of them, The Unicorn Whisperer, fits into the series perfectly. Newcomers will have some trouble figuring out just why things are the way they are here: everybody interacts with Phoebe’s unicorn, and there are plenty of other magical creatures around as well (dragons, goblins, fairies); exactly how the whole thing got started is never explained except through an occasional oblique reference, as when Phoebe wishes her unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, a happy new year, and Marigold says happy years can be boring, but “my finest recent year was when a child hit me in the nose with a rock, resulting in our becoming best friends!” Make of that what you will: there is no further reference in The Unicorn Whisperer to any sort of “origin story” for the series. Dana Simpson simply takes many themes she has used before and uses them again, in somewhat different ways, in this latest book. That means Phoebe has multiple run-ins with her “frenemy,” Dakota, who becomes the star of a goblin opera and invites Phoebe and Marigold to the performance because starring in the staging makes Dakota “cooler” and her “popular, cool friends wouldn’t understand that,” so she needs to have Phoebe attend because “we need uncool kids’ approval, too.” Dakota is hard to like but not quite as nasty as she could be, so Simpson gets away with having her treat Phoebe this way. And Phoebe occasionally gets back at Dakota, as when Marigold enchants a jump rope for Phoebe and Phoebe lets Dakota jump with her only if Phoebe gets to make up a jump-rope rhyme that insults Dakota (“she smells like a goat-a”). There are various soft-pedaled lessons in The Unicorn Whisperer, as in other Phoebe books, as when gold-star-student Phoebe gets so involved in reading that she does not do her homework and has to confess to her teacher, who says that “if I assigned self-awareness homework, you’d get an A on it.” And then there is the time that Phoebe wants to invite a boy, Max, to her slumber party, and her usually practical mother says that is traditionally not done, but “viva la revolución.” Phoebe is usually more in tune with her father, who watches more cartoons than she does, sports long hair and wears the back of it in a ponytail, and can discuss the various generations of “Pastel Unicorns” created by Toycorp (“I get to have a daughter who shares my interests”). Much less successful are Simpson’s heavy-handed teaching moments, as when she has Phoebe neglect Marigold for a while in order to write a history paper about “Georgia Neese Clark, the first female Secretary of the Treasury.” The subtler messages here – and some are indeed subtle – are better, as when Phoebe is frustrated about the classmates she is told to work with to make a diorama, knows she will end up doing all the work herself (as has happened before), and is shocked when the others get it all done without her because she is avoiding them: “I deserve an F for the amount of work I did, but I deserve an A for the job I would have done.” That is worth thinking about – as are some, but not all, of the elements of The Unicorn Whisperer and other books in the continuing Phoebe and Her Unicorn series.

(++++) DECIDING WHAT COUNTS

Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-5. Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano; Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens. BIS. $39.99 (2 SACDs).

Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. “0”-5; Triple Concerto; Rondo in B-flat, WoO 6; Variations and Fugue in E-flat, Op. 35 (“Eroica”). Mari Kodama, piano; Kolja Blacher, violin; Johannes Moser, cello; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Kent Nagano. Berlin Classics. $27.99 (4 CDs).

     The most prominent number in classical-music circles during 2020 is sure to be 250: it is the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. And the flood of Beethoven releases and re-releases is already well under way, with several “complete works” sets released or planned as well as any number of productions of music both highly familiar and less-known. To stand out from the huge crowd of newly issued performances – not to mention the tremendous number of releases of Beethoven’s music available long before the 250^th-anniversary year – recordings need something special, even gimmicky. Excellent performances alone are not enough: the quality of playing of Beethoven’s music has been remarkably high for many years now, and pretty much any reading of his well-known music will be more than adequate. That means listeners who already may have several recordings of his better-known works – and who certainly have one – need to pick and choose among newly offered material based on factors ranging from “special-ness” of some sort to price. The two-SACD set of the piano concertos from BIS, featuring Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens, is expensive, but it ranks high on the “special” scale for the excellence with which the performers bring forth the concertos as Beethoven expected them to sound. Brautigam plays Paul McNulty reproductions of two different fortepianos, one based on a Walter & Sohn instrument from about 1805 (for the first three concertos) and one modeled on a Conrad Graf instrument from about 1819 (for the fourth and fifth). The sound of the two keyboard instruments is very different – this is one way in which fortepianos, like harpsichords but unlike many modern pianos, colored music in very different ways. The Walter & Sohn instrument, for example, had knee pedals only, while the Conrad Graf had the foot pedals familiar from later instruments – but it had four of them, including not only a moderator but also a double moderator. The tonal colorations available to fortepianists help balance the comparatively modest (to modern ears) sound of their instruments, and lead to readings of period music that can be very highly nuanced when handled with the care and sensitivity that Brautigam lavishes on them here. And speaking of “period music,” Die Kölner Akademie is a period-instrument ensemble, and an excellent one – and has previously collaborated with Brautigam on a number of fine recordings, notably of Mozart concertos. Willens leads the group through the Beethoven cycle in very fine form indeed, highlighting the Mozartean elements of the first two concertos, the transitional nature of the third (whose minor-key structure comes directly from Mozart but whose handling of the piano looks toward the future), and the significantly expanded communicative elements of the fourth and fifth – which sound both fuller and more dramatic on the later-model fortepiano. Especially effective in this set is the second movement of the fourth concerto, whose dramatic back-and-forth between soloist and ensemble offers just the right balance for an argument whose structure is genuinely new in a piano concerto and whose resolution in something like comity is handled with poise and elegance. On the surface, the music here is entirely familiar, but it sounds so different in these performances from what is usual today that the recording shines new light on Beethoven by offering readings whose sound is as close as possible to what the composer expected and what his initial audiences would have heard.

     Listeners who think of “Beethoven’s five piano concertos” are of course thinking about the five played by Brautigam and most pianists. But Beethoven in fact wrote eight-and-a-half piano concertos, including a very early one that has not survived and a much later one that he started after the “Emperor” but on which he did not make much progress. In terms of his seven playable concertos, in addition to the ones numbered 1-5, there is the piano arrangement of the Violin Concerto, which sounds quite fine as a keyboard piece and includes an unusual first-movement cadenza in which the piano is accompanied by timpani, in a clever recollection and expansion of the movement’s opening bars. And there is also a concerto by young-teenage Beethoven, dating to 1784 and assigned the number WoO 4, that predates No. 2 (the first of the five numbered ones to be composed) by about five years. A new Berlin Classics release featuring the excellent wife-and-husband musical team of Mari Kodama and Kent Nagano makes this early concerto the focal point of a four-disc set of performances dating as far back as 2006 – although the recording of “No. 0,” as it is called here, was made as recently as May 2019. The set is well-priced in part because it is something of a hodgepodge of recording dates, and because Nos. 1-5 and the Triple Concerto were previously released in these exact performances in 2014. But far from there being anything here for which Kodama, Nagano or the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin should be apologetic, the entire release is filled with excellent (although not particularly historically informed) performances. Concertos Nos. 4 and 5, handled with verve and intelligence, are the best of the standard set of five here: Nos. 1 and 2 have a bit of unnecessary rubato now and then, and No. 3 gets a somewhat surface-level interpretation, although all the concertos are very well played by both soloist and orchestra. This release is, in fact, something of a treasure trove of Beethoven’s piano concertos and related works. In addition to the five usual concertos – in readings that offer nothing particularly revelatory but much that is highly skilled and sensitively presented – and the “No. 0,” there are ancillary works that shed considerable light on the main concerto sequence. “No. 0” is no slouch of a concerto: it is derivative, yes, and to a greater extent than No. 1 or No. 2, but it is filled with fresh, well-thought-through ideas, and has a degree of lightness and almost-humor that is largely absent from later, more-mature Beethoven. It is comparable in length to No. 2, if stylistically less individual, but in one significant way it presages later Beethoven: it is in E-flat, a key that was to be enormously significant to his music. To show just how significant, this recording includes Kodama’s performance of the “Eroica” variations in the same key – which is the key, of course, of the “Eroica” symphony as well. Somehow E-flat was already assuming considerable importance to Beethoven even when he created that very early piano concerto. And this set contains another “early thoughts” piece as well: the Rondo in B-flat, WoO 6, which Beethoven originally planned as the finale of his Concerto No. 2. Once again, the piece itself is quite well-made, and it shows a slightly different direction for the concerto’s conclusion from the one on which Beethoven ultimately decided. These Beethovenian byways are complemented in this release by the Triple Concerto, in which Kodama is ably if somewhat timidly partnered by Kolja Blacher and Johannes Moser. This concerto dates to about the same time as No. 3 in C minor – and because it is in C major, it offers an interesting juxtaposition (the two are presented on the same CD in this set). Kodama tends to dominate the playing a bit too much: Beethoven deliberately downplayed the role of the piano in this concerto and brought forth the significance of the cello. The result is a rather pallid performance, although all three soloists play with considerable skill. This is a set for listeners interested in some offbeat elements of Beethoven’s work and some items heard quite rarely but presented here in a way that increases understanding of Beethoven’s development in the piano-and-orchestra realm. That is not to say that this set is “complete” in any way: it omits both the piano version of the Violin Concerto and the Choral Fantasy, with its extensive and crucial piano part. But for what it does contain, and for the quality with which the material is handled, this is a release that is worthy of inclusion in the 250^th-anniversary celebration, and one that many lovers of Beethoven will be happy to own.

(++++) CONCERTOS CONSIDERED AND RECONSIDERED

François-Adrien Boieldieu: Piano Concerto; Overtures to “La Calife de Bagdad,” “Emma ou la Prisonnière,” “La Dame Blanche,” “Jean de Paris,” “Les Voitures versées,” and “Ma Tante Aurore.” Nataša Veljković, piano; Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Howard Griffiths. CPO. $16.99.

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in D minor; Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra. Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin; Antonio Pompa-Baldi, piano; Slovak National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Theodor Kuchar. Brilliant Classics. $9.99.

Johanna Senfter: Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra; Ten Old Dances for Two Violins. Aleksandra Maslovaric and Katarina Aleksic, violins; Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Feminae Records. $20.97.

Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra; Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Piano; Tzigane; Kenneth Hesketh: Inscription-Transformation; Henri Dutilleux: Au gré des ondes (arr. Hesketh). Janet Sung, violin; Simon Callaghan, piano; Britten Sinfonia conducted by Jac van Steen. SOMM. $14.98.

Second Wind: Arrangements for Saxophone of Works by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and Koechlin; Music by Robert Muczynski, David DeBoor Canfield, John Rommereim, and Russell Peterson. Dave Camwell, saxophone. Navona. $14.99.

     Concertos can sometimes provide insight even into the works of composers who were not particularly associated with the concerto form. François-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834) is remembered today only as an opera composer, and specifically as the composer of one opera, La Dame Blanche (1825). But he did work in other forms, including, in a single case, that of the piano concerto. Boieldieu’s piano concerto is an early work – he wrote it when he was 17, and it is his only known piece for piano and orchestra. It is a two-movement work that is overbalanced toward the first movement, an extended Allegro with some clever and unexpected handling of the thematic material. The second movement is a bit of a letdown: marked Pastorale con variazioni, it is a set of five variations on a pleasant, bucolic theme of little significance. The concerto, written the year after Mozart died, is a throwback in some ways, but in others it looks forward to the harmonic structure and thematic development that Boieldieu would include in his operas. The new CPO recording featuring pianist Nataša Veljković and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana under Howard Griffiths provides a fine opportunity to hear the relationship between the piano concerto and other works by Boieldieu, since it includes six opera overtures – including the one to La Dame Blanche. These are considerably more tightly knit than the concerto and a better blend of the amusing and the dramatic. Interestingly, Boieldieu uses three different forms for his opera overtures. One introduces themes from the opera – this is what most modern listeners tend to think of as normal in an overture, although it was not always so. La Dame Blanche is an overture of this type. But in addition, Boieldieu writes overtures in sonata form and in variation form – and within those forms, he sometimes opens with a slow introduction and sometimes dispenses with it. These varied approaches give the overtures heard here a freshness and attractiveness that put them on the level of the overtures by Luigi Cherubini – with whom Boieldieu in fact collaborated several times. Indeed, the overture to Emma ou la Prisonnière is not by Boieldieu but by Cherubini, although Boieldieu composed half of the opera. The piano concerto here gives an idea of the road not taken in Boieldieu’s music, while the overtures offer fine examples of the direction in which the composer did develop – with considerable success.

     Mendelssohn’s success in the concerto form is much clearer: his two piano concertos and E minor violin concerto are repertoire standards and quite deserving of the admiration they receive. But even though Mendelssohn was a child prodigy almost on Mozart’s level (and considered on Mozart’s level in his own time), these concertos did not simply spring into being, any more than a piano concerto such as Mozart’s No. 9, K. 271 (“Jeunehomme”) appeared without predecessors. If it is intriguing to hear Boieldieu’s piano concerto to realize the direction in which he did not develop, it is even more interesting to hear early Mendelssohn concertos for the light they shed on the direction in which he did go. A new Brilliant Classics CD featuring Solomiya Ivakhiv, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, and the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Theodor Kuchar, offers a rare and most welcome chance to explore two Mendelssohn concertos that are almost never heard in concert, and only rarely in recordings. The D minor violin concerto dates to 1822, when Mendelssohn was all of 13 – he really was a prodigy – and the concerto for violin and piano was written only a year later. Both are remarkably assured works, and in both there is already the easy melodiousness for which Mendelssohn was known. These pieces date to the same time as his String Symphonies, which show equal assurance and similar qualities of engaging tunes and well-crafted developments. The heart of the violin concerto is its central movement, which is more expressive than its Andante tempo indication might lead one to expect. And as in the later E minor concerto, Mendelssohn here has the finale begin attacca after the slow movement’s conclusion. Ivakhiv does not overstate the concerto’s importance or overplay it in any way: it is basically a concerto strongly indebted to those of Mozart, but with some Mendelssohnian characteristics, and Ivakhiv and Kuchar present it with just the right light touch. The violin-and-piano work has grander ambitions, and in it Mendelssohn somewhat overreached, based on his command of individual instruments and the orchestra at this time. The piece lasts a full 40 minutes and does not really sustain at that length. Here the first movement is the primary focus – it takes up half the work’s total length – but, again, it is the lyrical and often quite lovely second movement that is really the concerto’s heart. Yet there is a strange element to it: the highly affecting middle portion of the movement is for violin and piano alone, without accompaniment, and it almost sounds as if Mendelssohn meandered into chamber music as this section continues – until he eventually resumes the orchestral portion. Later composers were to do something similar, as Tchaikovsky did in his Piano Concerto No. 2, but in this Mendelssohn concerto there is a combination of creativity and awkwardness that is one of the few ways in which the composer’s youth seems retrospectively evident. Again, soloists and conductor approach the music with care and perform it with fine balance and without making too much – or too little – of the material. These concertos are not works of genius, but they are works of genius-in-development, and that in itself is more than enough reason to hear them.

     Concertos can be a gateway not only to a well-known composer’s other or later work but also to a less-known composer’s entire oeuvre. That is the case with the Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra by Johanna Senfter (1879-1961). A student of Max Reger, Senfter wrote music that was less gnarly and more accessible, although she clearly absorbed some of Reger’s notions of harmony and some of his compositional techniques. The four-movement concerto is compact, lasting about 18 minutes in a performance by Aleksandra Maslovaric, Katarina Aleksic, and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra on Feminae Records. The first and shortest movement comes across as an introduction to what will come later, and quickly establishes the virtual equality of the two solo voices and the skillful manner in which Senfter interweaves them. The second movement has an attractively lyrical, almost singing quality that is immediately winning. The third has a kind of quizzical sound that is almost playful, while the fourth sounds the most like a 20^th-century work rhythmically, even though it repeatedly returns to a level of warmth that many 20^th-century composers (including Reger) tended to abandon. This is a very well-made concerto that lies well on the violins and uses them effectively – and that makes one wonder why Senfter’s work is not better-known. Part of the answer may lie in the other piece on this disc, Ten Old Dances for Two Violins. Arranged in two suites of five dances each, these pieces bear the names of dance forms with which Bach would have been (and was) familiar: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gavotte and Gigue in the first suite, then Allemande, Bourrée, Menuet, Loure, and Passepied en Rondeau in the second. But although Senfter was clearly influenced by these Baroque forms, her suites do not so much reflect them as they attempt to update them for much later ideas of harmony and rhythm. This works rather well in the two strongly accented Allemande movements, but less well elsewhere: the dissonances of the Courante and Menuet, and the latter movement’s stop-and-start character, seem not to fit either the dances’ original forms or the time period of Senfter’s composition especially well. As a whole, Ten Old Dances for Two Violins is a piece that violinists can certainly enjoy playing: like the concerto, it shows Senfter’s considerable skill in instrumental balance and relationships. But it is not a particularly engaging work to hear: it is the sort of piece that can be admired for the skill of its construction but that leaves non-performing listeners somewhat cold – as, come to think of it, does much of Max Reger’s music.

     A well-played but rather ill-assorted (+++) SOMM recording features a concerto that is itself somewhat off-putting and detached: the Violin Concerto by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Like Senfter’s two-violin concerto, this Vaughan Williams work is from the 20^th century (1924-25), and like Senfter’s Ten Old Dances, the Vaughan Williams concerto has neo-Baroque tendencies. But there is a certain chilliness to the Vaughan Williams, which includes bitonal elements as well as the folksong references of which he was fond. The composer originally called the work “Concerto Accademico,” and the title seems apt, even though Vaughan Williams withdrew it in 1952. It is difficult for a listener to become emotionally involved in this music, and while it is easy to respect the considerable skill that Vaughan Williams brought to bear on the composition, the concerto never becomes engaging – even when performed as well as it is by Janet Sung and the Britten Sinfonia under Jac van Steen. The concerto was dedicated to Jelly d’Arányi, great-niece of Joseph Joachim, and she was also the dedicatee of Ravel’s Tzigane, which is more effective – if more superficial – than the concerto, and is heard on this disc in Ravel’s arrangement for violin and orchestra. The other Ravel work on this disc is his strongly jazz-influenced Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, which gets a fine and suitably jazzy performance from Sung and pianist Simon Callaghan. Offered on the CD between the opening Vaughan Williams work and the two closing ones by Ravel are first recordings of music by Kenneth Hesketh (born 1968) and by Henri Dutilleux as arranged by Hesketh, who studied with Dutilleux. Hesketh’s Inscription-Transformation is an extended exercise in textures in which complexity seems to be its own reason for being. The violin, often in its highest register, is set against an orchestra whose main purpose appears to be intensity. This could be effective in a five-minute work, but in this 14-minute one, it wears thin well before it wears out. As for the Dutilleux arrangement, this is Hesketh’s orchestral version of the piano suite, Au gré des ondes, and it is more effective than Hesketh’s original composition. Its six movements also add up to slightly less time than Hesketh’s single one: they work well as expressive miniatures, essentially small tone paintings of six musicians done in styles intended to reflect their work or their approaches to performance. Hesketh’s selection of illustrative instruments is first-rate, very neatly complementing Dutilleux’s very varied portraits of Claude Pascal, Jacqueline Bonneau, Pierre Sancan, Leon Kartun, Claude Arrieu, and Geneviève Joy. This is a case in which both the original work and the arrangement are worthy of being heard more often.

     The arrangements on a new (+++) Navona CD featuring saxophonist Dave Camwell are unlikely ever to supplant the originals, being designed more to highlight Camwell himself than to focus in any meaningful way on Bach, Vivaldi, or Handel. Camwell arranges the Prelude from Bach’s Partita No. 3, BWV 1006, and the Allegro Assai from his Sonata No. 3, BWV 1005, for, respectively, one and two saxophones with piano. He arranges, for single saxophone and piano, Vivaldi’s entire Concerto for Oboe, RV 548, and Handel’s complete Sonata No. 3 for Violin, HWV 370. The arrangements are nicely done to take advantage of the saxophone’s warm, sumptuous tone, and Camwell plays the pieces with Romantic feeling that is inappropriate for the music but effective in its own way. Considerably more interesting is Charles Koechlin’s Épitaphe de Jean Harlow, written for alto saxophone, flute and piano, a suitably small-r romantic and expressive lament for the early death of the once-famous movie star, who died at age 26 in 1937. Here Camwell comes into his own, comfortable with the music in ways that he never quite seems to be when playing his arrangements of much older material. The balance of this CD is newer still. Robert Muczynski’s Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (1971) is a short, well-varied work with considerable heft in its two movements. David DeBoor Canfield’s Concerto after Mendelssohn for Tenor Saxophone (2016-17), heard here in a 2018 version for saxophone and wind ensemble, plays around with several Mendelssohn works in a manner that ranges from mildly amusing to considerably overdone. John Rommereim’s Amara, Breath of Grace (2014) includes a choral ensemble and instructs the solo saxophone to improvise throughout. The idea is for the soloist to take cues (literally or figuratively) from the choir’s singing of the word “amara,” which means “grace” in the language of the Nigerian Igbo people. Whatever the intended meaning of this arrangement, what emerges here is a pleasant, tonal piece that sounds like a choral vocalise with saxophone sounds weaving in and out of the voices. This is the sort of music in which Camwell is clearly comfortable. The CD ends with Russell Peterson’s Concerto for Flute, Alto Saxophone and Symphonic Band (2009/2012). This is a pleasant three-movement piece in which the flute and saxophone complement each other well, although having the first two movements both slow and expressive makes matters rather soporific before the concluding Allegro brightens matters considerably. Camwell is Director of Jazz Studies at Troy University in Alabama, and the performers with him on this CD are drawn from the same venue. All contribute with skill and commitment, making the CD a treat for listeners who would like to hear a disparate set of unrelated saxophone performances – a generous 80 minutes that, in truth, will be somewhat too much for anyone looking for something more musically substantive and less focused on the sheer sound of the saxophone and the combinations in which Camwell presents it.

(+++) ALL-AGE ANIMAL ADVENTURES

Bird Brain: Comics about Mental Health, Starring Pigeons. By Chuck Mullin. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

All Cats Are Introverts. By Francesco Marciuliano. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy 3: Time Trout. By Doug Savage. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Cinderella Rex. By Christy Webster and Holly Hatam. Andrews McMeel. $8.99.

     The comings and goings and ups and downs of not-quite-real animals appeal to just about everyone, from adults to young children to very young children – but in different ways. Adults seem to like things wry, even sarcastic, and in some cases – such as Bird Brain – foundationally very serious even while they have amusing elements. Chuck Mullin’s Bird Brain is all about her bouts of overflowing anxiety and depression, and her attempts to cope with them by creating amusing pigeon drawings and sending them out onto, of course, social media. This is not traditional “funny animals” cartooning, and the extent to which it is different is made clear through the serious essays that Mullin includes to introduce the book and that she also places within each of its sections: “Bad Times,” “Relationships,” and “Positivity.” Those essays are pretty heavy going, especially for anyone who has ever experienced even a modicum of anxiety, much less the amount about which Mullin writes. In fact, the book might have been more immediately appealing if Mullin had started it with a few of her pigeon presentations and then used her essays to explain what was going on. Since she didn’t, readers may want to skip the essays at first, check out some of the pigeon stuff, then read about how and why the whole book came to be: “I’ve always loved drawing, but it surprised me just how much creating these pigeon comics helps me; they’ve become my tether to existence, my voice when my mouth fails me. …I hope that their nihilism can burst through my invisible bubble and into yours to connect us. A strange sort of connection, but a connection nonetheless.” Well, the connection is made pretty effectively through Mullin’s words, but is even better in her comics, which feature anthropomorphic pigeons with weirdly floating eyes (one is in each pigeon’s head where it belongs while the other floats off to the side somewhere). For instance, one set of panels shows a pigeon waking up to a “bad brain day” and calling in sick to work, then feeling even worse for lying about being ill, and finally burrowing under the covers and declaring, “I’ll just live under here forever now.” Another shows two pigeons walking side by side, with one thinking, “Oh no, an awkward silence! Quick, say something! Anything!!” And the other is thinking, “I like that we can have these quiet moments.” The seriousness of the topics that Mullin tackles puts Bird Brain outside the usual realm of comics and cartoons, and also means the book will not be appealing to everybody – in fact, “appealing” is not really the right word for it at all, “helpful” being much more apt. Nevertheless, the use of cartoon animals to communicate some very complex adult topics is evidence that comics can tackle a great deal more complexity than they are often given credit for – and can do so with sensitivity and without the need to be snide or sarcastic.

     On the other hand, a certain amount of snide sarcasm can be appealing, and it proliferates, to a greater or lesser degree, in many animal-focused books – certainly where cats are concerned. The result is works such as All Cats Are Introverts, a little gift book in which Francesco Marciuliano pens supposedly-from-cats poems celebrating felines’ well-known habits of being aloof and unresponsive, and suggesting that those characteristics flow not from standoffishness but from deep and pervasive introversion. Yeah, right. The fun here is partly in the photos – cats are nothing if not photogenic – and partly in the juxtaposition of apt poses and expressions with free-verse poems such as “Wanted,” which reads, “Send me a hint/ Show me a sign/ Pat your lap/ Your sofa/ Your chair/ Let me know/ In no uncertain terms/ That you want me to come over/ I won’t/ But I like to be invited/ Going to be over here for a while.” Or there is “More Than You May Know,” which goes, in part, “More than the honorable to a promise/ More than the endeared to a love/ More than the righteous to a cause/ I will be loyal to you/ I will be there for you/ I just may not be around you/ For long stretches at a time…” And there is “Elsewhere,” which neatly captures what cats’ human companions like to think a cat is probably thinking: “…My mind is always moving/ From daydream to daydream/ Never stopping to hear/ What you just named me/ Or who you said you were again.” Humans who coexist with cats will certainly recognize the feline personality in these smidgens of poetic whimsy, which confirm again and again that cats’ toleration of human beings is merely a form of acceptance in which cats, introverted or not, put up with people to a certain degree and not beyond. Or, as Marciuliano puts it in “One Too Many,” directly and pointedly, “Maybe I wouldn’t/ Nap so much/ If people didn’t/ Exhaust me so often.” And there you have it encapsulated: why cats sleep up to 20 hours a day.

     The use of cat photos gives a veneer of realism to All Cats Are Introverts, but many books for younger readers dispense with even the slightest pretense of reality and simply create adventures in which animal-ish characters, usually humans thinly disguised as anthropomorphic nonhumans, get into various scrapes and difficulties and then get out of them. A typical graphic-novel example of this approach is the Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy series by Doug Savage. A moose wakes up in the forest one day and discovers that he has laser eyes. He befriends a rabbit, and they have adventures that also involve a deer named Frank (whose leg Laser Moose has a habit of shooting off) and a raccoon who keeps sewing Frank’s leg back on but who insists he is not a doctor, no matter what the other animals call him. In the third Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy book, Savage introduces “Time Trout,” so called because he encounters a human time traveler who conveniently drops his time-travel device – which, conveniently, falls into the river and is just the right size for a trout to eat, and which, also conveniently, reads the trout’s brain waves so the fish can go hither and thither in the time stream. This causes various predicaments for Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy: one future has the entire forest on fire, another features an invasion by flying saucers, and in one section of the book the moose and rabbit re-encounter an enemy from a previous book, Aquabear, who is half bear and half fish. None of this makes a lick of sense or is intended to – it is all there for mild adventure and mild amusement. Of course, the many mixups can only be solved if the trout returns everyone to the right place and time and the “time hopper” device is destroyed, but the trout refuses to allow the device’s destruction, because “being a fish is so boring” and “I want to keep having adventures” and “I finally feel like I’m truly living my life.” Eventually the trout’s selfishness leads to Laser Moose being marooned 78 million years in the past and fighting dinosaurs, while Rabbit Boy fails in an attempt to recover and destroy the time-travel device, until the trout finally realizes the error of his ways and gives up the time hopper – returning it to the original time traveler but then, at the last instant, joining the time traveler in going back to the future and a different and presumably more exciting life there. Silly and meaningless, Time Trout is simply an amusing illustrated journey for young graphic-novel fans who do not care much about plot consistency or character development, but kind of like the notion of a moose that shoots laser beams from its eyes and hangs out with a faithful rabbit companion.

     Dinosaurs are only a part of Time Trout, but they are whole point of Cinderella Rex, a board book – aimed at the very youngest readers and even pre-readers – in which the well-known Cinderella story becomes well-nigh unrecognizable. Well, some basic themes are there, such as the royal ball and fairy godmother – here, a Fairy Triceratops. But Cinderella Rex – who is, yes, a T. Rex living with her “stompmother” and “mean stompsisters,” who are other types of dinosaurs – here wants only to dance, but is not allowed to because she is kept too busy cleaning things. The whole family is invited to a ball at the local castle, but it takes so long for Cinderella Rex to help her “stompsisters” get ready that they go to the dance without her, and “she could only dance alone in her garden,” a tear dropping from one eye as she gracefully whirls about in front of a nearby erupting volcano. There is nothing here about a possible royal marriage – this is, after all, a book for very young children – but there is a lost-shoe moment with the most amusing element of the story: Cinderella Rex “tried to pick it up, but her arms could not reach it.” True: she is a T. Rex, with those famous tiny arms! Anyway, the prince recovers the shoe and takes it around town to find the graceful dancer he had seen, simply because he wants someone to teach him to dance. And eventually “Cinderella Rex moved to the castle” and “her stompsisters had to clean up for themselves” and everything ends swimmingly…err, danceably. A simply told story with a few amusing elements and a lot of absurd ones, Cinderella Rex is enjoyable in its use of multiple types of cartoon dinosaurs enacting an age-appropriate version of a familiar fairy tale – a small treat for the youngest children, provided that they find green-skinned, huge-headed-and-huge-toothed central characters adorable.

(++++) NINES

Mahler: Symphony No. 9. Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. Accentus Music. $16.99 (2 CDs).

Schubert: Symphony No. 9, “Great.” Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev. Linn Records. $18.99.

Haydn: Symphony No. 99; Mass in B-flat, “Harmoniemesse.” Mireille Asselin, soprano; Catherine Wyn-Rogers, mezzo-soprano; Jeremy Budd, tenor; Sumner Thompson, baritone. Handel and Haydn Society conducted by Harry Christophers. CORO. $18.99.

Hummel: Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 arranged for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano. Uwe Grodd, flute; Gould Piano Trio (Lucy Gould, violin; Alice Neary, cello; Benjamin Frith, piano). Naxos. $12.99.

     Superstitious worries about the number nine when it comes to symphonies trace directly to Beethoven’s works, since the Ninth was his final such work – although, more accurately, it was his last completed symphony, since he did start a Tenth, some of which is quite playable. Because Beethoven was the first major composer to make symphonies monumental, the fact that he finished only nine came to be perceived as a barrier of sorts. Thus, much tends to be made of the fact that Schubert also wrote nine symphonies – although he too started on a Tenth, left several incomplete (notably the one known as the “Unfinished”), and it is arguable whether his Seventh should be counted and therefore maybe he only completed eight and started a Ninth. This sort of thing quickly becomes silly: Dvořák also wrote nine symphonies, and unlike Beethoven or Schubert did not start another after his “From the New World,” but the consensus for many years was that Dvořák actually produced five symphonies, the ones now numbered 6, 7, 5, 8 and 9 – until four early ones were discovered. And then there is Bruckner, whose Ninth remained unfinished but who created one after his No. 1 that is now called “No. 0,” so the Ninth was really his Tenth – or, to be completely accurate, his Eleventh, since there is also a very early work now numbered “00.” And yet one composer, Mahler, took the numerological issue of the number nine very seriously indeed, to the point that after his Eighth he assiduously avoided called Das Lied von der Erde a symphony – that would have been No. 9, a prospect that seems genuinely to have frightened Mahler. Yet when he did give No. 9 to a work, it became his last completed symphony – although, again, he started on a Tenth, and got much further with it than Beethoven did with his, to the point Mahler’s No. 10 is often performed in any of several completions made after the composer’s death. Still, the notion of Mahler’s Ninth as a “farewell” of sorts persists, and at its best can inform well-considered performances with the kind of resigned beauty that is everywhere apparent on a new Accentus Music release in which the symphony is performed by the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Herbert Blomstedt. It is highly noteworthy that this reading was led by a conductor who at the time was one month shy of his 92^nd birthday – surely an age by which most people are contemplating their own mortality, never mind the fact that Mahler himself died two months before he would have turned a mere 51. Although it is impossible to know just what Blomstedt was thinking as he prepared for and conducted this performance, certainly his handling of the music shows him attributing to it some intimations of immortality, especially in the outer movements. The opening Andante comodo is very commodious indeed, proceeding at so leisurely a pace that its unfolding seems almost like that of a gorgeous flower being watched as it blooms nearly in real time. The movement grows and grows as Blomstedt paces it as a very slow, deliberate walk, almost a meandering, although it is clear that there is a destination – one that is not revealed even by the movement’s end. The middle movements here seem more like byways, roads not taken, or at least not taken satisfactorily. The gentle Ländler of the second movement provides little respite, for there has been nothing from which significant respite is required: it simply offers a feeling of pleasant, pastoral relief from the first movement’s quest. The third movement is much less biting and frenetic than it can be, as if Blomstedt is at pains not to disturb the first movement’s mood too greatly even here, when Mahler – as heard in many performances – becomes truly demonic. This is actually the least successful movement in Blomstedt’s reading, being just a bit too mild to provide the intended contrast with the finale. But once the finale arrives, concerns about the preceding movement evaporate, since here Blomstedt picks up the mood of the Andante comodo again seamlessly, only with even greater depth, as is justified by the simple tempo marking of Adagio. And gradually, with a steady pace and increasing certainty, the destination implied in the first movement comes into focus in the fourth, as the symphony ends with quiet beauty that is part resignation and part acceptance. This is a highly knowing performance by a conductor who, surely cognizant of his own mortality, makes the final complete symphony of a much younger composer into a statement for all ages.

     At the other end of the conductorial age scale is Maxim Emelyanychev, new principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who was born in 1988 and was 30 when he made a newly released recording of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 for Linn Records. This is a reading so packed with the impetuousness of youth that it is easy to think about the fact that Schubert completed the symphony when he was not yet 30 – and died at 31. This is a polarizing (+++) performance, one so packed with vigor and intensity that the gentility and gentleness of Schubert are nowhere to be found: this is driven music, which Emelyanychev pushes hard and harder, especially in the first two movements. The opening Allegro ma non troppo main section does not acknowledge the ma non troppo at all: there is nothing expansive here, only a headlong burst of intensity that is undeniably exhilarating but that runs roughshod over many of the beauties with which the movement is packed. The second movement’s Andante con moto really does move at a fast walk: no time for sightseeing here, or even for thinking about where one may be going – it is more a power walk than a stroll. There is vivacity to this movement, but it comes at the expense of perception of beauty. The symphony’s second half works better. The strongly rhythmic third movement is effective and particularly well-played, despite some inexplicable rubato in which Emelyanychev periodically seems hesitant to move on from one section to the next. Then comes the finale, the only movement here that really thrives under Emelyanychev’s approach. It is rushed, yes, but less so than the first movement, and here the speed comes across as a kind of headlong joy that may not fit the expansive themes perfectly but that is convincing in its own way. It is highly unlikely that Emelyanychev will interpret this symphony the same way in a decade or two, much less in the five decades that separate his age from that of Blomstedt. For now, what Emelyanychev offers is an interpretation filled with vigor but largely lacking in nuance and expressivity – decidedly a matter of taste.

     The tastefulness with which the Handel and Haydn Society under Harry Christophers performs the music of Haydn can never be doubted, and a new (++++) CORO recording shows once again the excellence of this period-instrument group and is leader. The symphony they offer is not Haydn’s Ninth – which is largely eclipsed because it follows the “Morning, Noon and Night” trio of Nos. 6-8 – but his 99^th, one of the less-often-heard of the composer’s final dozen “London” symphonies. The neglect of this splendid work has never been understandable and is even less so after one hears how Christopher and his ensemble perform it. Maybe it needs a title to bring it to the popularity level of the “Surprise,” “Miracle,” “Military,” “Clock” and “London” symphonies from the same batch. Christophers actually proposes one: the “Harmonie,” that being the German word for a full wind band – and Symphony No. 99 does indeed make extensive use of the orchestra’s wind complement. From its stately opening to its Andante with extensive employment of winds to its exceptionally clever and witty finale, the symphony is a delight throughout, and the verve with which the Handel and Haydn Society plays it serves to make it even more enjoyable than it usually is. It is paired here with Haydn’s final large-scale work, the sixth and last mass that the composer created for Prince Anton Esterházy, whose interest in music was minimal and in strong contrast to that of his father, Prince Nikolaus, whom Haydn served for the better part of three decades. Prince Anton did, however, want Haydn to write a mass annually for the nameday of Anton’s wife, and Haydn did just that – six times, with the final such mass being composed in 1802. That is the work heard here, and it was in fact designated Harmoniemesse (although not by Haydn himself) because of its extensive use of wind instruments. Even in our much-more-secular age, it is a marvelously expressive work with some special touches that show how creative Haydn remained at the age of 70: the usually tender Benedictus, for example, is here a fast choral movement full of eagerness, and the concluding Agnus dei progresses from a radiant beginning to a more prayerful central section, then stops altogether before closing with bright, emphatic expressiveness. Soloists, chorus and instrumentalists all handle the Harmoniemesse beautifully, making both the meaning of its devotional elements and the power of its exceptional musical creativity equally clear.

     It would have been interesting if the creativity of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Beethoven’s sometime friend and sometime rival, had led him to arrange Beethoven’s Ninth for a small instrumental ensemble of the sort that could be found in many households – or could readily be put together – in the early 19^th century. Hummel did not do this, though. But he did arrange Beethoven’s first seven symphonies (as well as the Septet, Op. 20) for flute, violin, cello, and piano – the same instruments for which Hummel made arrangements of half a dozen Mozart symphonies. A new (++++) Naxos CD featuring Uwe Grodd and the Gould Piano Trio offers listeners a chance to hear what Hummel did with Beethoven’s First and the “Eroica,” and the result is fascinating. Unsurprisingly, the classical lines and comparative mildness of No. 1 come across better on these instruments than does the far more expansive, broader, deeper and more emotionally trenchant No. 3. Also unsurprisingly, Hummel – a brilliant pianist – reserves much of the “good stuff” in these arrangements for the piano, even taking some elements that Beethoven originally assigned to the flute and giving them to the pianist rather than the flautist. The purpose of these arrangements, though, transcends any of their oddities and forgives them. Hummel re-created these symphonies – probably shortly after Beethoven’s death – for the express purpose of making more people aware of Beethoven’s genius, which Hummel himself never doubted even when he and Beethoven found themselves at odds. There was no “standard repertoire” in the 1830s, no easy way for people to get to concerts to experience Beethoven’s music, no recordings of it – it was only through arrangements that people could play for themselves, with family members and friends, that these symphonies could become known. And Hummel’s handling of the symphonies accomplished just what he intended, by bringing Beethoven far more attention from music lovers than he would otherwise have had. Heard in that context, these arrangements are very fine indeed. Grodd and the Gould Piano Trio play them straight and without exaggeration, in finely balanced performances that do indeed have the piano prominent much of the time but that also function as a clear introduction to the music. And some of what Hummel did comes off exceptionally well: for example, while the first two movements of the “Eroica” inevitably lack the power of the original, the lithe and lively finale is surprisingly effective in this chamber version. Certainly, in the 21^st century, these Hummel productions are interesting sidelights on Beethoven rather than any sort of introduction to him. But sidelights do cast light, and Hummel’s handling of Beethoven’s First and Third Symphonies for a small ensemble very skillfully showcases many of the pleasures of music that was not always known as well as it is today – and that gained some of its popularity precisely because Hummel presented it in this form.