(++++) ROMANTICISM REEVALUATED

Brahms: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. András Schiff, piano and conducting Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. ECM New Series. $28.50 (2 CDs).

Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 6-9. Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $16.99 (2 CDs).

     If András Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have any say in the matter – and one can only hope that they do – the days in which Brahms was known for his turgidity will end soon. It cannot happen soon enough. The longtime use of hyper-sonorous pianos and huge massed orchestras of 100-plus players for Brahms’ two piano concertos has been challenged, on and off, for decades, but old ideas, even obsolete ones, die hard. To be sure, some performers found ways, many years ago, to present Brahms’ concertos with grandeur and beauty without suffocating them beneath a blanket of overwrought sound: both Clifford Curzon and Leon Fleisher managed this in recordings, thanks in large part to their collaboration with George Szell, one of whose most-notable accomplishments with the Cleveland Orchestra was to give it chamber-music-worthy clarity, elegance and poise. By and large, though, the need to have the Brahms concertos resound through huge concert halls with as much warmth as possible continued to favor performances in which piano and orchestra alike produced great gobs of clotted sonority – beautiful, to be sure, but clotted nonetheless.

     Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will have none of this, none whatsoever, on an absolutely wonderful ECM New Series recording of the piano concertos. This is limpid Brahms, delicate Brahms, a Brahms of linear progress rather than chordal massiveness – yet Brahms with his forcefulness intact, his creativity unimpaired and even accentuated, his sheer melodiousness flowing nonstop and to marvelous effect. The dedication of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to historically informed performance is one reason these readings are exemplary. Another reason is the ensemble’s size: 50 players, comparable to the 49 in one of Brahms’ favorite orchestras, the Meiningen ensemble led by Hans von Bülow. Still another is Schiff’s use of a piano made by one of Brahms’ favorite manufacturers, Blüthner – and constructed in about 1859, the year in which Brahms gave Concerto No. 1 its première. Truly, the stars are in alignment for these performances – which is to say that Schiff, the orchestra and Brahms are all stars, and they fit with proverbial perfection. The dynamism of the first movement of Concerto No. 1 – the longest movement in either concerto – is accentuated rather than attenuated by the use of a piano with clearer sonority (especially in its lower register) than more-commonly-heard ones. The work’s second movement has a real chamber-music feeling about it, with the piano primus inter pares for long stretches. And the finale has matched verve and clarity, with a genuinely distinctive piano sound that casts the music in a new and far brighter light than usual. For example, the second theme does not swoon here – it provides apt contrast but does not drip with treacle. There is enough audible contrast between the characters of the piano’s middle and upper registers to give different sections of this last movement their own personalities, with the cadenza and conclusion merging delicacy and strength in a manner that is almost unheard-of in Brahms performances – and decidedly deserves to be heard much more often.

     In Concerto No. 2, to which the adjective “autumnal” can be applied more deservedly than it is to many other Brahms works, the opening horn-piano duet sounds far better-balanced here than usual, leading into a declamatory cadenza in which Schiff clearly sets forth the emotive center of the entire work – on which he proceeds to build not only throughout the first movement but also in the three that follow. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment sounds richer and fuller here than in Concerto No. 1, without ever losing the transparency and fine balance that fit its size so much better than they fit ensembles twice as large. The concerto, although constructed by Brahms with formal care, sounds in many ways like a fantasia here – a wide-ranging set of emotional evocations and responses that flow one into the next, not so much seamlessly as inevitably. The ebb and flow of the second movement come through with heightened clarity, and the string sections with unusual delicacy. And the strings’ opening of the third movement re-characterizes the entire concerto, turning it nearly into chamber music of the utmost delicacy and warmth, almost as if Brahms has let out a sigh of relief – or, more likely, contentment – and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has felt and reproduced it perfectly. The piano enters in this movement only after the orchestra has been playing for two minutes; and when it does, Schiff sensitively parallels the mood already established by the ensemble and expands upon it to excellent and very moving effect. After this, the finale is all geniality, a dancelike expression of pleasure communicated trippingly by soloist and orchestra alike. Not even the gorgeous second theme really sounds “autumnal” here: everything is too lively, in the sense of being full of life, for the music to portend the kind of wintry conclusion implied by an association with the fall season. This remarkably engaging two-CD set shines a great deal of light on elements of Brahms that have been there all along but that have, over time, been obscured by changes in piano building, orchestral size, concert-hall construction and sonority, and other factors. Like other great composers, Brahms is moving and involving even when his music is performed in ways different from those he intended. But this top-notch recording of the piano concertos shows how much greater the effect of his music is when performers of the highest quality take the time and make the effort to allow today’s audiences to hear Brahms’ music as the composer meant it to be heard.

     As surprising as it is to hear Brahms played by a chamber-size orchestra – and to hear just how good his music sounds with a smaller ensemble – it is equally surprising to hear a chamber ensemble tackle symphonies by Dvořák, to whom Brahms was a longtime mentor and friend despite some inevitable religious strains in their relationship in light of Dvořák’s devout Catholicism and Brahms’ humanism bordering on agnosticism (which once led Dvořák to lament, “Such a man, such a fine soul – and he believes in nothing!”). This area of profound disagreement aside, the two men led musically interrelated lives, not only because of the well-known relationship between Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances and Brahms’ Hungarian Dances but also because of some similarities in their symphonies that are truly exceptional. This is nowhere more apparent than in Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6, the first of four offered in exceptionally thoughtful and well-played versions by the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard on a two-CD set from Recursive Classics.

     There are some complications regarding Dvořák’s symphonies. For some time, only five were known. What is now called No. 6 was referred to as No. 1; No. 7 was No. 2; No. 5 was No. 3; No. 8 was No. 4; and No. 9, “From the New World,” was No. 5. Then, after Dvořák’s death, three more symphonies were found – plus a fourth whose manuscript even the composer had lost. So for a time, Dvořák was considered to have composed not five symphonies but eight – or rather nine. In fact, all nine of these works have much to recommend them, although the very first to be published – which is now known as No. 6 – is the first in which the entire symphony holds together well and effectively, concluding with a thoroughly satisfying finale. Bernard, an exceptionally thoughtful conductor as well as a skilled one, makes a fine case for the importance of Dvořák’s last four symphonies in these recordings, although it could have been even better if he had chosen to offer the entire cycle, whose very first complete recording (conducted by István Kertész) remains, after more than half a century, an unequalled achievement in this repertoire.

     Perhaps there will be more Dvořák symphonies to come from Bernard and the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony – but whether or not other recordings are made, it is a real pleasure to have this one. It turns out that an orchestra of more-modest size can bring as many benefits to Dvořák’s music as to Brahms’. This is clear from the very opening of Symphony No. 6, where the strings’ admirable clarity of articulation gives the music freshness and rhythmic solidity while also providing a fine contrast with the winds and brass. The flow of the second movement is gentle and pastoral, the interplay of winds and strings especially well-handled. The third movement, a furiant and the least Brahmsian part of the symphony, has considerable flair here: fast-paced and propulsive, it borders on the frenetic and, if not quite danceable, is notable for its enthusiasm. The fourth movement’s opening could actually (if momentarily) be mistaken for the opening of the finale of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, so close is it to the conclusion of that other D major symphony in sound and rhythm. Here Bernard starts with an unfortunate accelerando instead of plunging headlong into the Allegro con spirito (the same tempo indication Brahms used). Once the correct tempo is reached, though, the movement progresses, well, spiritedly, with affability aplenty and an easygoing forward motion that is all the more pleasurable for not sounding unduly driven, as it does in some performances. The expansiveness of this movement caps the symphony neatly, with a kind of good humor that complements Brahms’ Second while showcasing Dvořák’s distinctive handling of the material.

     It is worthwhile to listen to Dvořák’s last four symphonies in sequence to hear just how much changed, and did not change, as he refined and further developed his compositional style. No. 6 dates to 1880, No. 7 to 1885, No. 8 to 1889, and No. 9 to 1893. The Bernard recording does not offer the symphonies this way, pairing No. 6 with No. 8 on one disc and No. 7 with No. 9 on the other. This is presumably because of the now-obsolete notion that CDs can only reproduce audio at high quality for 80 minutes: Nos. 6 and 7 together last 81 minutes in these performances. In any case, switching discs is a small inconvenience, and is worthwhile in order to listen to Bernard’s approach to No. 7 after hearing how he handles No. 6. The Seventh is Dvořák’s most tightly knit and intense symphony, fully exploring its D minor tonality – a strong contrast to the D major of No. 6. The ominous, almost growling opening of No. 7 sets the scene immediately, and the entry of the horns a few seconds later establishes a dark mood that is largely unrelieved throughout the work. Here the comparatively small size of the orchestra helps keep the music clear without interfering with its pervasive strength and warmth – a benefit for this symphony as much as for Brahms’ music. Bernard conducts this movement in a way that gives it substantial power – orchestra size notwithstanding – and maintains its dark elegance throughout. The gentler second movement provides some relief, with some especially beautiful horn passages, but it too has moments of intensity, as if to remind listeners that the skies are far from clear. There is a bit too much uncalled-for rubato here and there – this music does not require that sort of attempt at additional emphasis – but the effect is by and large a powerful one, with the ending particularly affecting. The Scherzo has a pleasant dancelike flavor although, again, it has dark moments and retains minor-key wistfulness, if not quite sorrow. There is another distinctive near-growl as the finale begins, and Bernard ensures that this movement really goes all-out emotionally, with emphatic chords, brass fanfares, timpani emphases, and an overall feeling of inescapable drama. No other Dvořák symphony has such sustained emotional depth, and Bernard and the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony explore it to very fine effect.

     The exuberant Symphony No. 8 contrasts to an exceptional degree with No. 7. In this sunny G major score, only the very opening of the first movement has a degree of introspection – once the flute dispels the partial cloudiness, matters become decidedly upbeat. Bernard keeps things well-paced, if perhaps a bit expansive for an Allegro con brio movement; brass and timpani help establish and sustain the mood very well. The clarity of the strings in the Adagio ensures that the movement never bogs down: it flows lyrically without ever plumbing any particular depths. The lovely third movement has lyricism aplenty of its own, with the fine balance of sections within the orchestra a highlight: everything fits beautifully with everything else, and Bernard is careful to bring out the primary thematic material without downplaying subsidiary elements. The trumpet call that opens the finale then heralds a movement rife with enthusiasm and even a degree of elegance. It is a positive, assertive movement, to be sure, but Bernard paces it with a degree of marchlike emphasis that underlines the strength of the material and, as elsewhere in this performance, the especially well-handled sectional balance of the ensemble.

     And then there is Dvořák’s final symphony – which, like the Seventh, is in a minor key (E minor) and is quite clearly from the New World but not of it. This is first and foremost a Czech symphony, and one thing Bernard does particularly well here is to highlight the ways in which that is true. Far from being an aberration among Dvořák’s works, No. 9 fits clearly in the cycle of symphonies, and is filled with the same techniques as prior works. The handling of structural material by various sections, the use of timpani, the pointed emphases from the brass, the way second and subsidiary themes flow from and relate to primary ones – these are audibly similar in Symphony No. 9 to elements of earlier symphonies. The Ninth is so popular and so often played that it is very difficult to put in context, but the task is made easier because Bernard’s use of a smaller-than-usual orchestra helps pinpoint ways in which the Ninth is an extension and outgrowth of the earlier symphonies, not a leap in a new direction. Certainly the themes have an American (and African-American) flavor, but the way they are presented, contrasted and developed is very much the same way in which Dvořák created, modified and worked with themes from Czech and other sources in earlier symphonies. Bernard is clearly well aware of this, and accordingly treats the Ninth the same way he handles the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth in terms of pacing, rubato, balance, emphases and contrasts. The first movement is strongly accented, its striding and lyrical themes well-contrasted, its slightly too speedy conclusion making the ensuing Largo seem even slower than it is. This second movement is warmly evocative without the overdone, dripping sentimentality it is sometimes given. The English horn stands out even more than usual against the smaller-than-typical orchestra – yet another instance in which the size of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony works to the music’s benefit. The extremely quiet ending of this movement is especially impressive and makes the start of the Scherzo all the more effective. Bernard takes pains with the rhythmic contrasts in this movement, making it almost into a short series of vignettes – an interesting and pleasant approach. And the finale strides boldly forward from its first notes, an exercise in strength both of thematic material and of playing: the orchestra goes all out to make the movement as exciting as possible. And so it is – but it is also, in part, sweet almost to the point of being cloying. Bernard never gives in to the temptation to swoon, however: thoughtfulness and careful balance are everywhere here, as in his readings of the other three symphonies in this release. What Bernard and Schiff prove in their handling of Dvořák and Brahms is, first, that even thrice-familiar Romantic music can do with some rethinking and reconsideration from time to time; and, second, that the very large orchestras and broad sound to which listeners have long been accustomed in this repertoire do not necessarily display the material at its best. Smaller forces really can make a bigger impression when deployed with sufficient skill.

(+++) SOLO ENDEAVORS

Music for Solo Harp by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, Cécile Cheminade, Amy Beach, Mel Bonis, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Wieck Schumann, Lili Boulanger, Kati Agócs, Sally Beamish, Freya Waley-Cohen, and Johanna Selleck. Elisabeth Remy Johnson, harp. Albany Records. $16.99.

Eugène Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Solo Violin. Kejia He, violin. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Bach: Partitas Nos. 1, 4 and 5. Haskell Small, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Brahms: Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano; Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello; Shostakovich: Sonata for Cello and Piano. John-Henry Crawford, cello; Victor Santiago Asuncion, piano. Orchid Classics. $16.99.

     The pleasures of playing a solo instrument are many. The pleasures of listening to one can be, too, if the performance is high-quality and the music interesting enough to sustain an extended audio experience. Certainly Elisabeth Remy Johnson’s harp playing is top-notch on a new Albany Classics CD, although the repertoire she performs is of somewhat uneven quality. There is more than an hour of solo-harp music here, quite a bit to listen to at one time – and the mixture of very modern material with transcriptions by Remy Johnson of piano works from earlier times is not always a successful one. The four pieces written originally for harp solo are all from the 21^st century: John Riley (2006) from Every Lover Is a Warrior by Kati Agócs (born 1975), Pavan (2016) by Sally Beamish (born 1956), Skye (2017) by Freya Waley-Cohen (born 1989), and Spindrift (2008) by Johanna Selleck (born 1959). John Riley is an expansion and reinterpretation of a folk song and retains a naïve, even simplistic quality that is well-balanced by the harp elaboration. Pavan was written for a ballet production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and is suitably airy and evanescent. The title Skye refers to the Isle of Skye; the piece contains folklike elements mixed with impressionistic ones, the work’s slower sections being especially affecting. Spindrift is impressionistic as well – the title refers to the spray blown from waves – and at nine minutes (longer than anything else on the disc) is somewhat overextended, although its contrasts between near-silence and extended arpeggios are effective. There is another 21^st-century work on the disc, Quest (2013) by Niloufar Nourbakhsh (born 1992) – written for piano and transcribed here by performer and composer in collaboration. This piece has decidedly pianistic elements throughout and some stylistic echoes of the Baroque, yet it lies well on the harp and has an altogether pleasant sound (its title is not reflected in the music in any way – but has personal relevance for the composer). Remy Johnson has chosen the rest of the pieces on the disc well in terms of their adaptability to solo harp, and since they will be mostly unfamiliar to most listeners, there will be little reason to consider their harp-vs.-piano versions. All these works are miniatures, mostly character pieces or salon items that briefly evoke particular moods. They are Aubade by Cécile Cheminade; A Hermit Thrush at Morn by Amy Beach; five separate short and charming (if inconsequential) pieces by Mel (Mélanie) Bonis (the wistfulness of Desdémona is particularly winning); Mélodie by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel; the very delicate Romanze by Clara Wieck Schumann; D’un vieux jardin by Lili Boulanger; and Remy Johnson’s arrangement of the traditional folk song Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies, whose title could stand as an overall description of this collection of fair and tender harp sounds offering music by 11 female composers. The disc has a kind of background-music quality when heard as a whole, but some individual pieces on it are worthy of more-focused attention, and the playing is first-rate throughout.

     The performance is also very fine on a new MSR Classics release featuring the six Op. 27 solo-violin sonatas written in 1923 by Eugène Ysaÿe. These works are a challenge for any violinist – Ysaÿe himself was both a performer and a composer – and many players have taken them up on that basis. The pieces, in one to four movements, are designed to characterize and encapsulate other violinists of the time. But what gives them enduring interest is the way they show as much about the composer as about the people being musically portrayed. The first is dedicated to Joseph Szigeti, the second (“Obsession”) to Jacques Thibaud, the third (“Ballade”) to Georges Enescu, the fourth to Fritz Kreisler, the fifth to Mathieu Crickboom, and the sixth to Manuel Quiroga. Ysaÿe was inspired to write the sonatas after hearing a Bach solo-violin sonata played by Szigeti, and Bach’s spirit permeates the works: No. 2, for example, directly quotes the start of the Prelude from Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin in the first movement – and then moves on to a siciliano, a sarabande and a finale quoting the Dies irae from the Catholic Mass for the Dead. What makes the sonatas so interesting is the way they combine Bach’s influence with the style of the 1920s: they are filled with dissonance, and use techniques such as quarter tones and whole-tone scales. They are also technically difficult, designed in part to highlight the special characteristics of the violinists to whom they were dedicated. However, the sonatas need to work on a purely musical basis for audiences that can scarcely be expected to be familiar with the particular abilities and focuses of the original dedicatees. Kejia He knows this, giving very effective performances precisely because he does not treat the sonatas as period pieces or ones focused on individuals’ technical abilities, but as musical offerings that transcend their time and the reasons for their creation. Thus, the Fugato of No. 1 is well-balanced between its Baroque form and 20^th-century harmonies; the Sarabande third movement of No. 2, marked Danse des ombres and requiring sensitive pizzicato playing, contrasts well with the double-stop-filled Allegro furioso (“Les furies”) that follows; and the Danse rustique of No. 5, while scarcely danceable, is strongly rhythmic and has well-differentiated legato elements. In many ways, these sonatas are specialty items, endlessly intriguing to violinists but something of an acquired taste for listeners. Those who do consider them a pleasurable listening experience will find He’s sensitive virtuosity very appealing.

     Another enjoyable experience for listeners inclined to a certain type of interpretation will be found on another MSR Classics release, featuring three Bach partitas played on piano by composer/performer Haskell Small. As always, playing these works on a modern piano is a matter of taste, and the validity of doing so a matter of opinion; certainly the CD will not appeal to listeners interested in historically correct interpretation. But Small ‘s sensitivity to the nuances of the music helps compensate for the inappropriately modern sound of the instrument and the inauthentic way the piano’s action carries the sounds of each hand’s notes into those of the other. The brighter movements fare especially well in Small’s performances: the Allemande and Giga of Partita No. 1, the Courante and Gigue of No. 4, and the Corrente and Tempo di Minuetto of No. 5. The slower and more-expressive movements are more a matter of taste: the Sarabande of No. 1 is somewhat overly Romantic, although not done in full-blown 19^th-century style; the gentleness of the very extended Allemande of No. 4 is a touch overdone, and the emotive nature of the Sarabande is a bit overemphasized; the pastoral feeling of the Allemande in No. 5 is pleasant, but the piano’s sound is just too warm for the music, and here too the Sarabande is a bit too emotionally expressive – although always in good taste, with Small never overdoing matters. There are many very fine piano performances of these works, and this one certainly belongs among them, but Small does not bring anything especially new or unexpected to his interpretations; and while the sheer sound of the piano is never overwhelming, neither is it ever fully convincing in works for which it was not originally intended.

     The one solo-instrument work offered by John-Henry Crawford on a new Orchid Classics CD is as different as can be from those by Bach and Ysaÿe. Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata for Solo Cello begins, ironically, with a movement marked Dialogo, and is filled with Romantic-era gestures and harmonies; the movement’s title refers to conversation-like elements in its structure. Written between 1948 and 1953, this solo sonata is more accessible in sound than other Ligeti works from the 1940s. The first movement has something of a folklike feeling in parts. Capriccio, the second movement, is more virtuosic than the first movement and more intense, giving the cellist as much of a workout as the solo violinist receives in Ysaÿe’s sonatas. Crawford masters the music without apparent difficulty, and his exuberant handling of the second movement makes it just the sort of tour de force that Ligeti sought. This solo-cello piece appears in the middle of a disc that is otherwise devoted to longer and musically somewhat meatier cello-and-piano works. The challenges for the cellist in these Brahms and Shostakovich works are different. In the Brahms, what is needed is a true partnership with the pianist, who is in fact given ample opportunities to overwhelm the string instrument. The balancing act is complicated for Crawford by the interesting fact that he performs on a cello made long before any work on this disc, including the Brahms, was composed: the instrument dates to about 1790. This means that the cello is better-suited for matching with a fortepiano or early (Beethoven-era) piano than with the modern one played by Victor Santiago Asuncion. It is to the pianist’s credit – and to the credit of the well-wrought partnership between both performers – that the mergers of and distinctions between the instruments come through so effectively in the Brahms sonata. The exchanges in the opening movement are especially effective here: there is a certain combativeness between the performers that needs to be resolved through a sensitivity to the overall shape of the music – and that is well-managed in this recording. Crawford and Asuncion do a fine job with the somewhat odd moodiness of the sonata: the intense, scherzo-like third movement, which surprisingly is more-extended than the work’s slow movement, is succeeded by a brief finale that is considerably lighter than anything that has come before. Both the instrumental balance and the interpretative understanding are quite accomplished here. The performers are also well-matched in Shostakovich’s early cello-and-piano sonata, which is quite unlike the Brahms sonata in every way except for the disparate moods of its four movements. The challenge for performers here is to create a totality into which the individual movements can fit despite their emotional distinctions and their substantially different lengths – the second movement, for example, is only one-fourth as long as the first. The opening movement actually has Brahmsian elements, while the second is more of a perpetuum mobile than a sarcastic “Shostakovich scherzo.” The third, impressionistic and bleak, is followed by a finale that is almost playful and does look ahead to scherzo-like elements in the composer’s later works. The sonata is not really a unified whole, and does not come across as one in this performance, but it has many effective elements of comparison and contrast between the instruments, and gives both cello and piano plenty of opportunities to carry the weight of the material. As a totality, this CD is very well-played and showcases two fine performers – but the selection of music is somewhat on the capricious side, or at least is so highly personalized that the disc will be of interest mainly to listeners who are intrigued by this specific mixture of music and/or by the stylish way in which Crawford and Asuncion present all the works.

(++++) TRACKING DAYS IN SOME NEW WAYS

Calendars (mini-wall for 2022): Snoopygrams. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.

Calendars (page-a-day for 2022): Peanuts; Bible Verse-a-Day. Andrews McMeel. $9.99 each.

Calendars (desk for 2022): Walter Geoffrey. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.

     Old dogs can certainly learn new tricks. Anyone who doubts that has only to look at the many and various ways in which Charles Schulz’s bouncy beagle, Snoopy, has evolved in the two decades since Schulz’s death (after previously going through considerable evolution during the five decades of the Peanuts comic strip). Snoopy has become a fixture online and in many roles in which Peanuts fans did not expect to see him, such as his famous (or infamous) role as spokesdog for insurance company MetLife from 1985 to 2016. Being at least as popular a character as Charlie Brown, Snoopy continues to bedeck displays of all sorts, reappearing in Peanuts book collections as well as being the star of offerings such as a 2022 mini-wall calendar featuring various Peanuts characters. Based on Snoopy’s official Instagram account – yes, he has one – and formally called @snoopygrams, this small calendar spans a full 16 months, as is now the norm for wall calendars – with September through December 2021 on a single page and the months of 2022 on their own individual ones. The four-month page is not for the faint of heart or faint of sight, since the calendar measures seven inches square (7” x 14” open), which means each of the four months of 2021 gets a space less than two inches square – but the Snoopy cartoon is worth seeing for all four months, showing the redoubtable beagle standing proudly beneath the words, “Keep your head up!” That is good advice for any month in any year. The rest of the calendar features several Snoopy poses: he marches with an American flag for July, lies flat atop a cupcake (in a pose familiar from strips in which he lies flat on the roof of his doghouse) for February (amid the words “Sprinkled with love”), and is draped over the top of a Christmas tree for December. Other Peanuts characters make appearances, too: Charlie Brown is about to pitch a baseball for April (“Believe in yourself!”); crabby Lucy walks along for March vowing, “I’m on a new campaign to be nice to people”; Linus is in the proverbial pumpkin patch, with Snoopy in the background, waiting for “the Great Pumpkin” in October; and so forth. Snoopy has quite clearly made the transition to the Internet age seamlessly, and anyone looking for a wall calendar that will fit a small space while providing a large amount of enjoyment (including some nostalgia) will find this one right on target.

     Nor is Snoopy confined to mini-wall-calendar status. He also appears on a mini-page-a-day calendar – the type featuring one illustration per weekday plus one per weekend. These little calendars measure only 3.5” x 2.5”, which is scarcely enough room for a full Peanuts strip or even a full panel with words. But there is plenty of space for close-up views of Snoopy and other Peanuts characters, all offered wordlessly but in characteristic poses. One page shows Pig-Pen walking as his usual dust cloud surrounds him; another has Linus pointing at the sky and apparently asking or demanding something, probably relating to his philosophical musings; one has Snoopy sitting in a distinctly human pose, gazing downward at the date as if trying to figure out the number; and there are walking Charlie Brown pages, a befuddled-looking Peppermint Patty, an enthusiastically running Marcie, a backpack-bearing Lucy, plus Snoopy at his typewriter, in his World War I Flying Ace costume, holding a water dish for Woodstock, even one of him looking uncharacteristically downcast. The nostalgia quotient is high here, since you have to know the characters already in order to get full enjoyment from their poses and the subtle alterations in their appearances on different pages. This mini-calendar – which has four magnets on the back, so it can be neatly affixed to a refrigerator or other metal surface – is further evidence that Snoopy and Peanuts retain the power to amuse that they had during the strip’s half-century run.

     And it is worth pointing out that you can find a mini-page-a-day calendar with words, ones that have stood the test of time even longer than Peanuts. That would be Bible Verse-a-Day, which – in the absence of pictures – has plenty of room on each page for a short quotation from the Old or New Testament. There is much to think about here, on every page. “For the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything he does. – Psalm 33:4.” “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. – Lamentations 3:25.” “You will have mercy on us again; you will conquer our sins…. – Micah 7:19.” “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace…. – Isaiah 55:12.” “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. – Matthew 6:34.” The quotations not only come from many books of the Bible but also are taken from many different English translations, so there is variety baked into the verbiage of this calendar along with the thoughtfulness and spiritual uplift. The calendar’s size may be small, but its value as a counterbalance to the everyday hectic-ness of modern life can be quite large – and the absence of illustrations or of a mascot such as Snoopy matters not at all.

     And Snoopy, for all his continuing popularity, is scarcely the only dog star on the Internet and social media today. One of his many canine compatriots is Walter Geoffrey, a French bulldog whose claim to fame is living in “Meltdown City.” As his website proclaims, “If you're looking for wg, you can find him on the corner of emotionally unstable and overdramatic.” That makes him an ideal purveyor of merchandise (toys, T-shirts, hoodies and more) and a suitable star of his very own desk calendar, a 16-month planner (September 2021-December 2022) with a cartoon drawing of wg’s head at the bottom right corner of every right-hand page. Like the mini-page-a-day Peanuts calendar, this desktop offering is for existing fans, since it provides no information on wg beyond the brief comments that appear next to his head at the bottoms of the pages. And those remarks are intended to reinforce what his fans already know: “5-Star Dog Living in a 2-Star World,” “Walter for President,” “The Sexy Leg,” “The Bilingual King,” “Mr. Tiny T-Rex Arms,” and so forth. In truth, the design of this desk calendar makes it less than completely suitable for the usual purposes of desk calendars: it does not open flat (although it has a built-in bookmark to keep a user’s place in the year), and at roughly 5” x 8” it is on the small side for desktop use. On the other hand, wg fans looking for a planner suitable for a small space – to go along with a small-space wall calendar and/or small-space page-a-day calendar – will enjoy using this one. They will also certainly agree with the bottom-of-some-pages declaration that wg is “The Most Interesting Dog in the World.” Snoopy fans, however, will understandably beg to differ.

(++++) UNUSUAL AND/OR INTRIGUING

Bruckner: Symphony No. 1, transcribed for organ by Erwin Horn; Three Pieces for Orchestra and March in D minor, transcribed for organ by Erwin Horn; Oscar Jockel: Bruckner Window II. Hansjörg Albrecht, organ. Oehms. $14.99.

Imre Széchényi: Waltzes and Hungarian Marches. István Kassai and György Lázár, piano. Naxos. $11.99.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Ástor Piazzolla: Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas. Nikki Chooi and Tessa Lark, violin; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Beau Fleuve. $15.

     The wholly unjustifiable but nevertheless fascinating notion of transcribing Bruckner’s symphonies for organ and then performing them on the instrument to which Bruckner himself was committed as a performer (but not as a composer) continues with a new Oehms recording of Erwin Horn’s very fine version of Symphony No. 1. What also continues here, inadvertently, is the sort of numbering confusion to which Bruckner’s work is constantly subjected: this is designated “Vol. 1” of the symphonies-on-the-organ series but is actually the second volume, the first having included Symphony No. “0” and being duly designated “Vol. 0.” Since Symphony No. “0” was written after No. 1, matters are even more confusing, but so it goes when it comes to Bruckner. Actually, Symphony No. “0” represents a compositional direction different from the one Bruckner followed from No. 1 to No. 2 and beyond, so it is understandable that the composer, after finishing No. “0,” declined to number it as part of the standard numeric sequence; but matters like this certainly do complicate scholarship and musicianship when it comes to Bruckner’s works. Happily, though, they do not complicate the listening experience – and neither does the fact that these organ transcriptions have no reason for being other than the fact that it is possible to make them, and the symphonies’ organ-like elements seem to invite the use of the grandest wind instrument of all. Hansjörg Albrecht has a very fine sense of Bruckner’s style as well as considerable performance capabilities, and his playing of Symphony No. 1 is fascinating to hear and in its own way is revelatory of Bruckner’s symphonic thinking: the organ sound brings out elements of Bruckner’s scoring, for those who know the symphony already, in much the same way that the orchestration makes listeners think of the organ. The result is a very intriguing cross-pollination even though, objectively speaking, there is no reason for it. Here as in the previous release, Albrecht offers some non-symphonic tidbits to go with the major work. The early Three Pieces for Orchestra and March in D minor sound just fine in Horn’s organ versions, with the jaunty March bearing no relationship to Bruckner’s later marchlike compositions but being particularly enjoyable in its own right. In addition, the recording includes the second of what will be 10 newly created contemporary compositions collectively called “Bruckner Windows,” each by a different 21^st-century composer and each planned to accompany the symphony with which it is paired. The one by Oscar Jockel is fascinating, being essentially a very extended crescendo that is about as different from the one underlying Ravel’s Bolero as it is possible to be. Jockel starts in near-inaudibility and progresses through 11 minutes of steadily increasing sound, with Albrecht’s numerous well-chosen stop combinations altering sound layers and the overall feeling of the music even as the sheer sonic wave progresses from ripple to tidal size before it eventually fades away. The piece is somewhat exhausting to hear and is only coincidentally (and perhaps philosophically) related to Bruckner’s First, but it is an intriguing experience in its own right. Its placement midway through the CD makes for a very interesting experience: first heard are the early Bruckner works that are in a sense “proto-Brucknerian” in terms of what would later come to be known as Bruckner’s identifiable style; then the Jockel, which is distinctly post-Brucknerian except insofar as its use of the organ has some parallels with the organ sounds that Bruckner elicited from the orchestra; and then the transcription of the symphony, as if to indicate that here at last is the work that experientially joins the Three Pieces for Orchestra and March in D minor to Jockel’s Bruckner Window II. The Jockel, incidentally, bears the unwieldy title Denn er hatte noch eine dringende Verabredung mit den drei Eichen und den zwei Bächen am Fuß des goldenen Berges (“For he still had a most urgent appointment with the three oaks and the two rivers at the foot of the golden mountain” – a reference to, among other things, Bruckner’s fondness for two-against-three rhythmic structures). There is something pleasantly quixotic in this entire Bruckner-symphonies-on-the-organ series, and Bruckner fanciers will find a great deal to enjoy in it – and that enjoyment is, perhaps, all the justification that the whole production requires.

     Enjoyment of a different and much lighter sort is very much present on a new Naxos CD featuring two-hand and four-hand piano music by Count Imre Széchényi of Sárvár-Felsővidék (1825-1898), an important diplomat in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and an almost exact contemporary of his friend Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899). Not much of Széchényi’s music has survived: there are no orchestral waltzes left by him, for example, even though he wrote quite a few and they were found attractive not only by Strauss but also by Liszt. Indeed, Széchényi was an assured stylist in the light music of this time, and this new recording of his piano works proves that – with all the pieces except one (the first of a set of three waltzes) receiving world première recordings. The works were written as early as 1853 and as late as 1894. The earliest waltz, called Le Château de Celles, dates to 1854, while the latest, Unser letzter Walzer, is in fact the latest Széchényi composition still known. The disc, however, is rather confusingly arranged and far from chronological. Furthermore, the 11 pieces are not gathered by type: the sequence is waltz, march, waltz, another waltz, a very Lisztian csárdás, waltz, galop (which is the piece from 1853), the three-waltz grouping, march, waltz, march. Related works are, for some reason, separated: a Hungarian March appears second on the CD, while Liszt’s expansion and rearrangement of the work – which Liszt dedicated to Széchényi – appears as the final piece on the disc. Despite the confusion of presentation, however, the CD is a very worthwhile and genuinely interesting experience, showing Széchényi’s skill in encapsulating moods, producing neatly danceable waltzes, and evoking a variety of scenes and experiences (for instance, in Wintermärchen Walzer, “Winter Fairy-Tale Waltz”). Pianists István Kassai and György Lázár are fine advocates for this music, getting the rhythms just right and showcasing, in the four-hand works, the skill with which the pieces make use of the two players’ portions of the keyboard. Széchényi was certainly not a great composer, but it is easy to hear in these works the reasons that both Strauss and Liszt liked his light music: everything is well-crafted, expressive (often with enjoyable touches of humor), and very much “in vogue” in terms of the light music of the time. Fans of 19^th-century dance music will find a great deal to enjoy here, and will likely hope for more Széchényi material in the future to complement this CD and an earlier Naxos one that presented his complete dances for orchestra.

     Speaking of orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic is an increasingly worthy one, being continuously honed by music director JoAnn Falletta into a strong, well-balanced, fine-sounding and polished ensemble – as is shown by the recordings released on the orchestra’s own Beau Fleuve label. The latest of those is not quite as interesting as some earlier ones, simply because the repertoire is not very unusual and Falletta is not a disciple of historical performance practices. This Vivaldi/Piazzolla disc is nevertheless a solid (+++) offering that features fine orchestral playing, two high-quality violin soloists, and a pleasant juxtaposition of very different works that have some obvious ties to each other. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Op. 8, Nos. 1-4) are eternally popular in all sorts of versions and arrangements, from those including the accompanying sonnets and offered with original instruments and in historically accurate performance practice to those, such as Falletta’s, utilizing the resources of a modern symphony orchestra and making no particular attempt to duplicate the works’ sound as Vivaldi would have heard it. The pieces are successful in pretty much any way they are presented, and will be comfortably familiar to listeners no matter how they are offered. The readings featuring Nikki Chooi are straightforward, pleasantly bouncy, nicely rhythmic, and generally well-considered, with the orchestra’s accompaniment suitably expressive of the works’ scene-setting and their plethora of evocative sounds. There is nothing especially distinctive in the performance, but certainly nothing about which to carp. The juxtaposition with Piazzolla’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (“The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” the word porteñas referring to “those born in the port city”) is nothing new or particularly unusual, and neither is the performance by a full orchestra: Piazzolla wrote the pieces for a quintet of violin or viola, piano, electric guitar, double bass, and bandoneón, but unfortunately they are rarely heard in that very interesting instrumental complement. What is a bit unusual in Falletta’s performance is the pattern of the pieces. Piazzolla arranged them in the order of Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, and they are sometimes played in the sequence in which they were written – Summer (1965), Winter (1969), Spring (1970), Autumn (also 1970). Here, though, they are heard in the order Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, which means they end with a sense of renewal – scarcely a bad idea in light of their being recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic (in October 2020, a month after the Vivaldi recording). Tessa Lark is the soloist, and again the performance is very well-played, the balance between violin and orchestra handled skillfully, and the overall effect quite pleasant. The programming on this CD is not as innovative as on some other Falletta/Buffalo Philharmonic offerings, but it offers further testimony to the very high quality of this orchestra and conductor, and their ability to excel in music by a number of very different composers from a variety of time periods.