(++++) HUSTLE AND BUSTLE

Busy Betty & the Circus Surprise. By Reese Witherspoon. Illustrated by Xindi Yan. Flamingo Books. $19.99.

Busy Betty. By Reese Witherspoon. Illustrated by Xindi Yan. Flamingo Books. $19.99.

     Oh, there is just so much going on all the time in the world of Busy Betty! There’s this and that and the other thing, all done at top speed and often in the wrong direction, which does not matter because the whole point is to go somewhere and do something and if it’s all a bit breathless, that’s just fine. Whew. Reese Witherspoon’s Busy Betty really does come across that way: thoroughly hyperactive (but in a good way), and pictured with absolute perfection by Xindi Yan, Busy Betty has a head as big as her entire torso, gigantic and sparkling blue eyes, and eyeglasses almost the size of her head. Overdone? Oh my, yes, but thoroughly reflective of her nonstop personality and unending enthusiasm. “I wake up every day with a MILLION questions and a BILLION ideas,” Betty explains by way of self-introduction, and that is actually a darned good summation of the character. In Busy Betty & the Circus Surprise, Betty and her best friends, Mae and Jeffrey, are putting together a surprise birthday party – with a circus theme – for Betty’s mom, despite the rather curmudgeonly remarks of Betty’s long-suffering older brother, Bo, and the general indifference of the family puppy, Frank. Betty pulls everyone into her orbit as she plans “the greatest day in the history of the universe” – yes, she talks like that, and literally has stars in her eyes while contemplating all the wondrous things she will do (Frank, meanwhile, looks grumpy and thoroughly unimpressed). The kids’ enthusiasm knows no bounds, although their actual skills could use some honing: the scenes of them applying makeup for the circus show (as Bo stares skeptically at the huge mess they are making) are especially amusing. Bo is the realist in the group, blandly informing Betty and her friends that they got the date of the birthday wrong – at which point Betty, drama queen that she is, exclaims “busted biscuits” and collapses in a mixture of contrition and frustration (in another of the many excellent Yan drawings, without which the book would be a lot less fun). Of course, it turns out (this being make-believe) that Betty’s mom is not the slightest bit disturbed about the huge mess everywhere – in fact, her eyes sparkle exactly as Betty’s do (yet another great touch by Yan). Everything turns out just perfectly, not only for the family but also for the entire neighborhood, and Betty’s unceasing bounciness and complete disregard of anything that might cause her to slow down have once again won the day.

     For anyone wondering about that “once again,” Betty and her family showed up earlier in a book simply called Busy Betty, which is certainly a worthwhile accompaniment to the circus volume – partly because Yan here shows Betty as a beyond-adorable baby who “was born busy!” This is where readers learn that Frank is “the most fantabulous dog in the entire universe,” except for the fact that he’s extremely smelly, so Betty needs to give him a bath. And it would help to have some soap, as Bo points out. Betty, however, gets distracted by just about everything – the pictures of her blowing bubbles instead of using the soap to clean Frank are typical, and typically amusing – but Betty gamely reminds herself of what her parents tell her, apparently quite often: “I have to focus to finish.” Unsurprisingly, things don’t go quite as Betty hopes: she and Frank both get messier, messier and even messier, ending up covered in goo and glitter and in a “humongous, enormous, colossal, BIG MESS!” Well, not to worry: Witherspoon makes sure that enthusiasm triumphs over carefulness and cleanliness and just about everything else – this is scarcely real life, after all. So Betty’s friend Mae comes up with a great idea that combines Betty’s “busy brain and Mae’s perfect plan,” to the great enjoyment of the whole neighborhood. This is exactly the pattern followed in the second book, leading in the first one to Betty literally jumping for joy as she exclaims, “Sweet cinnamon biscuits, we did it! Being busy is a great way to be.” Umm…hmm…well…let’s just say it’s a great way to be in the magical make-believe world of Witherspoon and Yan. Families may want to ensure that kids enchanted by Busy Betty have a touch more supervision in their antics than Betty ever requires or receives. After all, real-life messes do not clean up as quickly, or as profitably, as do those in the Busy Betty universe.

(++++) RIGHT ON TARGET

The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences, 16^th Edition. By Marybeth Kravets and Imy F. Wax. Princeton Review/Penguin Random House. $35.99.

     Differences. They are differences, not limitations or difficulties or, heaven forbid, problems. Language matters, and it matters a lot to Marybeth Kravets and Imy F. Wax in the latest iteration of The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences. The words “learning differences” appear in the title, the rather awkward subtitle (“350+ Schools with Programs or Services for Students with ADHD, ASD, or Learning Differences”), and on the back cover. This thoroughly establishes the bona fides of the authors.

     Words also mislead. There are many, many students with genuine “learning differences” that are not targeted in these carefully assembled 750+ pages: students who read super-quickly, get through semester-length courses in half a semester, write code and build apps in their non-school time, start businesses in their early teen years, and so on. The “learning differences” on which this book focuses are limitations, or potential limitations. This is spelled out a lot more carefully within the pages than on the covers: these differences include “learning disability” (yes, that is still a permissible phrase in the right place); “attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD)” (the American Psychiatric Association says the H actually stands for “hyperactivity”); “autism spectrum disorder (ASD)” (the acronym dates to 2013 but is still not in common use); plus “disability” and “conditional admission.” The clear explanations of these terms, as used within The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences, are welcome, and will be a solid foundation for families trying to negotiate the always-complex realities of higher education with students who require special programs, attention or services.

     A good way to use this book is to start with its explanation of terms (pages 8-10) and then turn to the very well-done “Alphabetical List of Colleges by Level of Support” (pages 748-756). Once families understand what those various levels are, this back-of-the-book list makes it easy to narrow down the possible choices of college based on the type and extent of support that a particular student requires.

     The next place to go, to maximize the benefit of the book, is its list of non-college options for the students at whom this material is directed. Called “Alternative Post-Secondary Options” and appearing on pages 736-743, this is an exceptionally helpful explanation of special programs designed for and around students requiring particular forms of assistance and guidance. The information, provided in compact form, is structured to be highly useful: each program is named, then described in a dozen or fewer lines in an “overview” box, and contact information (address, phone, email address, website) is then given. The value of this section is greater than ever at a time when students and families are increasingly questioning whether traditional college is the best route to take for success in life – especially right after high school. One possible alternative, for example, is Mitchell College Thames Academy, “a holistic college transition program for students…who would benefit from additional preparation to succeed in college.” Another possibility is Path to Independence, “an inclusive, two-year, non-degree certificate program offering a college experience to students with intellectual disabilities.” Still another is Aggie ACHIEVE at Texas A & M University, a program that “aligns coursework, internship opportunities, and extracurricular activities with each student’s academic interests and employment goals.” These arrangements and the others found on the “Alternative Post-Secondary Options” pages are creative solutions to the special problems faced by students who may not be ideally equipped – even with additional support – for the rigors of a traditional college education.

     It is best to turn to the body of the book, the 700+ pages that make up most of it, after digesting the material toward the front and the back. The vast majority of The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences includes the sort of information in which Princeton Review guides specialize: two-page discussions of specific schools, focusing in this book on each one’s support level and the specific accommodations the school provides – while also offering crucial statistical data on admissions, academics, number of students, and financial realities. The material is very well tailored to the specific purpose of this book – for example, a box on each left-hand page starts with a list labeled “Accommodations,” indicating what is allowed in exams, what support services are provided, what those extra services cost, and much more. The colleges are gathered by state and, within each state, are listed alphabetically, making it easy to choose a particular geographical area if that is important to the student and family. And for every school, the book provides a box called “Requesting Services for Students with Learning Differences” that explains what documentation is required and where it must be sent – a real boon to families looking to simplify the arduous and often confusing task of choosing a good school that will take into account the particular needs of a student whose physical, intellectual, psychological or other characteristics may differ significantly from the norm.

     If there is no single school that is ideal for any student – and there isn’t – then there is certainly no ideal college for any student requiring various forms of special attention and assistance. It is heartening, though, to know that there are many possible schools for students facing challenges beyond those that the majority of the college-bound encounter. The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences cannot pinpoint a specific ideal school for any student, but what it can do may be even more valuable: it can show that there are numerous schools, and a number of non-traditional alternative programs, that may fit a particular student’s needs, giving families a major boost in searching for viable alternatives.

(++++) TESTAMENTS

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 24. Lars Vogt, piano and conducting Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Ondine. $16.99.

Gwyn Pritchard: Realms Apart; Calling; Features and Formations; From Time to Time; Nightfall; Res; Evolution; Tide. Asia Ahmetjanova, piano; Ensemble ö! conducted by Francesc Prat. Métier. $18.99.

     It is very, very rare that an artist gets to select his own legacy in the full knowledge that it will indeed be his legacy. Lars Vogt was put in that profound and unenviable position after he was diagnosed in February 2021 with cancer of the throat and liver. He continued to play while undergoing chemotherapy, but his condition steadily worsened until his death on September 5, 2022. He would have been 52 years old on September 8. Despite the emotionally wrenching circumstances, Vogt decided to turn, in the months after his diagnosis, to piano concertos he had not recorded before – ones with deep personal meaning for him. Thus, in April 2021, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 24 as soloist and conductor with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the ensemble he had headed since 2019. He did not live to hear the finished version of the recording he made at that time, which is now available on the Ondine label. But it most definitely stands as an important part of his legacy, even though he was best-known for performing Romantic music, especially that of Brahms (in his very last concert, on June 26, 2022, he played Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3).

     Vogt gives Concerto No. 9, written in 1777 when Mozart was 21, an unusually mature performance, despite the work’s usual title of “Jeunehomme.” The first movement starts with an amazingly transparent opening, as if played by a small chamber ensemble – although the orchestra has more than 40 members. There is tremendous delicacy here, with the pacing relaxed and unhurried, as if friends have gotten together to enjoy performing a much-loved work. The strings’ clarity is exceptional. The palpable eagerness of the pianist to enter, a little "too early" according to traditional notions of structure, comes through as a moment of pure joy. Although he uses a modern instrument, Vogt plays with such restraint that the sound recalls the much lighter sonority of pianos of Mozart's time. The limpidity of the performance is exceptional. All is delicacy here: there is no sense of assertiveness, much less competition – always cooperation. The second movement, in C minor – which was to become the home key of Concerto No. 24 – sounds subdued rather than dark. Soft passages are remarkably clear – in general, the dynamics get extremely close attention. Vogt is always primus inter pares, first among equals. There is beauty and gentleness here, but the music is crepuscular rather than dark. The cadenza sneaks in slowly and quietly after an extended full stop, expanding only gradually into a solo exploration of the movement's themes and moods. Held notes and pauses go on just a bit longer than usual, enhancing the thoughtful mood. The finale starts with an exuberant piano opening that nevertheless pays very careful attention to each individual note. Give and take between solo and ensemble are well-balanced, and insights abound, as when the pianist’s two hands seem to go into question-and-answer mode about a third of the way through the movement, while the orchestra is briefly silent. The slow minuet introduced mid-movement sways gently and brings a touch of expansiveness and thoughtfulness to what is otherwise light and bright music, much as a similar section would do in Concerto No. 22 eight years later. Then the return of the original tempo sweeps away any hint of solemnity into a concluding section imbued with playfulness.

     Concerto No. 24, which dates to 1786, also opens with a very slow emergence from quiet, but the first tutti is quite emphatic, with strong brass emphasis accentuating its seriousness. The orchestra proffers well-accented rhythm and good flow, but then there is a slight extra pause before the piano’s entry and slight hesitancy when it does come in, as if emphasizing a kind of existential uncertainty. This becomes a pattern: when the piano re-enters after a silence it waits just a breath (or part of a breath), as if gathering itself for what is to come. The result is music that is dark-hued but not tragic. Vogt’s determination not to overemphasize the piano's lower register is an excellent decision, in keeping with the sound that Mozart would have expected: it avoids making the music more dour or over-dramatic than it really is. Notably helpful is the clarity, not rumbling, in the bass register. The careful tentativeness of the piano entries becomes an expected characteristic as the movement progresses, but there is nothing at all tentative about the playing once soloist and orchestra join. Vogt's cadenza (Mozart did not leave one for this movement) is sweeping, emphatic and extended, and incorporates some of the more-delicate material as well as the more-determined music. The reentry of the orchestra, without the usual end-of-cadenza trill, is unexpected and compelling, and the movement's quiet ending seems almost a surprise. The second movement is nicely paced, close to andante rather than larghetto as marked. It is clearly a respite from the strength and melancholia of the first movement. Here the winds are nicely highlighted, and they lighten the sound effectively. This is a tranquil movement standing between two that are anything but calm. The presentation is light but not airy, an exchange of pleasantries between soloist and ensemble. As the finale begins, the repeated falling intervals of the opening change the mood immediately. Now the winds serve to accentuate the emotional depth of the music, and the piano's communicative clarity is at the service of drama. Vogt is emphatic without ever pounding the keys or overusing pedal effects. The gentler intervals within the theme-and-variations form serve both to contrast with the more-intense material and to highlight it. The insistence on C minor for the conclusion (a strong contrast to the sunny ending of Mozart’s other great minor-key concerto, No. 20) keeps the music insistently meaningful, the last notes resonating conclusively and leaving behind a kind of dark thoughtfulness, more like Milton's Il Penseroso than anything genuinely despairing. As a testament to the thoughtfulness and stylistic excellence of Vogt’s pianism, this recording most definitely stands as a worthy monument to a pianist/conductor taken all too soon from the musical world.

     The piano is part of a tribute of a different sort on the Métier label – to Gwyn Pritchard (born 1948), in recognition of his 75^th birthday. Three of the eight pieces on the disc are for solo piano, featuring Asia Ahmetjanova. The other five works are ensemble pieces in which Francesc Prat conducts the Swiss contemporary group called Ensemble ö! The exclamation point, part of the group’s name, fits well with its handling of Pritchard’s music, which has an exclamatory feeling about it that will certainly not be to all tastes but that gives every work an underlying (if not overt) feeling of intensity. The three piano works here are Calling, From Time to Time, and Tide. The first of these contrasts long-held single notes with runs and clusters; the second changes direction in unpredictable ways on the keyboard, with Ahmetjanova’s hands running in parallel or contrary motion at different times; the third starts with individual notes and explores the realm of quiet and delicacy to a greater extent than do the others. The sound of the ensemble pieces on this (+++) CD contrasts strongly with that of the solo piano. Realms Apart mingles deep, slow-moving tones with fast-moving, high-register ones. Features and Formations sounds constantly anticipatory, as if leading listeners to an undiscovered country to which the journey will be difficult but ultimately worthwhile – although there is never truly a sense of arrival anywhere. Nightfall really does sound at first as if something has fallen heavily, but the work then becomes a series of well-differentiated sounds punctuated by extended silences. Res has a sense of cloudlike evanescence punctuated by individual sounds. And Evolution intersperses silences with exclamations of varying degrees of emphasis from varying instrumental combinations. This CD, which consists entirely of world première recordings, is not and will not be the last word on Pritchard’s music, but it stands as a fair introduction to his compositional methods and his interest in bringing sound out of silence and then finding multiple ways to contrast those two compositional elements. The audience for this contemporary music may not be a large one, but those who are members of it will find this collection of Pritchard’s piano and chamber works a worthwhile exploration.

(+++) AUDIOVISUALS YES, AMUSEMENTS MAYBE

Ligeti: Nonsense Madrigals; Makiko Kinoshita: Ashita no uta (Song for Tomorrow); Ola Gjeilo: A Dream within a Dream; Francesca Amewudah-Rivers: Alive; Joe Hisaishi: I Was There; Judith Bingham: Tricksters; Malcolm Williamson: The Musicians of Bremen; Paul Patterson: Time Piece. The King’s Singers. Signum Records. $17.99.

Mozart’s Jazz Requiem. The Queen’s Cartoonists. 7 Train Records. $9.99.

     The intermingling of music and visuals is scarcely new: that is what opera has been about for 400+ years, and church music, designed to enhance and accentuate the pomp and opulence as well as the solemnity of worship, even longer. But as in so many other matters, the audiovisual mixture has changed dramatically over time – think of silent movies, early cartoons, and the significant importance of music to more-modern movies (Prokofiev, Copland, Dimitri Tiomkin, not to mention the more-recent John Williams effect). Some contemporary composers and performers have, however, taken things in new directions, or to new extremes, depending on your point of view. And while music divorced from its original melding with visuals has long been a commonplace, it is considerably less clear, when it comes to some of the new approaches, whether the music can be fully enjoyed without its intended eye-attracting companionship.

     Take the new Signum Records CD featuring The King’s Singers. It includes eight works commissioned by the 55-year-old ensemble in the past half-century, the centerpiece being Nonsense Madrigals by György Ligeti (1923-2006), whose 100^th birthday the release honors. The Ligeti work – actually works, plural, the pieces having been written between 1988 and 1993 – is (or are) accompanied by and matched with six sets of cartoons turned into music videos by French illustrator Coralie Muce. But the CD, of course, omits the visual elements, which (for those who care to track them down) are amply illustrative of the music in a kind of awkwardly skewed surrealistic way. What exactly is, or is intended to be, the relationship here between the audible and the visual? Complicating matters is the fact that Ligeti’s settings of poems from William Brighty Rands, Lewis Carroll and elsewhere are very much in the composer’s usual style, which is to say the Nonsense Madrigals are somewhat more nonsensical than their verbiage, since their words are rather difficult to follow even with these singers’ usual super-clear enunciation. Making matters even more confusing is the fact that the Nonsense Madrigals are not presented as a group – they are interspersed on the disc with other, wholly unrelated works that were also commissioned by The King’s Singers. These include Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (2020); Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream (2022); Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022); Joe Hisaishi’s I Was There (2022); Judith Bingham’s Tricksters (2019); Malcolm Williamson’s The Musicians of Bremen (1972); and Paul Patterson’s Time Piece (1972). None of the non-Ligeti works is tied directly to visual material, although several of them call up (or are intended to call up) images of many kinds: Williamson’s is based on the Grimm fairy tale; Gjeilo’s uses a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe; Patterson’s and Bingham’s are creation stories; Hisaishi’s is a memorial and eulogy for modern tragedies even though it refers directly to none of them; and so on. Complexities within complexities. This is, in its totality, a very curious CD indeed: beautifully sung throughout, clearly arranged very thoughtfully (if rather peculiarly, in terms of alternating the Ligeti material with other, wholly different music), and often decidedly strange. The visual component of Ligeti’s Nonsense Madrigals actually helps elucidate the words, although the visuals were created decades after the music; and visualizations (imaginariums, if you will) enhance the remaining works as well. Yet it is easy – although it feels a bit strange – simply to enjoy the disc as music if one does not try too hard to picture what the music is about. This is certainly not a CD for everyone, not even for every aficionado of The King’s Singers; but it is a salutary experience for those inclined to look for – and listen for – something different. Different from what is a matter worth contemplating.

     Speaking of different: The King’s Singers are vocalists, while The Queen’s Cartoonists are instrumentalists – Joel Pierson, piano; Rossen Nedelchev, drums; Mark Phillips, clarinet, alto sax, soprano sax, and flute; Greg Hammontree, trumpet and trombone; Drew Pitcher, tenor sax and bass clarinet; and Steve Whipple, bass. Speaking further of different: there is an underlying seriousness to The King’s Singers, even when they present lighter material; what underlies The Queen’s Cartoonists is harder to fathom. Indeed, it is difficult to decide whether a new 7 Train Records recording is brilliant or idiotic, or both, and hard to know whether to be intrigued or appalled by it. One of the great works of the classical canon, one of those pieces featuring music intended to accompany visuals – solemn religious ones – but standing very much on its own, is Mozart’s Requiem, which the composer did not live to complete. The Queen’s Cartoonists have chosen this work – all 13 sections, from Requiem aeternam to Lux aeterna – as the basis for a set of five music videos that incorporate some of Mozart’s music and a whole lot of riffs, as in jazz riffs, upon it. The result is Mozart’s Jazz Requiem, and to say that it is weird is more than a slight understatement: it is practically the definition of bizarre. To get just a slight idea of the sound world of what The Queen’s Cartoonists have done here, consider the guest artists who join them on certain tracks: Jon Singer on xylophone and marimba; Samantha Lake on tuba; Jennifer Wharton on bass trombone; and Tatum Greenblatt and Wayne Tucker on trumpets. Consider also the cover of the CD, which features Mozart, arisen from a grave marked Requiem, conducting an ensemble of nine nattily dressed skeletons, most of them smiling and two of them using bones as drumsticks and mallets, respectively. As for respectfully, well, that is a matter of opinion. The problem is that it is hard to form an opinion. If this release had as its foundation pretty much anything but Mozart’s Requiem, it would be easy to admire the audacity of the performers and pianist/arranger Pierson. Jazzing up classical music, even Mozart, can be a lot of fun: Duke Ellington did just that with bits of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and Grieg’s Peer Gynt. And poking fun at classical music (in the mode, for example, of Anna Russell, Peter Schickele or Gerard Hoffnung) can be thoroughly delightful. And listened to totally without context – that is, if heard by someone who does not know Mozart’s Requiem at all – this is certainly a disc of abundant delights, upbeat here, intense there, fascinatingly varied in one place, suitably solemn in another. But in context, for anyone who does know the grandeur and tragedy of Mozart’s short life and this end-of-life, incomplete masterpiece, Mozart’s Jazz Requiem is inescapably peculiar. And that is putting it mildly. Seeing the videos – which those with an especially macabre bent will want to track down online – gives the whole project an even stranger resonance, since they feature, among other things, genuinely upsetting (as well as not-at-all upsetting) death scenes from long-forgotten cartoons. One has to admire the sheer gall of The Queen’s Cartoonists at the same time one responds viscerally to the sheer panache of their playing. It is the gall/panache balance that will be perceived differently by whatever audience may find its way to this decidedly odd disc. It is almost impossible to dislike the performance, even as one questions and perhaps condemns oneself for daring to enjoy it.