(++++) RARITIES

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 (1876 version). ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Markus Poschner. Capriccio. $16.99.

Hummel: Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 arranged for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano. Uwe Grodd, flute; Pettman Ensemble (Curt Thompson, violin; Edith Salzmann, cello; Michael Endres, piano). Naxos. $13.99.

Edward German: The Seasons (symphonic suite); Richard III—Overture; Theme and Six Diversions. RTÉ Concert Orchestra conducted by Andrew Penny. Naxos. $13.99.

     Pretty much anyone who listens to Bruckner regularly knows there are two versions of his Symphony No. 4, “Romantic”: the original from 1874 and the revised one, containing the famous “Hunting” Scherzo and performed much more frequently, from 1878-80. But the “1876” listing on a new Capriccio CD featuring the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Markus Poschner is not a misprint. There was in fact an intermediate variant of this symphony, altering a number of details in the 1874 version but not yet changing the Scherzo or smoothing the work’s contours as Bruckner would later do. Although admittedly many of the differences between 1874 and 1876 are subtle and not always clearly audible – despite the fine performance – the overall impression left by this virtually unknown variant is a fascinating one. It sounds very fine on its own, even with the earlier Scherzo, and provides an unusual window into Bruckner’s creative process and his symphonic thinking in the mid-1870s. If many of the details that Bruckner changed for the 1876 version are small and not readily audible, some are genuine surprises: the extended development in the first movement, for example, and a complex contrapuntal section in the second (featuring call-and-response from two horns) that Bruckner later simplified. Indeed, the contrapuntal elements are more prominent in the 1876 version than they would later become: Bruckner professed himself horrified at the amount of counterpoint here and decided to remove much of it in the 1878-80 revision. The approach of the bicentennial of Bruckner’s birth in 2024 has led numerous orchestras, conductors and impresarios (of concerts and recordings alike) to explore the byways and little-known elements of the composer’s oeuvre, and those explorations are at their best when they provide genuine insight into the composer’s thoughts and compositional processes. The 1876 version of Symphony No. 4 will surely remain an oddity, but it has many worthy and very intriguing touches heard neither in 1874 nor in 1878-80, and as a result will be a must-have for listeners looking for something out of the ordinary to complement the more-familiar sounds of the other versions of the “Romantic.”

     Speaking of familiar symphonies, they just don’t get any more familiar than those of Beethoven. But this was not always the case. In Beethoven’s own time and for a while thereafter, anyone who did not live in a major European music center – Paris, London, Vienna, Leipzig – would be able to hear these symphonies very rarely, if at all. Picking up on audience frustration at missing out on famous orchestral works, whose reputation preceded them through reports in newspapers and specialist publications, arrangers found ways to make numerous large-scale pieces more readily accessible by reducing them to chamber size. Johann Nepomuk Hummel did just this for Beethoven’s first seven symphonies and the Septet, Op. 20, arranging them for flute, violin, cello, and piano – an instrumental combination that Hummel especially favored, using it more than 50 times for a wide variety of pieces. Naxos has now released a second CD of Hummel arrangements, like the first one featuring Uwe Grodd on flute; the trio here is different from that on the previous disc but no less accomplished. This time the symphonies offered are Nos. 2 and 6; the previous recording contained Nos. 1 and 3. Unsurprisingly, Hummel’s Classical-era training and his preoccupation with balance come through somewhat better in No. 2 than in the “Pastoral” – in fact, No. 2, which tends to be comparatively neglected today, was highly thought of in Beethoven’s time, with the composer himself arranging it for piano trio. No. 2 is a transitional work, carrying forward elements of No. 1 (whose chamber arrangement by Hummel is particularly successful) but expanding and driving them in new directions. No. 6 in Hummel’s version feels almost like a suite, its individual movements standing out as separate entities as much as they do when regarded as part of a larger whole. The delicacy of the chamber version gives No. 6 a very different effect from that of the orchestral original, with Szene am Bach and the concluding Hirtengesang having lovely lilt and thoroughly pleasant rhythms, while the dramatic Sturm unsurprisingly is somewhat lacking as heard here. Yet Hummel is well aware of what he is working with in both these symphonies, and how best to dispose the instruments. He generally gives the piano prominence – he was a virtuoso pianist himself, and often played these arrangements – and tends, if anything, to pull non-piano parts into the keyboard: many flute melodies are heard not on the flute but in the upper reaches of the piano. Hummel knew Beethoven and his music well – the two composers had a somewhat fractious relationship that became close at the end of Beethoven’s life – and Hummel’s chamber arrangements of these symphonies clearly show that he understood their character and structure and was able to preserve much of the “Beethoven sound” even without access to full orchestral coloration. It is scarcely a surprise that these arrangements helped bring Beethoven’s music more quickly to a wider audience than would have been the case without them.

     The audience for the works of Edward German rose and fell through the composer’s lifetime (1862-1936), with German outliving the sort of interest in lighter music that so well served Arthur Sullivan (who once named German his successor). German had self-awareness about changing tastes, ceasing to compose in the last decade-plus of his life and saying that people would simply no longer be interested – although they were engaged by the way he conducted his own works, which he continued to do for years after he stopped composing new ones. A Naxos re-release of performances from 1994 by Andrew Penny and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra provides a welcome chance to hear bits of German’s serious, non-stage music and contrast it with his theatrical work. The CD also shows some of German’s stylistic maturation over time. The one for-the-stage piece here, the overture to Richard III, is the earliest work on the disc, dating to 1889, is an effective curtain-raiser or concert overture (it was used both ways), and helped establish German as an important theatrical presence in British music. Thirty years later, toward the end of his compositional career, German created Theme and Six Diversions, an attractive and well-made reinterpretation of the theme-and-variations form – German’s title is intended to indicate that the material that comes after the theme is not strictly a set of variations but, instead, a kind of revisiting of the original theme in varying guises. This interesting approach leads to some effective writing, including a Gipsy Dance and a concert waltz that both hover around the theme rather than draw explicitly from it. The orchestration is somewhat leaner and not as lush as in earlier works by German, showing elements of the composer’s later thinking both structurally and in terms of the sound of his music. Between these two pieces chronologically lies The Seasons of 1899, a substantial four-movement suite filled with attractive tone painting. From the rustic dance of Summer (actually called Harvest Dance, a title that would seem better suited to autumn) to the solemnity and gloom that open Winter before the music turns into a playful tarantella that sweeps away the darkness, this is music that engages the listener and proffers theatrical qualities despite not being tied to any specific scenes or staging. So thoroughly have German’s skills been neglected, though, that almost everything on this CD is a world première recording: only Summer and Theme and Six Diversions have been recorded before, and neither of those at all recently. German had the misfortune to be something of a transitional figure in the sort of music in which he specialized – Hummel, whose music is also under-appreciated, was in a similar position in his time – so recordings such as this one are particularly welcome for bringing German’s well-made music to, potentially, an entirely new set of listeners.

(+++) INSTRUMENTAL CREATIVITY

William Byrd: Pavans, Galliards, Variations & Grounds. Daniel-Ben Pienaar. AVIE. $24.99 (2 CDs).

Christopher Cerrone: The Air Suspended; Why Was I Born Between Mirrors? Shai Wosner, piano; Argus Quartet; Pat Swoboda, bass; Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. New Focus Recordings. $10.

Music for Brass by Brian Belet, Nathan Wilson Ball, Janice Macaulay, L. Peter Deutsch, and Andrew Lewinter. Navona. $14.99.

     Performers who offer music on instruments very different from the ones for which the music was written may be motivated by the desire to bring audiences great works (as in the case of Bach’s harpsichord music played on piano), may simply be unable to use or even find the original instruments (ophicleides are scarcely common these days), or may have a somewhat more quixotic reason for what they are doing. Daniel-Ben Pienaar falls into this last category in his performances of music by William Byrd (1543-1623) on, of all things, a modern piano. Byrd very definitely did not write with piano in mind – in fact, the harpsichord was just becoming fully established during Byrd’s lifetime, and he wrote a considerable number of pieces for it that helped it gain prominence. Byrd wrote very carefully for the capabilities and limitations of this plucked-string instrument, and his works, to a much greater extent than those of Bach many decades later, fit the harpsichord so well that they mis-sound when modernized through piano performance. Nevertheless, Pienaar gamely puts forth two-and-a-half hours of Byrd on a modern piano, resulting in a recording that is far too exhausting aurally to hear straight through and that, for all the fine playing, ultimately sounds like an encroachment on the composer rather than a tribute to him. The problem is that the piano’s sonorousness and sustaining capabilities do not fit Byrd’s music at all. To the extent that Pienaar uses them, he makes the music into something it is not and was never intended to be. To the extent that he holds back on the pedaling and sound-altering capabilities inherent in a percussion instrument whose strings are struck rather than plucked, the performances simply sound artificial. The works here – 39 of them, a really substantial survey of Byrd’s music – are all performed with enthusiasm, the tempos well-chosen and the ornamentation presented attractively. But everything just plain sounds wrong. In addition to the pavans and galliards, Pienaar includes some variations, grounds, even songs, and he does try to modify the piano’s sound to give different works a different sort of listener connection – as in, for example, the particularly warm sound of the Hornpipe, MB 39. Canons are ably handled, but the essentially harmonic piano simply does not produce them as well as the essentially contrapuntal harpsichord. One thing that Pienaar does show is how effectively Byrd could write at differing lengths: Galliard, the Earl of Salisbury, MB 15b, runs just 56 seconds, while Hugh Ashton’s Ground, MB 20, lasts eight-and-a-half minutes, as does The Second Ground, MB 42. Pienaar certainly tries hard – just listen to what he tries to do with The Bells, MB 38 – but he is hampered by the fact that his chosen instrument simply does not gibe with this music. This is a very well-played release that is about as inauthentic as possible. It may be a labor of love for Pienaar, but the old saying  that you always hurt the one you love seems to fit this recording all too well.

     The piano use is hyper-modern in the concerto by Christopher Cerrone that is offered by New Focus Recordings on a very short disc (running time of 22 minutes). The concerto was as thoroughly tailored to pianist Shai Wosner as Byrd’s works were to the early harpsichord. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, performances of the then-new work were cancelled, leading to a CD in which the concerto is heard with Wosner on piano accompanied by the Argus Quartet and bassist Pat Swoboda. This is essentially a work of minimalism, filled with sustained notes and repetitive sounds. Its three movement titles are intended as evocative but are not connected especially clearly with the music: “From Ground to Cloud,” “Dissolving Margins,” and “Stutter, Like Rain.” Like many other contemporary composers, Cerrone (born 1984) seems to care as much about the literary and sociopolitical gloss of his music as about the music itself. The Air Suspended, as he calls this concerto, is supposed to connect not only to weather in general but also to climate-change concerns. It does not, at least in any reasonably clear way, but the intent to make the connection is an important element to keep in mind when listening to the piece. The basic sound of the work is not unusual for 21^st-century music – indeed, the other piece on this disc sounds considerably more unusual. This is Why Was I Born Between Mirrors? Again, this is an intentionally evocative title, but only listeners firmly in the know about Cerrone and this work – or ones willing to research it – will understand that the piece is a response to a novel by Ben Lerner called Leaving the Atocha Station. Thus, as with many modern musical works tied to other art forms, this sextet requires listeners to learn its background and intentions rather than simply to listen to it and thus find out what Cerrone is trying to say. This, of course, seriously limits the likely audience for the piece – which is a bit of s shame, since the inclusion here of tuned flower pots and the use of a prepared rather than standard piano result in a sonic world that is worth experiencing, at least for the seven-minute duration of the music. Like many other contemporary composers, Cerrone creates his works carefully, but without any apparent interest in having them appeal to anybody beyond a core audience that is hungry for whatever the latest and most avant-garde pieces may be.

     The instrumental use is creative in a different way on a Navona CD featuring recent music by five contemporary composers. Of the seven works here, five are for brass quintet and are played by members of the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava. One piece is for solo tuba. And one is for horn and piano. Among them, the seven pieces showcase brass in a variety of guises, combined in ways that tend to be clever as well as nicely put together. Three by Five by Brian Belet has two fugal movements sandwiching one called “More Questions (Still Unanswered),” a nod to Ives’ The Unanswered Question. The blending and contrasting of the two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba is handled well. Nathan Wilson Ball’s Nocturne adds a bass trombone to the brass quintet and sounds crepuscular, if not especially dark or somnolent.  Three short pieces by L. Peter Deutsch also use a quintet to good purpose. 5/4 Fugue in G Major sounds a bit like a throwback – an effective one. Mountain Journey—Toward the Mountains is a single movement of a longer piece, and if it does not really set any particular scene, it does a good job of combining and contrasting the instruments. Twilight Waltz is a pleasant if scarcely danceable blending of sounds. The solo-tuba piece is Tuba Contra Mundum by Janice Macaulay. Composing a solo work for this instrument, even one lasting just four minutes, is a considerable challenge, and if this piece is not really eminently listenable, it does at least explore various techniques and sounds associated with the tuba that listeners will not likely have heard before. The final piece on the disc is Sonata for Horn and Piano by Andrew Lewinter. In the conventional three movements, this is the most pleasantly melodic work on the CD, and inclusion of the piano produces a sound for the piece that differs substantially – and to the work’s benefit – from the sound of everything else on this disc. The final “Theme and Variations” has a particularly jaunty lilt. The Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava players, Jobey Wilson on tuba, James Wilson on horn, and Katherine Cisco on piano, all approach these pieces respectfully and with considerable skill in eliciting the sounds sought by the composers. Listeners intrigued by contemporary handling of brass instruments and brass ensembles will find a great deal to engage them here.

(++++) TIME OUT (OR TIME IN)

Max & the Midknights 3: The Tower of Time. By Lincoln Peirce. Crown. $13.99.

     The concluding book in Lincoln Peirce’s Max & the Midknights trilogy ties things into multiple knots, then neatly unravels them – simply cutting through some of them, as Alexander the Great reputedly did with the Gordian Knot, when actual explication and explanation would be too burdensome. Peirce certainly has no interest in overdoing anything particularly thoughtful in this faux medieval saga tied loosely (very loosely) to his long-running Big Nate comic strip (Nate introduces each of the books but is not a character in them). The Max & the Midknights tales are romps in which characters who are recognizable from the modern-day Big Nate adventures – but are modified to fit a world of kings and queens, wizards and dragons, and so forth – have adventures suitable to fantasies of this sort, all packaged in not-quite-graphic-novel form (which means the Max & the Midknights books are more-or-less traditional novels that are very heavily illustrated, with the art carrying forth a lot of the story even though the prose narrative is crucial as well).

     Max, a girl – the mystery of her male name is one matter settled in typically oddball fashion in The Tower of Time – and her long-lost twin sister, Mary, meet and greet each other in the first part of the third series entry, and then embark on a suitably addled quest to learn the story of their own background and parentage while also, hopefully, preventing war between the nation-states of Byjovia and Klunk. A lot of the fun here comes in the byways of the story rather than its main events. For example, there is a neat two-page terrain map, Peirce’s version of the ones so commonly seen in heroic fantasies, containing such places as Fancy Plain, Eeny-Meeny Mines, Blue River and Red River (which merge into Purple River), Sneak Peaks, and so forth. And the map is helpfully labeled: “Far North,” for example, has a note above it with an arrow pointing off the top of the page, with the words “Farther North.”

     The map guides the heroic band of not-full-knights (hence “Midknights”) on a quest that first brings them to an unpleasant encounter with trolls, from which they escape through the not-very-helpful assistance of a guardian witch named Evra (who looks a bit like the fairy who introduced the “Fractured Fairy Tales” in the old Rocky-and-Bullwinkle cartoons). Evra combines rhyming comments with math problems – which have to be solved by Kevyn, the brain of the Midknights and the inventor of the library card (a fact that turns out to be of surpassing importance). Unfortunately, the place to which Evra admits the Midknights, Bentley’s Pass, has non-troll problems of its own, and they have to get out fairly quickly, return to the troll area, and escape in a different (amusing) way. Evra then turns up again, later in the book, as the gatekeeper of the Tower of Time, which the Midknights need to visit so Max and Mary can locate their parents and their younger selves but absolutely not interfere with the past, except as is really necessary. Which of course it turns out to be.

     Another amusing byway, which Peirce eventually brings into the main story with a very neat twist, has to do with Max being pressed into service as a cabin boy (she is in boy disguise at the time) for a pirate named Cap’n Scab, who has a fork rather than a hook for one of his hands and whose crew members spend their time singing to or about their leader: “He thrives on chaos, woe, and strife!/ He’ll rob you blind and take your life!/ His hand is neither spoon nor knife!/ The murderous Cap’n Scab!”

     Fans of the Big Nate comic strip will get some extra enjoyment in The Tower of Time from seeing reflections of Nate’s modern-day adventures in Max’s of long ago. It is not just that short and rotund Kevyn resembles the short and rotund Chad in Big Nate, or that Max’s feckless troubadour uncle, Budrick, is a close parallel to Nate’s feckless father. There are also highly recognizable elements of Peirce’s cartooning that crop up from time to time: the cat from Big Nate on page 21, for example, and a kind of trademark “befuddlement” pose (one eye wide open and one a straight line or tiny circle) seen on pages 7, 18, 38 and 128. There is also a very funny bit of deliberate self-reference when Max and Mary are in the Tower of Time, searching for the right time line to prevent nefarious deeds, and open one time-line door to find a scene of Nate being yelled at by teacher nemesis Mrs. Godfrey while student nemesis Gina looks on with satisfaction – the whole thing leading Mary to comment, “That last one was weird.”

     Weirdness is the point here, and responsible for much of the silly fun, as when various characters are turned into fruits or vegetables and Kevyn accidentally becomes a cat for a while – a transformation that turns out to be super-important. Peirce does a great job of pulling all the threads of the Max & the Midknights books together in this third volume, and although there is no need for a fourth (the story is neatly concluded), it is always possible that Peirce’s fans will vociferously demand an eventual return to Byjovia and its environs, including the Upper Case Sea (shaped like an upper-case C) and Lower Case Sea (shaped like, yes, a lower-case C). How can any preteen reader – or parent of one – resist puns that bad?

(+++) LARGE GROUPS AND SMALLER

Debra Kaye: Rising Up; Lawrence Mumford: Hope and a Future; Dinah Bianchi: Chasse Noir; Bruce Reiprich: When Quiet Comes; William Copper: Gold Lights in Blue; Richard E. Brown: Paisano Suite. Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava conducted by Jan Kučera, Stanislav Vavřínek and Jiří Petrdlík. Navona. $14.99.

Greg McLean: The ’Twain Have Met; Guillermo Klein: Solar Return Suite; James Stephenson: It’s About Time; Dave Rivello—arrangements; Mildred J. Hill: Happy Birthday. Charles Schlueter and Marvin Stamm, trumpets; Mark Weissman, saxophone; Ryan Devlin, tenor saxophone; New England Conservatory Symphonic Winds conducted by William Drury and Gene Young. MSR Classics. $14.95.

Michael Murray: Passage to Nod; Genevieve’s Cats; Penny Whistles; The Last Invocation. Genevieve Fulks, soprano; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Stanislav Vavřínek; Minju Choi Witte, piano; Allison Storochuk, clarinet. Navona. $14.99.

     Contemporary composers’ explorations of varying themes, topics and musical approaches often continue to involve turning to full symphony orchestras – but equally often focus on specific orchestral sections or even smaller groups. The second release in a Navona series called “Inviting Worlds” features five single-movement orchestral works and one eight-movement suite, all connected only by the six composers’ interest in exploring orchestral totality and tonality. Debra Kaye’s Rising Up is the longest of the single-movement pieces, at around 11 minutes, and is intended to portray resilience through and after difficulty – it was written early in the COVID-19 pandemic, but works much better as a general piece about living through and reaching beyond adversity. Its restrained positivity is far more effective than outright triumphalism would be. And it has something of the sound of Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture – although the “rising” for Kaye is emotional and psychological rather than astronomical. Lawrence Mumford’s Hope and a Future is cut from similar proclamatory cloth. It is a movement from Mumford’s Symphony No. 4, but the composer says it can also be used as a concert overture, in which guise it works well as an optimistic look beyond, yes, the COVID-19 pandemic. Dinah Bianchi’s Chasse Noir is a cinematic-feeling theme and variations that excels in use of orchestral color and a feeling of constant, speedy onward propulsion toward an unknown destination. Bruce Reiprich’s When Quiet Comes, on the other hand, is a reserved work for piano (Lucie Kaucká) and orchestra, simple and restrained in sound – although cinematic in its own way in speaking of sorrow. William Copper’s Gold Lights in Blue is a pleasantly foursquare work that contrasts sedate neo-Baroque backgrounds with periodic bursts of enthusiasm. Richard E. Brown’s Paisano Suite, in eight short movements that hark back stylistically – although not harmonically – to the Baroque era, is more tightly knit than suites usually are, and provides pleasant contrasts among the movements without having any of them overstay their welcome. All six composers’ works are very well-served by the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, whose conductors seem thoroughly comfortable with these contemporary pieces that, by and large, stretch tonality instead of breaking with it altogether, and that use the full orchestra skillfully and to good effect.

     It is the winds rather than a full orchestra that get the attention on a new MSR Classics release of live recordings that mixes celebratory and bright elements with quieter and more-reserved ones. Filled with jazz and jazz-like material, this CD, like Navona’s “Inviting Worlds” entry, includes one suite (in seven movements) and five single-movement pieces. The disc features the smooth-sounding New England Conservatory Symphonic Winds. Interestingly, this American ensemble, playing American music, is neither more nor less adept with the repertoire than is the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava with the pieces it plays – a sure indication of the internationalization both of modern classical music and of the groups that perform it. The New England ensemble’s disc features two works in which trumpeters Charles Schlueter and Marvin Stamm play together with tremendous verve, style and enthusiasm: The ’Twain Have Met by Greg McLean (born 1956) and It’s About Time by James Stephenson (born 1969). McLean’s piece is more dissonant than is usual for a jazz-inflected work, and makes considerable use of drum set; but it has plenty of upbeat moments in which the trumpets get the chance to hold forth. Stephenson’s work is more melodic and has more of a symphonic sound, along with touches of humor to go with the considerable virtuosity required of the soloists. The other major work on this disc is Solar Return Suite by Guillermo Klein (born 1969), featuring a solo saxophone (Mark Weissman) and having a very mellow, laid-back sound throughout. Klein treats the jazz ensemble as a collection of individual instruments most of the time, so the saxophone always stands out and never seems in competition with the group as a whole. The suite has something of the feeling of “mood” or “background” music in its mixture of warmth and mostly straightforward harmonies. The feeling is somewhat similar in arrangements by Dave Rivello (born 1962) of Some Other Time, from Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town, and Henry Mancini’s Dreamsville, both featuring tenor saxophone (Ryan Devlin). The Bernstein work is about as relaxing as can be, and Mancini’s quiet mood piece floats softly and delicately along as if written in the first place for tenor sax. The CD ends with an amusing 22-second performance by Schlueter on a piccolo trumpet, playing Happy Birthday via telephone as a musical gift for conductor William Drury – a conclusion emblematic of the feeling of pleasant camaraderie among gifted musicians that pervades the entire disc.

     A Navona release featuring soprano Genevieve Fulks returns to the full-orchestra realm – but also showcases some songs accompanied by clarinet and piano, and others with piano alone. Michael Murray’s Passage to Nod includes six pieces to texts by Robert Louis Stevenson, each of them set atmospherically but rather similarly despite their differences of topic. Fulks has no trouble projecting her voice above the orchestra, which mostly creates an aural backdrop instead of commenting on or adding to Stevenson’s words. The work as a whole is somewhat placid and static, the words sensitively set but the instruments painting less in the way of musical scenes than might be hoped. The Last Invocation, to words by Walt Whitman, is also for soprano and full orchestra, and here too Murray (born 1943) is mostly concerned with setting a quiet, reserved mood with the instruments while giving the voice a foreground role that does not seem to have a great need for its accompaniment except as a fairly generic sonic backdrop. The six-song Penny Whistles for soprano, clarinet and piano, which again has words by Stevenson, is more interesting: here Murray appears more concerned than in the orchestral settings with the coloristic possibilities of the two accompanying instruments, and allows himself some jocularity from time to time – notably in the 55-second Singing, the shortest piece here. There are also bits of effective tone-painting in this cycle, especially in Windy Nights. However, the cleverest piece on the disc turns out to be the most modestly scored: Genevieve’s Cats, whose three songs have words by, respectively, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, and John Keats. This work is only for soprano and piano, and here Minju Choi Witte gets to participate fully in the word paintings, which Fulks presents with aptly varying levels of warmth, sensitivity, and emotional engagement – showing that the resources of a full orchestra are not always necessary when today’s composers seek to convey a wide variety of thoughts and feelings.