Music Beat: Classical Escapes

Don't find yourself stranded without these five classical albums.

Way back in the 90s, we kids would sometimes pass the time with questions like, "If you were stuck on a desert island, what five albums would you take with you?" Obviously, that was long before these newfangled iPods with their infinite storage capacity made the whole thing a moot point. If you were alone on a desert island with an iPhone, you'd probably never want to leave. You'd have every album and movie known to man, and if your private beach had WiFi, you could Google for coconut recipes, blog about raft building, and Twitter picts of yourself with your volleyball BFF to the folks back home.

But let's say ye olde deserte islande is back, and you're stuck with a Sony Walkman and five classical CDs. Which ones will keep your mind off the circling sharks? Well, I'll tell you.

1. Portrait of Vladimir Horowitz.
This collection isn't just the best of Horowitz (a celebrated pianist who lived from 1903 to 1989), but the best of piano. The anthology includes beautiful recordings of all the greats that I could only butcher during my piano lessons—Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," Chopin's "Funeral March," and Mozart's "Alla Turca." It does not include Debussy's "Clair de Lune"; but if it did, it would have all of my favorites. Two gems on this album are the opening track, Scarlatti's "Sonata for Keyboard in E major, K. 531 (L. 430)," which rolls and trills like a lively, light rain, and Schumann's tender "Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) for Piano, Op. 15 Träumerei," which possesses a quiet, haunting elegance. The latter piece served as the bridesmaids' entrance music for our wedding, and I think the music was so beautiful (as were the bridesmaids themselves, of course) that no one noticed the hatchet job the seamstress did on their dresses.


2. Humoresque: Favorite Violin Encores. My grandmother played this album so often that I get synesthesia every time I hear it. From the first note of "Flight of the Bumble Bee," I am on the couch in the my grandmother's den reading a book and chewing on the Riesen chocolate she just tossed me from her chair. This compilation from the great violinist Isaac Stern (who lived from 1920 to 2001) combines folk favorites such as "Greensleeves" and Brahms' "Hungarian Dances" with classic staples including Debussy's "Clair de Lune." His violin becomes almost a human voice in Schubert's "Ave Maria" and Foster's "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair." Both Schubert's "Serenade" and Mendelssohn's "On Wings of Song" are achingly beautiful. This collection marries the lively, robust sounds of Copland's "Hoedown" (better known as the "Beef: It's what's for dinner" melody) with the melancholy whimsy of Kreisler's "Liebesleid." Each track is a treasure—it's hard to imagine a more delightful, satisfying collection.



3. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons. When I got my first stereo, I used to close the door to my room and pretend to conduct these four famous violin concertos. Air-conducting to a recording behind closed doors has its advantages—the musicians never make mistakes, and no one can see you flailing your arms like an idiot. Each concerto depicts a season. The opening violin strokes of "Spring" always make me sit bolt upright with a grin on my face. It's joy and precision and lyricism all bundled together. What's not to love? Our family once huddled on the steps of the National Museum in Prague to hear a live concert of "The Four Seasons"—it was surprisingly intimate and such a delight. If you can hear it live, don't miss it!



4. Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez; Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre. My parents used to play the LP version of this album for guitar and orchestra during almost every dinner party. This beautiful performance by Australian guitar soloist and Andres Segovia protege John Williams (not the one of Star Wars fame) gave me a lifelong love of classical guitar. Somehow, the quiet voice of the guitar doesn't get swallowed up by the full-bodied roar of the orchestra. The first movement begins almost like a call and response between the guitar and the strings, winds, and brass. But the instruments ultimately weave together to build the energy of the piece, which crescendos to a spectacular finish. Wikipedia says this all much better—but it's probably best to just hear it for yourself.



5. Classic Williams: Romance of the Guitar. No album is more relaxing and refreshing than this gem from guitarist John Williams (the same soloist who performs the "Concierto de Aranjuez" mentioned above). The tone throughout the album may be gentle, but that does not make it boring. In each recording, Williams' guitar is as expressive and arresting as a good storyteller. Ponce's "Scherzino Mexicano," for example, may build on a repeated them, but the way Williams brings out the louds, softs, and pauses of the piece makes each repetition feel fresh. Every track is richly textured. As in Stern's "Humoresque," Williams' instrument becomes the human voice for some tracks, including Myers' "Cavatina" from the film, "The Deer Hunter"—a simple, but haunting melody. There are faster pieces, too, such as deFalla's "Danza Espanola" that highlight Williams' technical prowess. The album ends with the Adagio movement of Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," which usually leaves me wanting to hear the whole piece from start to finish—which is why I'm bringing both albums to my desert island.

Of course, this is the age of the iPod, so no need to settle for just five albums. What classical treasures would you stash in your life vest?

Music Beat: Soothing Show Tunes

Musical numbers that put the "lull" in "lullaby."

When baby G arrived last year, he kept a simple schedule: Eat for an hour, sleep for an hour, repeat. Once we figured this out, it wasn't so hard to find a cat-napping rhythm of our own. Still, sleep deprivation does funny things to the brain—and the cells storing my musical memory short-circuited.

Like many new moms, I sang to the little guy all the time. But instead of the beautiful, child-appropriate ballads my mother sang to me, I was streaming pop music circa 1990. We're talking Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," NKotB's "The Right Stuff" (ugh!), and the chorus to Snoop Dogg's "Who Am I (What's My Name)?" In one particularly bad moment, I churned through a piece of meta-pop from Neil Diamond called "The American Popular Song." That pulp—with the telling lyric "The American popular song goes on and on and on"—had been moldering in a corner of my brain since the early 80s.

Obviously, baby G's musical education needed an overhaul! Today, our MP3 player administers regular doses of indie rock songs, folk tunes, jazz sessions, British rock anthems, and classical recordings—but our favorite staple is the musical soundtrack. And why not? The lively song-and-dance numbers are like primary colors—bright, cheery, simple, and entertaining. So, it's no surprise that five of our favorite lullabies come from musical soundtracks. Here they are:

• "Moonshine Lullaby" from Annie Get Your Gun
  Illegal brewing has never been more soothing than in Bernadette Peters' rendition of this treasure from Irving Berlin. We saw her in the 1999 Broadway revival—and the incredible energy she had on stage comes through loud and clear in the recording. With lyrics like the following, how can you go wrong?
  
  "Behind the hill,
  There's a busy little still
  Where your Pappy's workin' in the moonlight.
  
  "Your lovin' paw
  Isn't quite within the law,
  So he's hidin' there behind the hill.
  
  "Bye, bye, baby.
  Stop your yawnin'.
  Don't cry, baby,
  Day will be dawning.
  
  "And when it does,
  From the mountain where he wuz,
  He'll be coming with a jug of moonshine."
  
  You get the idea.
  



• "Stay Awake" from Mary Poppins
  Julie Andrews tenderly delivers this clever piece of reverse psychology from Sherman and Sherman on the film soundtrack. The lyrics may preach resistance to bedtime, but the sleepy melody promises to carry kids off to dreamland before they can put up a fight:
  
  "Stay awake, don't rest your head.
  Don't lie down upon your bed.
  While the moon drifts in the skies,
  Stay awake, don't close your eyes.
  
  "Though the world is fast asleep,
  Though your pillow's soft and deep,
  You're not sleepy as you seem.
  Stay awake, don't nod and dream;
  Stay awake, don't nod and dream."
  



• "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music
  When I was 10 and wanted my cat to climb up on the bed with me, all I had to do was sing this Rogers and Hammerstein favorite from The Sound of Music. What can I say? The cat had taste. There's something intimate and comforting about the acoustic guitar accompaniment (which my mom played for me when she taught me the song). And the lyrics are hopeful and happy, with a dash of nationalism—just what every kid needs, right?
  
  "Edelweiss, Edelweiss,
  Every morning you greet me.
  Small and white, clean and bright,
  You look happy to meet me.
  
  "Blossom of snow,
  May you bloom and grow,
  Bloom and grow forever.
  
  "Edelweiss, Edelweiss,
  Bless my homeland forever."
  



• "Good Night, My Someone" from The Music Man
  My mom taught me this ballad from Meredith Willson's The Music Man for one of those elementary school talent shows, and I just loved the idea of singing a lullaby to a person I'd never met. The unknown person, of course, is one's true love: "I must depend on a wish and a star as long as my heart doesn't know who you are." Swoon, right? This chorus came right back to me when I was rocking baby G one night, which gave me hope for recovered brain cells:
  
  "Sweet dreams be yours, dear,
  If dreams there be,
  Sweet dreams to carry you close to me.
  I wish they may, and I wish they might;
  Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight."
  



• "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from Cinderella

A song from a Disney animated feature may not exactly count as a "show tune"—but it's my list, and I'm making an exception! Ilene Woods' warm voice carries this dreamy tune from Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. Unfortunately, on our version, there is a clanging clock that sounds in the middle of the track, followed by a cranky lament from Cinderella herself. But if you can get around those bits, or just sing it yourself, it's a sweet melody.

I'm a sucker for optimism, and this song is chock-full:

"A dream is a wish your heart makes,
When you're fast asleep.
In dreams, you will lose your heartaches.
Whatever you wish for, you keep.

"Have faith in your dreams, and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through.
No matter how your heart is grieving,
If you keep on believing,
The dream that you wish will come true."

Maintenance

It's been too long between posts, dear reader (yes, you!). So, here turns the new leaf. The next few entries will be experiments with that HTML staple, the unordered list, in the hopes that this will encourage shorter, more positive, and more frequent updates. Only time will tell. Stay tuned...

Paper Trail: Confessions of a Diaper Hypocrite

How I tossed my environmental conscience into the landfill.

Guilt and worry—two special feelings I can't seem to shake, especially when it comes to the whole diaper debate.

One of the things I obsess about is what the next wave of Earth settlers will find when they dig through whatever remains of our civilization. I imagine squads of saucers deploying teams to puzzle over Crocs, rifle through broken Bakelite, and crack the code for LOL and OMG.

(Inevitably, this train of thought leads to my wide-awake paranoia about being one of the bodies they put into the alien museum—you know, like the mummies encased in glass at the British Museum? "What big hips they had," they'll say. "How short and wide they were!" After seeing the gift shop at the King Tut exhibit in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, I made my whole family promise never to make my death mask into a lolly pop or a pencil eraser or any other novelty item, thank you very much.)

And of course, what civilization excavation scenario leaves out the landfills? Our entire story is in the trash. I imagine the poor suckers who sort the stuff will end up with two piles that tower over everything else: skyscrapers of old cell phones and used diapers.

Now, I don't mind if the aliens go through my address book—but decades' worth of baby poop? TMI, people! Sure, it'll give them incontrovertible proof of our dietary habits, but really. Let's make them work a little for it, right? Also, couldn't they just reconstruct us all like the world's worst Jurassic Park knock-off? People of science laughed at me when I ranted about this, telling me that it was unlikely any DNA would be present. But then I read an article about the world's oldest poop—14,000 years old with DNA in tact!—and vowed that no one in our family would leave such a souvenir.

Most sources on the diaper debate—cloth vs. paper—will tell you that it's basically a wash when it comes to the environment. Paper products eat up trees and build up in landfills (up to 20 years to biodegrade!), while cloth diapers have pesticides in their past and require bejillions of gallons of water to scrub them clean. Even Bill Nye on his guilt-inducing show "Stuff Happens", which catalogues the environmentally unfriendly things we do in every room of the house, didn't give a definitive answer. The skeptic in me thought that maybe paper-diaper advertising fixed the fight—although I never stopped the TiVo long enough to confirm my suspicions.

Still, since almost every paper diaper is also individually wrapped in plastic before it's discarded, I couldn't help but think that reusable cloth diapers were the way to go. Cost is comparable, too, if you opt for a diaper service (those who wash their own cloth diapers come out slightly ahead). My parents gave us the best gift of all: the first few months on a diaper service. In fact, it was the same diaper service they'd used in my baby days—Dy-Dee Diapers is pretty much the only game in Southern California. And they are wonderful! Not only did they spirit away the mess and leave us fresh, clean diapers every week, but they also introduced me to exciting inventions. No more leaky, uncomfortable plastic pants for this generation! Now, there are snazzy covers that close easily with Velcro and these marvelous Snappi things that secure the diapers without pesky (and nasty!) pins.

So, the cloth experiment was off to a great start! Of course, we gave ourselves a special paper dispensation for travel. And when people came to visit (no need for visitors to have to go straight to the dry cleaners after stopping by, right?). And when we ran out of clean diaper covers. And when we had a surplus of paper diapers. And when we got lazy. Some weeks, we were probably 50/50. But over the holidays, we pretty much abandoned cloth altogether. No leaks, fast securing (a must when baby figured out how to roll over on the changing table), less bulk for baby, and easy disposal. Sold!

And sold out. It took me a week or two to admit I'd abandoned my principles for the sake of expediency. But today, I canceled the diaper service. Everyone tells me not to beat myself up. They say our contribution of waste is just a drop in the bucket—the very "everyone is doing it" argument that made me crazy when I was on the cloth side. It's the kind of thinking that giant landfills are made of. So, no, I DO deserve to feel bad about this. After all, my guilt will likely erode over the next few months—but our diapers won't!


Dy-Dee Diapers: *****
My paper cave-in: *

Book Beat: Is the Rainbow Fish a Red?

Children's story values flash over substance.

Let's take a moment to pity the children of English majors whose parents' uncontrollable lit-crit tendencies keep the books their peers love out of their reach. Our first child is not even born, and already I'm culling his library for unsavory messages, tacky topics, and egregious grammar. Will he have a severe knowledge deficit if he doesn't read Everyone Poops? This mom is willing to risk it.

Currently on the chopping block is Marcus Pfister's The Rainbow Fish. Despite its vibrant cover and shimmering illustrations, the story has a dark underbelly with a warped message about how to make friends.

The Rainbow Fish (RF) starts out as a vain jerk. He won't play with the other fish because he's "too beautiful." Another fish asks him if he can have one of his shiny scales. RF is quite justifiably appalled (after all, that is a piece of his body!), and the beggar fish swims away. Then RF has an odd moment where he asks an octopus why no one likes him (how RF got from being "too beautiful" to caring about what others think is not explained). The octopus advises RF to give away his shining scales: "You won't be as beautiful, but you will have friends." Heeding this advice, RF gives away all but one of his scales and swims off happily with his new scale-sporting friends. The end.

Um, let's go back to: "You won't be as beautiful, but you will have friends." What a message! Arguably, the word "beautiful" could represent RF's vanity here—meaning he had to let go of his snotty attitude in order to befriend others. But literally—which is how I think most youngsters would read this—it sounds like having a distinguishing characteristic all your own is a bad thing. Distribute the wealth, or else the proles will get you! Worse is the idea that you have to buy friendship by giving away the part of yourself that makes you who you are. The Rainbow Fish gave up his rainbowness to be part of the pack. The word for that in the adult world is sell-out.

If the other fish in RF's world were also special and had something to share, I wouldn't be as bothered by the overall story arc. In that case, there would have been wonderful opportunities for lessons celebrating the uniqueness of individual contributions and the rewarding result of cooperation. But as is, RF comes across as a stereotypical bourgeois pig, who gives in to proletariat demands to share his wealth in exchange for social status. What kind of worldview is that for a child? It sounds like a Faustian bargain to me.

True friendship can't be bought—not with shiny scales or bits of one's soul. While the value of sharing and being unselfish can't be stressed enough, it can never be gained at the expense of one's integrity. Maybe it's asking too much of a children's book to make that distinction, but it's enough to keep The Rainbow Fish off our baby's shelf.


The Rainbow Fish: *

Tube Talk: PBS Bio-Pic Is Pure Austen-tation

The drama centers on an unsympathetic heroine who wishes she were a missus.

If the premise of the PBS bio-drama Miss Austen Regrets—that all women live to rue something in their pasts—is true, then my regret is sitting through the whole 90-minute film without changing the channel. In this fourth installment of the "Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen" series, writer Gwyneth Hughes presents the novelist in her final years, ruing her spinsterhood, sparring with her much younger niece over men, and generally wallowing in self-pity—all qualities that go unrewarded in Austen's own novels. What would the original think of such a shallow copy?

It's no wonder that fans of Jane Austen's works become obsessed with the writer herself. After all, very little is known about her beyond what you would find in a fourth-grade book report. Yes, there are the basic facts—year of birth, year of death, years of residence in one part of the country and another, not to mention an extensive genealogy—but there is very little insight into her interior life. No diaries survive, and beyond her novels themselves and the tenuous written memories of her surviving relatives, there are just a few personal letters to hint at the character of the person who wrote them.

Nearly 200 years after her death, reconstructing that character is still a feverish trend in the literary world. As Kathryn Sutherland notes in her introduction to the 2002 Oxford University Press edition of J.E. Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, "it is not facts and information we crave but intimacy and identification." That desire to know the author better—in the same way that readers become intimately acquainted with her heroines—unfortunately leads to wild speculation on the part of critics and biographers, who cast many Jane Austens based not on available information, but on Catherine Morland-style extrapolations of small details.

Miss Austen Regrets provides a perfect example of decontextualizing the surviving source material. Among Austen's surviving letters, the most tantalizing are those addressed to her niece, Fanny Knight, who was 18 years her junior. In these letters, Austen discusses Fanny's love life, particularly whether she should accept a proposal from a certain gentleman and how to read the signs of her own heart. In these letters, she praises Fanny warmly for her complex character and feelings, and it is obvious that Aunt Jane had nothing but the highest esteem for her young niece. It is fun to see how Austen's opinion—whether Fanny should accept or wait for a better offer—oscillates from nearly one paragraph to the next. Her excitement seems genuine, as does her earnestness to prove helpful without overinfluencing Fanny's own thoughts on the matter.

Hughes' script borrows heavily from these letters, placing verbatim lines into face-to-face dialogue scenes between aunt and niece throughout the film. Rather than the comeraderie Austen's letters suggest, Hughes uses these conversations to fuel conflict between the two characters, who get into heated discussions about weighing the values of love and money in marriage. Hughes also paints a Jane (Olivia Williams) who, at 40, flirts shamelessly with men and even begins to have feelings for her brother's young doctor—feelings that cause an unlikely rivalry to develop between Jane and Fanny (Imogen Poots). Frustrated, lonely, and perpetually defensive, Jane becomes more wretched and dissatisfied as her physical condition deteriorates. At long last, the film ends with Fanny's own wedding—three years after Jane's death—and somehow Fanny finally realizes what all her aunt's fuss was about. Unfortunately, the audience is left in the dark.

Whether Jane Austen truly wrestled with loneliness, self-doubt, and long-standing regret can never be known. But it does seem that someone with her wit, intelligence, and humor would not have spent her days in long laments as this film suggests. While the lack of hard evidence leaves plenty of room for biographical interpretations, it seems unfair to bend out of shape the few surviving artifacts. In the quest to know her better, why not look for Austen's thoughts about life and society where they are most well-preserved—within the pages of her novels.


Miss Austen Regrets: *

Tube Talk: "Grey's" Blacks Out Marriage

At Seattle Grace, commitment is toxic—and often fatal.

Okay, I admit it. When it comes to television and movies, I'm a sucker for the romantic comedies with the ludicrous obstacles, the longing looks, the delayed gratification, and the really bad jokes. This plot construction has been a time-honored girl magnet since Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice hit the stands, and probably even before. But, it doesn't work for every medium. With television shows, the push-me, pull-me between romantic leads can only hold water for so many episodes. Eventually, someone has to make a decision—and often, the decision kills the chemistry that attracted viewers in the first place. (Remember how unwatchable "Lois and Clark" became as they prepared for the wedding? Ick.)

"Grey's Anatomy," ABC's primetime hospital soap, charged out of the gate with the formula in full effect. Girl (Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey) meets guy (Patrick Dempsey's "McDreamy"), who is (gasp!) her boss. After falling for him anyway, she finds out he's married. Will he leave his adulterous wife for his adulterous girlfriend? There you have the first two seasons of "Grey's Anatomy." Silly premise though it was, the show was peppered with interesting patient story lines, good supporting characters, and fairly sharp, funny dialogue—enough to keep me coming back week after week.

But once the main conflict was resolved (early in Season 3 when boy and girl FINALLY choose each other), the engine of the show cranked to a halt. If this had been a film, the music would have swelled, the credits would have rolled, and the audience would have fumbled for their car keys on their way out the door. But, no. A zombified version of the show still limps along. Whether the creative juices haven't yet been replenished or whether there are too many new cooks in the kitchen, the strong characters developed in the first two seasons have become plot puppets with little consistency from week to week. For instance, is the Dr. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) who let her husband walk out the door without a fight last night really the same Dr. Bailey who told her coworker that the people you love always have priority over your career? It's almost like the writers haven't watched their own show.

In a strange effort to revive the show and keep ratings high, the writers have been viciously hunting down all couples since the end of Season 2, when a main love interest was killed off after proposing to one of the interns. This seemed okay at the time, as it felt like a one-time bout of bad luck. But Season 3 and Season 4 have ruthlessly mowed down every married (or potentially married) couple in its path. The idea of marriage is either toxic (Cristina and Burke, Callie and George) or fatal (Denny, George's dad, and Meredith's step mom don't survive). After running out of main characters to break up and guest stars to kill off, the writers fell upon supporting roles, leaving both the Chief and Dr. Bailey on their own after decades of marriage.

Season 4, which ended abruptly with last night's episode as a result of the writers' strike, has decimated the playing field. No couple is left standing, with the possible exception of McDreamy and his new scrub nurse, Rose (Lauren Stamile). There are no interesting combinations left, and the patient plot lifts have been flat to nonexistent for the past two seasons. The show has stagnated as much as the characters' love lives. Sharp dialogue has been replaced by terse, stale phrases and lingering, awkward beats—usually between the titular character and McDreamy trying to out-break-up each other.

Of course, it's unrealistic to assume that every couple that walks down the aisle (or talks about it) will live happily ever after. But many do stay together—and marriage doesn't have to be a fallow field for writers. After all, "I Love Lucy," "The Cosby Show," and even "Everybody Loves Raymond" lasted for years on the air with (gasp!) married protagonists that kept the audience interested. If ABC must keep the malingering "Grey's" on the air, there has to be more than a group of single losers to keep viewers engaged. Exploring more mature relationships—and bringing back the light, witty touch from earlier seasons—could pull it out of the downward spiral.

"Grey's Anatomy": **