(++++) PIANISTIC TWISTS AND TURNS

Haydn: Piano (Keyboard) Concertos—complete (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 11). Mélodie Zhao, piano; Camerata Schweiz conducted by Howard Griffiths. CPO. $33.99 (2 CDs).

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130, transcribed for piano four hands; Schubert: Fantasie in F minor, D. 940. DUO Stephanie and Saar (Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia), piano four hands. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Curt Cacioppo: La promessa di Beatrice; Né più la luce; Gloria; Luce è Donna; Paean; Notturno elidiano; (I, madly struggling, cry). Kristina Bachrach, soprano; William Sharp, baritone; Curt Cacioppo, Debra Lew Harder and Wan-Chi Su, piano. MSR Classics. $12.95.

     Although he was scarcely a virtuoso at the level of Mozart, Haydn was a more-than-passable harpsichord player (as well as a capable violinist), and he produced a number of mostly pleasant, if rather unassuming, concertos for harpsichord and other keyboard instruments – specifically the organ, although in a couple of cases, years after creating certain concertos, he indicated that they could also be played on the then-new fortepiano. What Haydn did not do was lay the groundwork for performances on a full-scale modern grand piano, which did not exist in anything like its present form until a century after Haydn wrote the works that Mélodie Zhao plays on just such an instrument on a new two-CD set from CPO. Zhao’s renditions are something of a throwback to a time before historically informed performance: she does not hesitate to use pedaling, crescendo and decrescendo, sustaining /overlapping notes, and other techniques that did not exist in Haydn’s time and are quite inappropriate for his music. However, she uses these approaches mostly in her cadenzas rather than in the written-out portions of the concertos, in which she is considerably more restrained – and considerably closer in approach to Howard Griffiths, who conducts the Camerata Schweiz chamber orchestra with a light touch and a fine sense of Haydn’s balanced and elegant style. So what we have here is a very well-played, if occasionally somewhat misguided, set of performances – and a chance to listen to nine keyboard concertos that are probably the only surviving ones genuinely written by Haydn, whose fame was such that publishers, and other composers, often tried to pass their works off as his and sometimes succeeded. It is now accepted that a concerto listed as Haydn’s No. 9 is definitely not by him, and although No. 7 – not recorded here – is certainly based on some of Haydn’s non-concerto music, it appears to have been changed into concerto form by someone else. Indeed, one work heard here, No. 10 (actually a concertino, and listed as such by CPO), is of dubious origin, although it may be by Haydn and certainly sounds much like his work. Also, No. 6 of these pieces is actually a double concerto, in which Zhao is joined as soloist by violinist David Nebel. Clearly the provenance of Haydn’s keyboard concertos is complex and is still being unraveled; and the works themselves do not show him at his most creative, although several have ebullient and delightful finales – including No. 11, the best-known of these pieces, whose last movement is a bouncy Rondo all’ Ungarese. Zhao is scarcely an expert Haydn stylist, but her performances make up in verve and spirit what they lack in authenticity, and Griffiths’ careful attention to a more-Haydnesque approach keeps the overall recording highly entertaining and quite enjoyable to hear. There is also some genuine interest in Zhao’s cadenzas, which are not suitable to Haydn’s time period but have charm of their own – and do not go on overlong, so at least in terms of timing, they fit the music appropriately. This is scarcely a release for anyone who prefers historically informed performances, but it is a welcome chance to experience some fine pianism in the service of music that may not be Haydn’s best but that is certainly well worth hearing when performed with the skill and élan that it receives here.

     The Beethoven performance by the wife-and-husband duo of Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia, on a New Focus Recordings release, seems on the face of it to be even less authentic than Zhao’s handling of Haydn’s concertos. But matters are more complicated than that. Beethoven’s B-flat quartet, Op. 130, is the one for which he famously wrote the Grosse Fuge that he was then persuaded to discard and publish separately, substituting a less-forbidding finale to cap the previous five movements. Beethoven himself arranged the Grosse Fuge for piano four hands, and what Ho and Ahuvia do is perform the quartet with its first five movements transcribed by Hugo Ulrich and Robert Wittmann, followed by the Grosse Fuge in Beethoven’s four-hand adaptation. Clearly Ho and Ahuvia believe this version of the quartet works better than the one with the replacement finale, although it would have been nice if they had recorded the Ulrich/Wittmann version of that movement as well, to give listeners a chance to make up their own minds (it would have fit on the same CD). In any case, the quartet in this guise is fascinating to hear. The piano cannot vary dynamics on sustained notes, as string instruments can, but the keyboard sound works well for this quartet thanks to the care the performers take to prevent any muddiness, especially in chordal passages, and to give the music a welcome level of transparency. The interpretation is unusual in some respects, or at least nontraditional: the very brief second movement is slower here than its Presto designation, which actually makes it easier to hear the syncopations, and the third movement – Andante con moto ma non troppo – ignores the last part of that tempo designation and moves along quite smartly, the intriguing pacing providing a greater sense of suspense than most performances offer. Less successful is the over-fast Cavatine, whose emotion seems more surface-level than usual, although it could be argued that the movement’s comparative lightness of character in this reading better sets up the grandeur of the Grosse Fuge than would a darker approach. That vast last movement is played particularly impressively, and although it does indeed tend to overbalance the quartet to some degree, it has a magisterial presence that Ho and Ahuvia convey to very fine effect. This quartet transcription pairs very interestingly indeed with Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor, D. 940, which spins out at even greater length than the Grosse Fuge and encompasses in its way as many moods as does the entirety of Beethoven’s Op. 130. Here the tempo choices seem particularly apt, especially in the contrast between the bright and very nicely paced Scherzo and the well-spun-out finale. The differing treatment of fugal writing by Beethoven in the Gross Fuge in 1826 and Schubert a mere two years later is revelatory of the burgeoning Romantic era in piano music, and Ho and Ahuvia do a first-rate job of exploring both the differences between these two important fugal works and the similarities between them.

     The use of the piano by Curt Cacioppo (born 1951) on a new MSR Classics CD is less distinctive and more indicative of its usage by many composers in the 21^st and late 20^th centuries. The disc includes two solo-piano pieces, Paean (2015), a kind of nocturne-with-dissonance played by the composer, and Notturno elidiano (1998), a similar but somewhat more delicate piece played by Debra Lew Harder. Those piano solos are placed midway on the disc, as interludes of a sort, between a set of four songs for soprano and piano, with text by Luigi Cerantola, and a single song for baritone and piano, with words by Walt Whitman. The vocal dominance of the piano and of the disc as a whole produces a verbal emphasis for the CD that creates expectations of emotional communication that the music never quite fulfills. The four Cerantola-based songs, written between 2008 and 2019, are rather old-fashioned both musically and in their somewhat exorbitant (that is to say, somewhat overdone) emotional expressiveness, which places them more firmly in the realm of Italian opera than in that of art song. Cacioppo is apparently aware of this: the third song, Gloria, includes a lovely oboe part (played by Evan Ocheret) that gives the audience (as well as soprano Kristina Bachrach and the composer/pianist himself) some respite from the rather hectic intensity of the first two songs. And then the fourth song, Luce è Donna, which is really a scena and is longer than the other three put together, appears – with the subtitle/designation, Parodia alla Sestina: “Operistica.” The works are all well-made but are rather rarefied in their intended appeal. And then, after the solo-piano works, there is a piece from 2018 with a title that, for no particular reason, is given in parentheses: (I, madly struggling, cry). Here clear-voiced baritone William Sharp and pianist Wan-Chi Su fit rather oddly together: Sharp alternately speaks and sings, while Su produces keyboard material that tends to sound as if it comes from some other work altogether – it does not exactly underline or contrast with Whitman’s words as Sharp delivers them, but skitters here and there as if seeking respite from the intensity of the vocal material. The disc as a whole shows Cacioppo’s versatility as a composer plus his skill as an interpreter of his own piano music, but it never really gels as a totality, coming across as a (+++) release that adds up to somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

(++++) HEARTFELT

Candy Hearts. By Tommy Siegel. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

I Hope This Helps: Comics and Cures for 21^st Century Panic. By Tommy Siegel. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

In Love & Pajamas. By Catana Chetwynd. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

     Those cute little candy hearts that proclaim words of love and amusement become, in Tommy Siegel’s cartoons, much less cute but, often, much more amusing – certainly amusing in a more-pointed way. Candy Hearts uses the flat surfaces of the sweets to display messages of all sorts – mostly showing the numerous ways in which people can miscommunicate. Siegel places the hearts on more-or-less-human bodies – they have arms and legs, although no additional anatomy. Then he creates poses taken from everyday human life and uses the hearts to communicate feelings that remain generally unexpressed. For instance, a heart kneels on the floor, holding a ring box that is open to show another heart (his sweet-heart, of course) an engagement ring. On the box-holding heart are the words, “Will you marry me.” On the seated heart are the words, “Please God not in this Chipotle.” What happens next is left to the reader to imagine. Along the same lines, two hearts are holding hands while walking. On one are the words, “Clinging to new relationship to avoid self-inquiry.” On the other – whose second hand is holding a cell phone – are the words, “Prematurely withdrawing to avoid self-inquiry.” And then there are the panels containing more than two hearts. One has two larger (adult) candy hearts, the words on one saying “Staying married but only” and those on the other continuing the thought: “for the sake of our children.” At their feet are two smaller (child) hearts, one with the words “Please for the love of God” and the other continuing the thought: “just get divorced.” OK, Siegel does not exactly have an upbeat view of humanity, or relationships, or communication, but he does have a clever and offbeat way of displaying his generally downbeat perceptions – as when two hearts are seated on the grass, a leashed dog between them, with one heart displaying the words, “I hope this isn’t a test run for kids” while the other displays, “Dude obviously this is a test run.” That is a simple two-heart drawing. At the other extreme is a three-heart drawing set at a luggage carousel labeled “Emotional Baggage Claim,” where two hearts both display the words “Not mine” while bags labeled “Ex issues” and “Daddy issues” move past them. Farther along the carousel is a third heart with the words, “How are all of these bags mine” – not only waiting for the two still moving along but already surrounded by ones labeled “Fear of abandonment,” “Anger issues,” “Fear of commitment,” and “Mommy issues.” Whoa, that’s harsh – and dark. And funny. And that pretty well sums up the worldview that Siegel presents in Candy Hearts. Sweet, it isn’t.

     Siegel came up with the Candy Hearts concept about a year into a self-generated attempt, ultimately successful, to produce 500 comics in 500 days. Good thing he did, too, because the art he shows in his chronicle of that time period – collected in I Hope This Helps – is neither as original nor as offbeat as the “heart” concept on which he eventually settled. Siegel, who plays in a band, started doing drawings for fans during the band’s long drives from venue to venue. He decided on the 500-day-500-cartoon plan partly out of desperation and partly out of a need for something to do during those interminable times between concerts. But most of the narrative he offers in I Hope This Helps about his geographical and artistic journey is at best mildly interesting, and most of his drawings are quite derivative: other cartoonists have used the one-eye-on-face-and-one-floating-by-the-head style; others have shown people with huge bulbous noses; others have created sequences of drawings with related captions (“A Guide to Mustaches,” “What Your Coffee Drink of Choice Says about You” [also “Your Guitar,” “Your Houseplant,” “Your Sandals” and many more]); others have tried riffs loosely related to New Yorker cartoons (one woman to another while they have cocktails: “Honestly, ever since I withdrew from the world and submerged myself in videos of round animals, I’ve been feeling so much better!”). A few of Siegel’s ideas work reasonably well, such as side-by-side bullet-point comparisons of “Star Wars vs. Star Trek,” “Movies vs. Films,” “How to Cope in Los Angeles vs. New York” (one bullet point: “psychedelics and surfing” vs. “coffee and therapy”), “Scrambled Eggs vs. Cereal,” “Babies vs. Dogs,” and so forth. But nothing in I Hope This Helps works very well except for the early candy-hearts cartoons, which also appear in the book Candy Hearts. As a result, I Hope This Helps is a (+++) book that is really only for people who want to know how Candy Hearts came to be, or who are fans of Siegel’s band (which is called Jukebox the Ghost for unexplained and possibly unexplainable reasons). Siegel turns out to be good enough to recognize a clever idea when he has one – but not quite good enough to abandon all his less-good ideas before turning them into a less-good book. Still, his heart eventually turns out to be in the right place – or at least his hearts do.

     Real-world candy hearts are supposed to be small tokens or representations of sweet and loving sentiments. They are little things that point to big ones. And in fact, as Catana Chetwynd shows with In Love & Pajamas, there are lots of little things in everyday life that point to the big sentiments that collectively add up to love. This sweet and warm (++++) book simply offers everyday events in cartoon Catana’s life with her cartoon husband, John, using those events to show the intimate intricacies (and intricate intimacies) that make up a loving relationship. For instance, Catana is seen pouring herself a cup of coffee, walking away, then thinking of John, and then going back to pour coffee for him, too. This is a very little thing to do, but it is through the hundreds and thousands of such tiny things that a relationship is built and strengthened. Some of Chetwynd’s panels are about personality differences: she searches for her purse, then for her phone, then for where she parked her car – while he is seen looking at “my oil change receipts from my first car, right where I filed them 14 years ago!” Other panels have a slightly wry view of mundane matters: a single-panel page shows Catana looking at John and saying, “When I’m done being mad can we go get burritos?” Some sequences are simply cute: John is taller than Catana, so while they are standing in the hot sun, she repositions him just slightly to give her some shade. Other sequences handle stereotypical male-female differences in amusing ways: Catana needs four panels to get ready for the day by taking a shower, brushing her hair, doing makeup and choosing an outfit; John’s routine consists simply of changing from sweatpants to real pants. And then there are the “meet cute” panels, which take the traditional concept of romantic-comedy films into real life – for instance, Catana and John text “miss you” on their respective cell phones even though they are in two rooms of the same home; and when they are actually in different places, they talk on the phone about being reunited in two hours, which is just one hour twice, which is 30 minutes four times, or a mere 15 minutes eight times. It is true that a little of this lovey-dovey stuff goes a long way, but it is also true that Catana’s chunky, simply drawn characters – with big eyes that, somewhat surprisingly, do not look like the now-so-common eyes created or influenced by manga – act in realistic enough ways so that the overdone elements of In Love & Pajamas stop just short of being too treacly to enjoy. There are half a dozen stickers at the back of the book that neatly encapsulate its themes, showing panels in which Catana and John walk together under an umbrella, lift each other up for hugs, or just sit together so closely that they seem almost to be a single character. Few people in the real world are quite that close, but many wish they could be, making In Love & Pajamas something of an aspirational book as well as something of an inspirational one.

(++++) RE-RISING AFTER THE FALL

Master of the Revels: A Return to Neal Stephenson’s D.O.D.O. By Nicole Galland. William Morrow. $29.99.

     The full title of this book – which is reasonably thick at 534 pages, but not exceptionally so when compared with its more-than-750-page predecessor – explains more than most titles do about what readers can expect from the novel. The book acknowledges and bows to Neal Stephenson – but he did not write it. It is very much a sequel. And it revisits places (and times and narrative approaches) in which readers really need to be grounded for Master of the Revels to have anything approaching its intended effect. All that, just from the title.

     Yet that is scarcely enough. Galland does not quite have the outright cleverness with science-fictional tropes that Stephenson possesses, and somehow the collaborative original brought out a vein of wit and humor in the coauthors that is significantly diminished in this sequel: it does not disappear entirely but somewhat changes character. Indeed, it is a tossup to decide whether or not the original book is a must-read before this one: it certainly is for an introduction to D.O.D.O. (the Department of Diachronic Operations) and a first plunge into the multifaceted method of D.O.D.O. storytelling – which in the first book involved letters, journals, official white papers, PowerPoint presentations, an extended poem in the alliterative style of Beowulf, and more, and in this second book includes many of the same forms of communication and a few additional ones. On the other hand, Galland spends nearly the first 200 pages of Master of the Revels providing backstory, which is really a bit too much for anyone who read the original book recently – but is a huge help for anybody who does not remember it or has not read it at all. The recap material is mostly well-integrated with the new narrative, which means it is not possible simply to skip all of it and move along; but the complexity of the original book requires a lot of scene-setting and character elucidation, so Master of the Revels does not really get going on its own until about a third of the way in.

     When it does shift into high (or at least higher) gear, though, Galland’s book stands up quite well to the inaugural volume of what now appears to have become a series or, at the least, a trilogy. The new book is set five years after – well, sort of “after,” this being a sequence about time travel – the formation of D.O.D.O., whose leader has fallen under the control of a witch named Gráinne, who is from 17^th-century Ireland and is determined to alter history so the year 1851, when the invention of photography eclipsed magic forever, will be different enough to allow the 21^st century to be dominated by magic rather than science. Gráinne is the nominal nemesis of the D.O.D.O. spinoff GRIMNIR, in which the tried-and-true operatives of the first book, Tristan Lyons and Melisande Stokes, have regrouped – along with Tristan’s sister, Robin, a new character – to undo whatever Gráinne undoes and keep the future, or present as the case may be, pretty much as it has been or will be (even writing about the D.O.D.O. books can be confusing, given their time-travel and time-mixing propensities).

     It is not entirely clear whether Gráinne should really be deemed evil, or only misguided, or whether perhaps she has a pretty good point in what she is trying to do. Contemplation of this issue is one thread of Master of the Revels, which weaves many others together into an intricate (if somewhat over-complicated) tapestry. The underlying premise of the D.O.D.O. books is that big changes to the past can cause disastrous multi-universal “diachronous shears” and a host of paradoxical traps, but small changes (essentially a “butterfly effect” sort of thing) can be cleverly used to manipulate the course of events in whatever direction one wishes – unless, of course, other time travelers create other small changes that counterbalance yours and set things back (or forward) as they originally were (or would be).

     The back-and-forth maneuvers and fast perspective and time shifts of Master of the Revels give the whole thing some of the flavor of a Monty Python comedy, and, indeed, Galland keeps things somewhat lighter and a touch or two less intricate and portentous here than she and Stephenson did when they worked together on the first book. Like that volume, Master of the Revels takes readers to a variety of times and places, including Sicily in the fourth century, Florence in the 14^th, and Kyoto in the 15^th. And Galland’s attentiveness to elements of everyday life in those times and places is one of the book’s pleasures. The main focus, though, is Elizabethan England, specifically the weeks in which Shakespeare is getting the initial production of Macbeth ready for the Globe Theater and then a performance at court. Gráinne is at work here through the spells of the Three Witches in Shakespeare’s play, seeking to change a bit of the text in a way that will reverberate through the centuries and accomplish Gráinne’s pro-witchcraft aims (the fact that Tristan and Melisande are helped by some other witches, who are not quite sure where their loyalty lies or should lie, complicates matters further). The book’s title refers to Edmund Tilney, who is Master of the Revels at the Globe and in that role is a kind of censor-cum-production manager whose job also encompasses special effects for the performances. Obviously he is a key, perhaps the key, to the various factions’ various machinations in various times and various universes. However, there are other keys here and there, too, such as members of the Fugger banking family, who also played a major role in the first book: the specific bankers named Fugger in the D.O.D.O. books did not exist, but certainly could have been descendants of Jakob Fugger (1459-1525), our-real-world banker extraordinaire and possibly the richest man who ever lived.

     Master of the Revels is rife with opportunities for reader confusion, many of them intentional on Galland’s part, some of them inherent in time-travel books of all sorts, and a few that seem to have slipped in inadvertently – but do not derail the headlong pace into which the story eventually settles. Yet perhaps “headlong” is not quite the right word, since the pacing is certainly fast when things get going, but the story is circular and ouroboros-like rather than straight-line progressive. It is very difficult, but in a pleasant way, to join Galland (who is herself, on the authorial level, the master of these revels) on a journey that “knits up the ravell’d sleave of care” but leaves enough threads askew to make at least one further D.O.D.O. volume likely. This book may not be “chief nourisher in life’s feast,” but it is considerably heartier than a snack and decidedly tasty – although it would be merely churlish to point out that, ironically in light of the various emendations attempted in Shakespeare’s witches’ lines, many scholars believe that Shakespeare may in fact not have written all the “witch” material in Macbeth. Perhaps the butterfly wings of the denizens of D.O.D.O. and/or Gráinne have flapped after all.

(+++) WINDS, ARRANGED

Music for Bassoon and Strings by Alexis Ciesla, François Devienne, Barbara Strozzi, Carl Jacobi, Édouard Du Puy, and Clara Schumann. Shannon Lowe, bassoon; Kristin Pfeifer Yu and Ken Davis, violins; Laurel Yu, viola; Steven Taylor, cello; Maurice Belle, double bass. MSR Classics. $12.95.

George Lewis: The Recombinant Trilogy—Emergent, Not Alone, Seismologic. Claire Chase, flute, with Levy Lorenzo, electronics; Seth Parker Woods, cello and electronics; Dana Jessen, bassoon, with Eli Stine, electronics. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Ireland: Fantasy-Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Sarnia—An Island Sequence; Prokofiev: Sonata, Op. 94a. Phillip O. Paglialonga, clarinet; Richard Masters, piano. Heritage Records. $18.

     Listeners with a taste for wind-plus-something music have a considerable amount of material from which to choose, some originally written for the combination and some arranged for it – often by the performers themselves as they look for new repertoire for their chosen instruments. Bassoonist Shannon Lowe, for example, has arranged two short works from very different eras: La Vendetta by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) and Die gute nacht, die ich dir sage (“the good night that I say to you”) by Clara Schumann (1819-1896). The pieces are expressive in their own, very different ways, and in fact expressiveness lies at the heart of Lowe’s entire recital on MSR Classics: she is one of many bassoonists who see the instrument as warm and pleasant, readily capable of heartfelt emotion quite distant from the more-comic role to which it was often relegated in the past. The Strozzi work has a distinct singing quality to it (Strozzi was a well-known singer), while Clara Schumann’s pretty offering to husband Robert is a lovely little piece, filled with warmth that is tender and never overdone. The remainder of this CD has a distinct aura of potpourri about it, collecting pieces that simply reflect Lowe’s performance interests rather than any particular theme. The disc opens with the most-recent work on offer, Dança de Lisboa by Alexis Ciesla (born 1967), which progresses from the bassoon’s darker register toward a brighter and more vivacious sound as it evolves. The two most-extensive works here are from 18^th-century France, a quartet by François Devienne (1759-1803) and a quintet by Édouard Du Puy (1770-1822). Both are in minor keys (G minor and A minor, respectively), but neither aims for or achieves depth, profundity or even melancholy. The Devienne has almost a dual-instrument focus, with violin and bassoon both cooperating and moving to the verge of competition. Du Puy’s work is more virtuosic, giving Lowe plenty of opportunities to shine and having, like Strozzi’s, some elements of vocalizing about it – Du Puy, like Strozzi, was a noted singer. Also on this disc is an intriguing Potpourri on “Zampa” by Carl Jacobi (1791-1852), featuring music from the now-rarely-heard opera by Louis Hérold. Some themes used by Jacobi are recognizable from the work’s still-familiar overture, while others point to just how tuneful the opera is despite an over-the-top plot that has much to do with its fall into obscurity. Lowe plays everything on the CD tastefully and with a fine sense of style, and if nothing here approaches the level of “great” (or even particularly significant) music, everything is certainly enjoyable.

     For a contemporary composer such as George Lewis (born 1952) – especially one who himself performs on electronics – the mixture of acoustic wind instruments with electronic alteration seems to come naturally. New Focus Recordings has released an hour-long disc of three works that Lewis collects as The Recombinant Trilogy. Like much electronic music, this is a matter of taste: those who enjoy digitized sounds and modifications that change the inherent acoustic properties of instruments will become involved in the way Lewis alters the properties of flute, cello and bassoon, while those who are more interested in the instruments’ inherent capabilities will find what Lewis creates overdone and definitely overlong. Certainly these three pieces require considerable virtuosity on the part of the instrumentalists; the question is to what end. If Claire Chase’s flute is turned into something screechy, its sound often on the verge of unpleasantness (by design); if Seth Parker Woods, who both plays the cello and modifies it electronically, creates a sound world in which the instrument’s rich tone and wide range are implied mostly by their absence; if Dana Jessen’s bassoon offers the rumblings of something approximating an earthquake or incipient invasion of the surface world by creatures from below – if all these sounds and modifications occur again and again, in works that grow from a kind of organic conception but without giving listeners any particular themes, rhythms, harmonies or pacing to which they can attach their expectations, then only an audience that actively seeks immersion in an electronic world will experience this material as Lewis intends. Emergent dates to 2014, Not Alone to 2014-15, and Seismologic to 2017, but all use identical sound-manipulative techniques, or at least strongly overlapping ones. The instrumentalists heard here are the ones for whom the works were created, so it is fair to call their performances definitive. It is also fair to ask what Lewis and the performers are trying to communicate, if there is anything beyond the basic notion of manipulable aural elements. Parts of Emergent sound shrill, while others are hollow-sounding and gloomy. Not Alone is filled with escalations and alterations of cello-playing techniques of all sorts. Seismologic extends the solo instrument to an even greater degree, pulling bassoon sounds far lower than they can be when produced naturally, while also creating layering effects that make the instrument sound like various natural phenomena. There is much in The Recombinant Trilogy that is intellectually intriguing; but, as is often the case in contemporary music, there is nothing here that is emotionally gripping – or is intended to be.

     In somewhat older music, though, the emotional connection of a wind instrument such as the clarinet can be substantial, as is clear on a Heritage Records CD featuring clarinetist Phillip O. Paglialonga. There is one work here, by John Ireland, that was written for clarinet, and another, by Prokofiev, that has been arranged for it. Ireland’s Fantasy-Sonata for Clarinet and Piano is the composer’s only piece for solo clarinet, and it covers the instrument’s complete range without ever trying to force it higher or lower than a performer can take it. Although notable for the virtuosity of the clarinet part, this work also asks a great deal of the piano, which partners with the wind instrument to a high degree and, when played with sensitivity, helps create an exceptionally well-balanced piece requiring considerable skill from both players. Paglialonga is very ably partnered here by Richard Masters, whose unerring sense of balance between the instruments prevents the piano from ever overshadowing the clarinet, and whose careful presentation helps give the piece a greater sense of structure than it sometimes seems to have (it is certainly more fantasy than sonata). Masters’ skill with Ireland’s music is also in evidence in the solo-piano work Sarnia, an impressionistic three-movement piece about the island of Guernsey (called Sarnia in Roman times). Although written, like the other works on this CD, during World War II, Sarnia sounds more like an oasis of quiet and peace, perhaps a throwback to more bucolic times, than a piece composed in wartime. There is some of the same feeling in Prokofiev’s Sonata, Op. 94a, an arrangement for violin and piano of the Op. 94 sonata for flute. Paglialonga thus plays an arrangement of an arrangement, but the clarinet version harks back in its lyrical elegance to the original one for flute. The feeling is on the sylvan side in the first of the four movements, although the leaps and bounces of the second movement – with distinct playfulness in both clarinet and piano – offer highly recognizable Prokofiev-wittiness material. The sonata as a whole is rather stately, classically proportioned and, in its finale, with some of the sound of a throwback to the much earlier Classical Symphony. The finale actually sounds especially bright and emphatic on the clarinet, while Masters’ underpinning of the material makes the sonata’s conclusion particularly effective. The works on this CD have little in common except temporally, but they collectively make for a very pleasant listening experience that neatly highlights three separate wind-related approaches: one original composition, one arrangement, and one work where the wind instrument is absent altogether – with all three works played with panache and a convincing degree of emotional connectedness.