(++++) MORE-OR-LESS ROMANTIC

Mendelssohn: String Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5; Violin Concerto in D minor; Salve Regina for Soprano and Strings; Fuga for String Quartet; Largo and Allegro for Piano and Strings in D minor; Fugas a tre in G minor and D minor. Europa Galante conducted by Fabio Biondi; Monica Piccinini, soprano. Naïve. $16.99.

Hugo Alfvén: Symphony No. 2; Svensk Rhapsodi No. 3. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Łukasz Borowicz. CPO. $16.99.

Scriabin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 2, 7 and 9; Etudes Op. 2, No. 1…Op. 8, Nos. 2 and 11…Op. 62, No. 5; Prelude & Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9; “Vers la flamme,” Op. 72; Five Preludes, Op. 74; Manfred Kelkel: “Tombeau de Scriabine”—Presto. Vincent Larderet, piano. AVIE. $17.99.

Tchaikovsky: Grand Sonata in G, Op. 37; 18 Morceaux, Op. 72—Nos. 2, 5 and 14; Romance in F minor; The Seasons, Op. 37a—Nos. 6 and 12. Stefania Argentieri, piano. Divine Art. $18.99.

     Although it is an exercise in futility to try to pin down the exact beginning and ending of the Romantic musical era, that has not stopped innumerable academics and aficionados from trying, or at least from toying with the idea of finding just where and how this time period began and faded. Thus, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante probe early Romanticism by performing early Mendelssohn on a new Naïve release. Mendelssohn was, in his time, considered another Mozart, and although he never fulfilled that potential in his later works, he was definitely an amazing prodigy as a child. And his early pieces certainly showed exceptional ability to distill and reinterpret the works and approaches of earlier composers – notably members of the Bach family. The pieces offered by Biondi were written in Mendelssohn’s preteen and teenage years, from 1820 to 1827, but it would be a mistake to think of them as somehow exceptional in his oeuvre. After all, the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture dates to 1826, and the Octet to 1825. Still, the pieces heard here provide a pleasant sampling of Mendelssohn’s engagement with various forms. His 12 String Symphonies were written between 1821 and 1823, and eventually provided a foundation for Mendelssohn’s five completed mature symphonies; the Violin Concerto in D minor (1822) is nicely balanced but far more conventional than the much-more-famous E minor concerto of 1844. Biondi and his ensemble offer fleet, pleasant readings of two of the String Symphonies and the concerto (with Biondi himself as soloist), and intermingle these more-substantial early works with various ones that are even less frequently heard. The Salve Regina is particularly welcome: it is a beautiful setting, sung with warmth and understanding by Monica Piccinini against an accompaniment of tremendous delicacy and beauty. The Largo and Allegro for Piano and Strings is also well worth hearing in this historically informed performance that does not insist on using a super-resonant modern concert grand piano, which would thoroughly overwhelm the strings. Also here are three fugal movements that clearly show how early in life Mendelssohn had absorbed the basics of fugal construction, while employing some harmonies that fit better with early Romantic thinking than with the pure Baroque, with which fugues are more closely identified. Mendelssohn lived and wrote music as the Classical era was giving way to the Romantic – all these pieces were created while Beethoven was still living – but his fascination with the past never wavered either in what he created or in what he performed, as when he famously led Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1826. This CD is enjoyable in its own right, and also intriguing in showing Mendelssohn as something of a transitional musical figure, being in this way a bit more like Hummel and Spohr than he is generally deemed to be.

     By the time of Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960), Romantic music was at its peak and arguably past it – although Alfvén himself remained, like Rachmaninoff (who was born one year later), firmly devoted to Romantic compositional and expressive ideals. Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2, first performed in 1899, and his much later Svensk Rhapsodi No. 3, known as the Dalarapsodi, first heard in 1932 with the composer conducting, lie firmly in the expressive, large-orchestra terrain of later Romantic music, and as such contrast very strongly with the cleaner lines and balance that Mendelssohn brought to works that in some ways are equally emotionally expressive. It is interesting, for example, to compare the impact of the serious and Sweden-focused Dalarapsodi with Mendelssohn’s Scotland-imbued The Hebrides – first published 99 years earlier. The emotive landscapes are similar despite the many differences between the works. The last of Alfvén’s three rhapsodies is the most serious: the first, Midsommarvaka, is naïve and folklike in orientation, and the second, Uppsala Rhapsody, is on the humorous side. Most of the Dalarapsodi is dark, even gloomy, and although it employs a number of folk tunes (plus themes created in the folk idiom by the composer), the ones it uses are downcast and pensive. The orchestration is particularly effective, starting with a soprano saxophone solo that sets the entire work, and its mood, in motion very effectively. At nearly 25 minutes’ length on a new CPO disc, the Dalarapsodi is certainly a substantial work. But Symphony No. 2, which is twice as long, is even grander in style and ambition. The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Łukasz Borowicz produces a vast, sweeping canvas for this symphony, which comes across as far more serious throughout than its nominal D major home key would indicate. The work has, in effect, two slow movements, one so designated (a lengthy Andante) and one in the form of a very substantial (seven-minute) Preludio: Adagio to begin the fourth and last movement. There are programmatic elements, most of them quite serious, in Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2 – even the not-quite-a-Scherzo third movement does little to relieve the work’s somewhat downcast mood. But this is not despair along the lines that one can find in, say, Mahler – instead, it is a mood of contemplativeness, of exploring significant elements of life. And then, in the finale, after the dour Preludio, Alfvén turns to a double fugue – realizing, as Mendelssohn and many others did before him, that this form allows severity of expression without anguish. And then, again in a distant echo of Baroque thinking of the sort so frequent in Mendelssohn, Alfvén resolves the symphony by bringing in nothing less than an 18^th-century hymn tune. But this is not a triumphal hymn: it is one that acknowledges the eternal presence of death, so that Alfvén eventually ends the symphony in the minor rather than D major. These excellent performances of both the symphony and the Dalarapsodi show just how pervasive Romantic musical thinking and creation remained for many composers in Alfvén’s time, and how strong the Romantic effect can be even for audiences today.

     But long before Alfvén’s Dalarapsodi, composers had been abandoning Romanticism – or at least starting to turn it in different directions, much as Mendelssohn did with Classical-era thinking. Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), born the same year as Alfvén, thought of music in radically different ways, even in some orchestral works that used Romantic-size instrumental forces – and certainly in his piano music, a sampling of which appears on a new AVIE recording with the rather overdone title of “The Scriabin Mystery.” In the highly capable hands of Vincent Larderet, there is no particular mystery about the works here, although the reasons for the selection of these specific pieces may be on the mysterious side: they are presented chronologically, with the specific choices likely reflecting Larderet’s own feelings for how to assemble an all-Scriabin recital that traces the composer’s changing style. Scriabin was scarcely a child prodigy, but one piece here dates to his teenage years: Etude Op. 2, No. 1 was written when he was just 14, in 1886. It has some of the darkness of Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2, but already here there is a sense of moving beyond the confines of Romanticism into new forms of expressiveness. In the next decade, Scriabin was to start experimenting more overtly with unusual ways of expressing his often-present pessimism, including polyrhythms in the Etude Op. 8, No. 2 and some of the elements of the Prelude & Nocturne for the Left Hand, written when Scriabin feared that a right-wrist problem would soon prevent him from continuing as a concert pianist. But Scriabin remained clearly in touch with a Romantic esthetic in some of his other works of this time, such as the Etude Op. 8, No. 11 and the Impressionistic Piano Sonata No. 2. The sonata, interestingly, was inspired by the ocean and seashore – the same inspiration cited by Alfvén for portions of his Symphony No. 2. Scriabin’s sonata was published in 1898, a year before Alfvén’s symphony was first played; but while Alfvén continued in the Romantic tradition into the new century, Scriabin moved away from it, as several works chosen by Larderet show. The seventh and ninth piano sonatas (“White Mass” and “Black Mass” respectively) move a considerable distance into mysticism and Satanism, which the composer had already explored elsewhere; the same intense interest, bordering on obsession, appears in “Vers la flamme.” Larderet’s approach to all this material is interesting: he gives it a level of expressive clarity that highlights rather than obscures the sometimes difficult-to-plumb philosophical depths on which the music rests. Scriabin’s synesthesia is crucial to his music but impossible for a performer to duplicate, yet the inherent colors of these piano works seem to flicker in and out in Larderet’s interpretations, rendering the music highly expressive even when it is on the abstruse side. This works especially well with the very latest works on the CD: the Five Preludes, Op. 74, were Scriabin’s final completed pieces, but his very last composition was an Acte préalable that he sketched but did not finish. The sketches were found by musicologist and composer Manfred Kelkel and used by him for a piece he calls “Tombeau de Scriabine.” This is a fascinating what-might-have-been exploration with which Larderet entices listeners – without, unfortunately, really satisfying anyone’s curiosity, since he presents only the Prelude of Kelkel’s work and not the eight variations into which it leads. Thus, the conclusion of this otherwise admirable disc somewhat misfires (although it is worth pointing out that the disc runs 80 minutes, so including the whole Kelkel work would have required a second CD or the omission of some of Scriabin’s music). On the whole, this is a fascinating and thoughtful journey through Scriabin’s Romantic, post-Romantic and highly personal forms of musical creation, with excellent playing that whets the appetite for further pianistic explorations by Larderet.

     And speaking of exploring, one way to do that in Romantic piano music – and thus to find out just where Scriabin put down roots from which something not-quite-Romantic eventually grew – is to listen to piano works that are wholly and distinctively Romantic, such as those of Tchaikovsky. His solo-piano music has never attained the popularity of his orchestral and chamber works, for reasons that are not entirely clear: the piano pieces flow with the same warmth, breadth, lyricism and strongly felt emotions as his other compositions. It does help, however, to hear them in full – and an otherwise very fine Divine Art recording by Stefania Argentieri falls short in that respect. The one complete piece here, Tchaikovsky’s only mature piano sonata, very much gets its due in Argentieri’s hands. Indeed, its expansiveness here is somewhat overdone, with a second movement marked Andante non troppo, quasi moderato that Argentieri treats so broadly as to make it almost an Adagio. The first movement is also on the slow side: clearly Argentieri is striving for expansiveness, but here she approaches bloat. The performance is technically excellent, but the interpretation is somewhat too broad for the sonata, which is labeled “Grand” but here comes across as grandiose. The other works on the disc fare better, but because they are mostly only excerpts of larger sets of pieces, they provide little chance to hear the entirety of Tchaikovsky’s pianistic thinking and the way it fits into the Romantic sensibility. The sole standalone piece here is his early Romance in F minor, which Argentieri plays with gentle delicacy that fits it well. Also here are three of the 18 Morceaux, Op. 72. No. 2 is a Berceuse that drags a bit here and therefore sounds a touch too gloomy. No. 5, Méditation, has a fantasia-like feeling that Argentieri puts across well. And No. 14, Chant élégiaque, is quietly thoughtful. The individual performances are quite fine, but the mood of the three pieces turns out to be very similar here – listeners unfamiliar with the 18 Morceaux will be left wondering whether that reflects Tchaikovsky’s plan for the entire set, or whether Argentieri specifically chose pieces with similar moods. The same issue arises with The Seasons. Argentieri here presents No. 6 (June) and No. 12 (December). Both are quite engaging, the melody of No. 6 being heard out of context fairly frequently and the lilt of No. 12 providing a very pleasant sense of enjoyment of the Christmas season. However, the choice to play just these two parts of The Seasons simply whets the appetite for more of the work, whose pleasantries and naïveté are in fact highly enjoyable throughout. All these Tchaikovsky piano pieces fit firmly into the Romantic sensibility, and they are clearly foundational to the earlier pianistic endeavors of his fellow Russian, Scriabin. But this disc as a whole is a (+++) offering because its major work, the Grand Sonata, does not come off as well here as it can, and its shorter pieces are less effective on their own – and less indicative of Tchaikovsky’s Romanticism – than would be the case if they were heard as intended, as portions of larger works.

(++++) VOICES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Haydn: Symphony No. 103; Theresienmesse. Mary Bevan, soprano; Catherine Wyn-Rogers, mezzo-soprano; Jeremy Budd, tenor; Sumner Thompson, baritone; Handel and Haydn Society conducted by Harry Christophers. CORO. $18.99.

William McClelland: Songs. Krista River, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Meglioranza, baritone; Alex Guerrero, tenor; Robert May, Margaret Dudley, Thomas McCarger, and Suzanne Schwing, narrators; Donald Berman and Blair McMillen, piano; David Enlow, organ; New York Virtuoso Singers conducted by Harold Rosenbaum. Naxos. $13.99.

György Kurtág: Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs; Katherine Balch: Phrases; John Aylward: Tiergarten; Emily Pretorius: Immensity Of. Departure Duo (Nina Guo, soprano; Edward Kass, double bass). New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

Daniel Carr: Nine Bethany Swann Songs; Vocalise; Piano Trio. Mindy Ella Chu, mezzo-soprano; Benefic Piano Trio (Misha Vayman, violin; Cello [Qiele] Guo, cello; Sunhwa Kim, piano). MSR Classics. $14.95.

     The fascinatingly quirky – and revelatory – series of releases mixing Haydn’s symphonies with his Masses, performed by the Handel and Haydn Society under Harry Christophers and released on the CORO label, continues with a pairing of the “Drum Roll” symphony with the Theresienmesse. Like previous similar releases – Symphony No. 99 with the Harmoniemesse, Symphony No. 100 with the Nelson Mass – this CD sheds new light both on the choral work and on the instrumental one, without attempting to draw unwonted (and unwanted) parallels between them. The high skill level of these period-sensitive performances is pretty much a given – Christophers is one of the world’s best conductors of music from this time period, and the Handel and Haydn Society has existed since its founding (1815) with a focus on repertoire of this sort (at the time, the society’s name referred to “old” music [Handel’s] and “new” music [Haydn’s]). The Theresienmesse, the fourth of six that Haydn composed for the name-day of the wife of Nicolaus II, Prince Esterházy, got its title because a copy was acquired for the library of Empress Marie Therese. Like all these Masses – written more than a decade after Haydn stopped producing symphonies – the work has characteristics all its own: it is primarily intimate and lyrical; it uses clarinets rather than oboes; and Haydn reserves a special surprise for the start of the Agnus dei, which is sung in loud unison rather than the far more common hushed gentleness. This Mass also includes a textual error, indicating that Haydn probably set the words from memory: in the Credo, the words et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium Dei unigentium are omitted altogether – with the music, unsurprisingly, not missing a beat (literally) due to their absence. The first-rate performance here is complemented by a rendition of Symphony No. 103 that plays games with the opening-movement timpani roll from which the work gets its title. Haydn did not indicate exactly how the drum roll should sound, or at what volume, and Christophers takes the liberty of having timpanist Jonathan Hess create a sit-up-and-pay-attention, loud and rhythmic bit of ebullience that takes the famous Paukenschlag of Symphony No. 94 several steps further. And when the drum roll reappears toward the end of the movement, it sounds very different, creating an even-more-unexpected experience for the audience. Details like this are characteristic of Christophers’ thoughtful approach to all these Haydn releases, as is the excellent, historically informed orchestral playing throughout the symphony (and in the Mass as well). More than two centuries after its founding, the Handel and Haydn Society still does its “new music” namesake proud.

     Choral music retains its fascination for many composers right up to the present day, and so do other vocal forms that are now “new music” but that clearly draw on the past. A Naxos CD featuring world première recordings of numerous vocal works by William McClelland (born 1950) offers insight into the way some contemporary composers use vocal material to enhance emotional connections with listeners. There are 18 pieces with voice here and, midway through the recording, as if offering a brief refresher between courses, there is the solo-piano work Five for Piano (2006), which evokes poetry in each movement but is wordless. The sensitivity of these little bits of pianistic expressiveness, played pleasantly by Blair McMillen, reflects the care with which the vocal works on the disc are created and performed. The most-elaborate setting here is Cædmon’s Hymn (2018), using the text of an Old English poem that is attributed to Cædmon as his only known surviving work. McClelland ingeniously uses four separate narrators, along with organ and chorus, to put forth what is essentially a simple, brief poem in praise of God. The use of fairly substantial performance forces does not overweight the poem’s sentiments, thanks to the judicious way McClelland employs narrative and song alike – and although the music lasts more than nine minutes, it does not seem overly stretched out. Another choral work here, Hail Lovely and Pure (2011), is even more extended: at 13-and-a-half minutes, it is the longest piece on the CD. This is strictly a choral work, one that shows McClelland’s skill at disposition of the full chorus and of sections within it. The only other choral piece heard here reaches back even further in time than Caedmon’s Hymn. It is These Last Gifts (2015), for tenor and chorus, and is based on the Roman poet Catullus’ heartfelt elegy after the death of his brother. Here too the choral setting is notable for its emotional expressiveness, which is never overdone but is always effective in putting across depth of feeling. The remaining pieces on the disc are for single voice (mezzo-soprano or baritone) and piano, and are mostly settings of works by American poets. The female voice is given Autumnal (2005), Poem Composed in Sleep (1997), Sea Rose (2002), Insomnia (1987), Memory of Summer Facing West (1975), Garden Abstract (2008), and To One Who Revisited an Old Garden (2005). The male voice sings Autumn 1964 (1995), Going (1993), Labrador (1990), Storm (2011), The Fields of November (2013), The Defective Record (2005), Snowstorm in the Midwest (1989), and The Politician (1998). Although written during a period of more than 40 years, the songs all share elements of careful construction and devotion to evoking the emotions behind the words, with the piano underlining passages of particular strength or import. McClelland is here shown to be a composer for voice whose considerable skill shows not only in his choice of material but also in the adept way he crafts music that both illuminates and enhances the meaning of the words.

     What McClelland is not is avant-garde – that adjective applies much more clearly to the composers heard on a New Focus Recordings release featuring the highly unusual performance combination of soprano and double bass. “Quirky” describes this disc as clearly as it does the Haydn symphony/Mass combinations, but to very different effect: there is no way that this music, a little of which goes a long way, will appeal to a wide audience – but it will be very appealing indeed to those seeking to experience forms of composition and sonic display that frequently border on the weird. There is nothing particularly new about mixing very high musical elements with very low ones – for example, part of the exceedingly strange effect of Alkan’s Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer comes from doing this on the piano, and Alkan thought of it in 1844. Nevertheless, the mixing of soprano vocal parts with a solo double bass is not one most audiences will have heard, and it creates odd and at least intermittently effective aural landscapes in all four of the works on this disc. Those landscapes do not bear particularly long visits, though: even at only 51 minutes, the CD as a whole is a bit much. But, interestingly, its longest work – György Kurtág’s Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs – is the one that most involves listeners and best repays attention. That is because this piece, “Some Sentences from the Scrapbooks of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,” a physicist well-known in the 18^th century, includes no fewer than 42 tiny movements, half of them being settings by Kurtág of Lichtenberg’s aphoristic thoughts, the other half being English-language readings offered by Nina Guo and Edward Kass immediately prior to each piece – allowing English speakers to hear just what points Lichtenberg was making and to figure out how effectively Kurtág turned the thoughts into music in his 1996 work. This is a wonderful approach that generates real anticipation for hearing the musical settings. “A gourmand: he could pronounce the word ‘succulent’ in such a way that upon hearing it one believed one bit into a ripe peach.” “Steeple: upside-down funnel to lead prayer to Heaven.” “Audacity: he wasn’t ashamed, even ex officio.” “The good tone: the good tone is there, an octave lower.” “Effort in vain: blushing in the dark.” These scrapbook notes (published posthumously) are not deep thinking or greatly revelatory, but they are kernels of contemplation or amusement that Kurtág sets with considerable skill and a sure understanding of the capabilities of voice and double bass (both sometimes at their extremes). The remaining works on this (+++) CD, however, are not at this level. Phrases by Katherine Balch features standard-sounding screechiness from voice and instrument alike, its four short movements (not as short as the individual elements of Kurtág’s work) quickly outstaying their welcome through repetition and preoccupation with sonic oddities for their own sake. Tiergarten (“Zoo”) by John Aylward is not a complete menagerie but a study of three creatures: swan, panther and unicorn. Here too is a composer considering the words (in German) not as vehicles for expression but as building blocks of sound-for-sound’s-sake – the extended hiss of “s,” for example, and the pervasive atonal Sprechstimme, and the click of the consonants, all mixed with double-bass groans and shivers. Finally, Immensity Of by Emily Praetorius is a work of long (very long), slow (very slow) expression, voice and instrument alike spinning individual phrases out and out and out with occasional intercessions of brief contrasting sounds. The piece is effective tone-painting in its own way, but is about twice as long as it needs to be to make its point: its nine minutes seem much longer, while the 21 minutes of Kurtág’s work seem to zip by. This disc as a whole will be a treat for listeners enamored of unusual contemporary vocal material, although it is unlikely to reach (or reach out to) a wider audience.

     Two Daniel Carr pieces “for High Voice, Violin, Cello and Piano,” heard on a (+++) MSR Classics disc of world première recordings, are also for specialized tastes. The Nine Bethany Swann Songs were composed in reverse, as it were: Carr wrote the music and then Swann created texts to go with the notes. Carr (born 1972), like McClelland, offers settings where the words are paramount – or perhaps it is better to say that Swann found a way to put words in the forefront of Carr’s music. Either way, this nine-movement cycle is as much in the pop-music vein as the classical one: harmonies and words alike tend to be simple-to-simplistic, with the more-effective elements, such as the opening of “The Somnambulist” and parts of “Light Sources,” being entirely without vocal material. The cycle sounds as if it is trying to attain an overall meaning of some sort, but neither its musical arc nor its verbal one is particularly cohesive: the songs, even when they have similar titles (“A Return” followed by “Song of Returns”), are thematically disconnected, and the music never settles into a discernible stylistic pattern. The short Vocalise works better, treating the voice as a fourth instrument in addition to the three in the Benefic Piano Trio; however, the vocalise material itself is not especially involving, and the overall mood of the piece is somewhat disjointed. The vocal works on this disc are joined by Carr’s Piano Trio, which is the most appealing piece on the CD. Although here, as in Nine Bethany Swann Songs, there is no real sense of continuity and connection among the four movements, there are some well-done instrumental contrasts within and among them. “Shanty” is full of instrument-to-instrument gestures, with an underlying sense of drama; “Ritual” contrasts a pleasantly thoughtful opening with a much-more-intense central section; “Hymn” has a simplicity and gentleness that contrasts well with the mood of the preceding movements, if it is perhaps a little too much on the naïve side; and “Dance” is strongly rhythmic, dissonant, and apparently intended as being as different from the preceding movement as possible. Carr’s music on this disc – the third release in an ongoing series – is well-crafted but not highly differentiated from the chamber works (with or without voice) of other modern composers, and is as much on the bland side of contemporary music as the pieces by Balch, Aylward and Praetorius are on the acerbic end of things.

(++++) CHOOSING SWEETNESS

Rock That Vote. By Meg Fleming. Pictures by Lucy Ruth Cummins. Dial. $17.99.

     “Votes whose outcome is of no real significance can be a lot of fun” is probably not the message that Meg Fleming and Lucy Ruth Cummins are trying to teach in the superficial and very entertaining Rock That Vote. So cynical adults should be wary of giving in to the temptation to tell impressionable young readers that that is one way of interpreting the book’s viewpoint. Far better to let kids develop cynicism on their own. And maybe, just maybe, their development of it will be slowed, if not prevented altogether, with the help of Fleming and Cummins.

     After all, this neatly rhymed, pleasantly drawn book focuses on a topic that very young readers might consider of great significance: the selection of a new class pet. And it then proceeds to show that kids of all shapes, sizes, races, creeds and abilities (and disabilities) can have and express their own opinions on a class pet without ever showing any sign of pettiness. It helps that this class seems to have access to as many pets as there are students: “Hedgehog, lizard, hamster, goat?/ Make a sign and rock that vote!/ Duck. Turtle. Fish. Ferret./ Snail. Gerbil. Frog. Parrot.” In fact, the class has a pet already – a bunny – so the discussion and voting are for a sort of bunny buddy. This turns out to matter when a later vote is scheduled, this one for the name of the newly chosen pet.

     Anyone with a mathematical inclination had best not look too closely at this particular pet-picking election, since there are 14 kids in the class and at least a dozen “advocacy” posters – so presumably any pet that gets two or three votes will be declared the winner, which in theory would leave about a dozen students unhappy. But there is none of that in this sunnily untroubled classroom: when the choice is made, everybody instantly agrees with and supports it.

     Indeed, the only sign of slight disagreement in this election comes when two friends “pinky promise” to vote for a frog and one changes her mind, picking a hedgehog instead. What to do? “Let’s work it through.” All one has to do is “understand” and “listen” and “share” and “shake hands” and everything is perfect (just what needs to be understood, listened to, etc., is not discussed: everyone is too busy being all smiles).

     So the kids end up choosing a duck to go with their bunny; everyone immediately goes into a waddle-waddle dance (the bunny does, too: this two-page spread is the best illustration in the book); and then it is a simple matter of assigning the care of the new pet, building a water feature in the classroom (this is a very lucky group of kids and very adaptable school), and voting on the duck’s name – with, again, no significant disagreement and a good time being had by all.

     The sentiments here, and their expression, are more at board-book level, to be used with parental instruction, than at the level of four-to-seven-year-olds – the most likely readers of Rock That Vote. The book is certainly fun, the words have a pleasant cadence, and the illustrations are charmingly enjoyable. And really, the whole thing can be read as if it takes place in a fantasy classroom (there are certainly enough fantasy elements present!) where the biggest trials and tribulations involve misunderstandings over pinky promises. But it is clear that Fleming and Cummins want more than something flighty and escapist: they want to teach about voting, how the process works, why it is good to be enthusiastic and to advocate for one’s preferences, but why it is crucial that everyone jump to the same side instantaneously no matter who wins and who loses (although part of the point here is that there are no losers). Unfortunately, the Utopian flavor of the teachable moments here needs to be carefully reinforced by adults, even if kids read the book themselves, because what happens in this make-believe classroom is just too far from what children – even young ones – will perceive in the world around them. That includes in their own families: in a simple disagreement, such as over going to one restaurant or another, Rock That Vote would suggest that when a decision is made, the child preferring the unchosen restaurant should immediately and enthusiastically decide that the chosen one is equally good, if not better. But opinions do not work that way; disappointment is real; where there are winners in elections, there are, by definition, losers. The kids in Rock That Vote have an unattainable level of equanimity and enthusiasm for whatever happens in their elections. Not so the kids who will read the book – to say nothing of their parents. Rock That Vote offers perfection in a process that is messy and often very imperfect indeed. It is a nice book, and it would be wonderful if some of the Fleming/Cummins pleasantries could somehow carry over to the real world. Will the readers of this book eventually make that happen? On that question, it would be a pleasure to vote “yes.”

(+++) EAT, MEET AND GREET

Eating Together, Being Together: Recipes, Activities, and Advice from a Chef Dad and Psychologist Mom. By Julian C.E. Clauss-Ehlers and Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers, Ph.D. Princeton Architectural Press. $27.50.

     Carefully cultivated culinary connections create co-parenting cohesion. There, in one awkwardly alliterative sentence, you have the premise and approach of Eating Together, Being Together. This is a book for the very-upscale parenting of very-upscale children by very-upscale adults, the kind of book that on one page talks about picking the juiciest watermelon and on the next page discusses “giving love by sharing goodness” and becoming an “advocate for social justice.” It is a book packed with precision cooking instructions that only readers with plenty of time and plenty of money will be able to follow: one tiny edge-of-page paragraph about an inconsequential side dish says to “boil fingerling potatoes in their skins, then drain, cool, and slice before mixing with good-quality mayonnaise, chopped fresh chives, a touch of sweet pickle relish, salt, and pepper.” It is equally packed with rather heavy-handed attempts to connect kitchen-focused matters with the rest of life: “To be inspired, whether in or out of the kitchen, is to forward our creativity. We can look to a person or a creation as an inspiration, and then move from that toward something we want to bring to the world.”

     Despite the pervasive sense of noblesse oblige, this is a book with some practical advice that can be followed even by people not in the authors’ class or social circle. This is true even though comments here may sometimes be overdone (“we can share love by giving goodness”); and may sometimes be obvious (“snacks, like so many things in life, have positive and negative aspects”). The fact is that the book does often provide useful advice and recommendations: “Food recycling [means] using food in new and creative ways rather than throwing it out. …You can also recycle food by freezing leftovers.” Or: “Save time in the morning by making breakfast the night before.” On the other hand, some useful ideas are expressed with a tone that sounds as if it talks down to readers: “In the spirit of eating mindfulness, we can reduce food waste by knowing more about the makeup of the ingredients we’re eating.”

     The authors have three kids together, two teenage daughters and a much younger son, and they also have solid careers, one as an executive chef at a higher-end New York City hotel and the other as a psychologist in private practice and a university professor. So clearly their viewpoints are skewed – but so are those of all authors of cookbooks and parenting books, and Eating Together, Being Together is a bit of both. There is narrative on various topics relating to child-rearing, and there are recipes of all sorts to be shared with or made in cooperation with younger family members. There is a “top tip!” (with exclamation point) here and there, and the occasional “fun fact!” (also with exclamation point). The amount of fun may be arguable – “a mandoline slicer is a vital piece of equipment” – but these brief highlighted items help break up the design and narrative of the book.

     Also helpful are the pages with specific food-related suggestions for “young helpers,” “preteen + teen helpers,” and “grown-up helpers.” These are basically three ways of looking at a single project. When making fruit salad, for instance, the idea is to develop team-building skills, which means to have young helpers ask grown-ups to prepare fruits and do the slicing; have preteen + teen helpers assign people to various parts of fruit-salad preparation, checking in on progress regularly; and have grown-up helpers assign others to various kitchen tasks that do not involve knives (a “be careful!” admonition appears dozens of times in innumerable contexts).

     The narrative in the book is best when it includes an admission of not having all the answers: “I’m not sure what ‘solution’ can fully address the struggle of giving our kids eating choices while also wanting them to eat certain foods.” Most of the time, though, both authors are quite sure of themselves – perhaps understandably so, in light of their professional positions, but sometimes expressed to a greater degree than seems strictly necessary. The recipes – there are many of them, and they are quite varied – are sometimes on the exotic side, sometimes relatively straightforward. But even the not-very-unusual ones are presented here in ways that will be difficult for time-pressed (not to mention financially less-secure) families to follow. Making pizza, for example, here requires creating a yeast mixture that stands for eight to 10 minutes; then making a mixture of high-gluten flour with all-purpose flour, adding the yeast mixture, and kneading for five to eight minutes; then covering the bowl and letting it sit at room temperature for an hour; and then breaking the dough into four pieces to be refrigerated for two days before continuing the preparation. And that is just the dough, not the toppings.

     Readers who think the intriguing and thoughtful ideas in Eating Together, Being Together are worth exploring would do well to read a little of the book carefully before deciding whether to own it and try to implement its suggestions, both for food and for family life. The style of the authors is distinctive in a way that some people will find congenial and others may consider off-putting in its sheer certainty and a certain sense of privilege. If the writing style and the continual references to mindfulness and waste reduction and support of farmers’ markets and making time for self-care fit your how-the-world-works-or-should-work paradigm, and if you have plenty of time to spend in food preparation and plenty of funds to get just the right ingredients, Eating Together, Being Together will be a pleasant read packed with insight and some delicious food recommendations. If, however, you find the style somewhat self-indulgent and self-satisfied, and the specificity and time commitments of the recipes somewhat over-the-top, then this particular book will not be the best choice if you want to find ways for your family to eat together in the name of connectedness.