This is a companion
volume to The Emperor’s New Clothes
and Aesop Suite for An die Musik
on Newport Classics NPD85668, also reviewed
here, which contained music by Peter
(P.D.Q. Bach) Schickele and by Jerzy
Sapieyevski. Here they turn to Bruce
Adolphe for both commissions and enlist
the doughty support of Mittel-Europish
Dr Ruth Westheimer as narrator, a woman
whose violent association with the English
language has encouraged the use of American
demotic in matters culinary and cultural.
Little Red Riding
Hood has been rudely plucked from
her European locale and festooned with
bagels and "nut cookies" (whatever
they are). Characters don’t wander through
pathways of a vaguely Schubertian kind,
they patronise "a small diner by
the interstate" and when swallowed
by the wolf, extraction of the consumed
bodies is facilitated by the Heimlich
Manoeuvre. This is not a manoeuvre to
be recommended when practised by "Dr
Ruth" a woman whose fearless inspection
of sexual mores is matched only by her
Genghis Khan like assaults on the text.
Still I dare say that children in her
neck of the woods will enjoy the weird
local colour and will equally enjoy
the music. This veers from fresh flowing
(non-Prokofiev) perambulation, flecked
by charming exchanges for violin, oboe
and piano, to a trenchant wolf motif.
There’s delightful nostalgic reverie
for the Grandmother, revisited in vaguely
leitmotif style and some sturdy jazzy
music for the woodcutter. This is a
most enjoyable piece of work by Adolphe
– nothing startling, but sympathetic
and warm.
His Goldilocks and
the Three Bears is recorded much
closer than the companion work so to
avoid the Westheimer Effect you might
want to adjust your volume control.
There’s not so much Americanisation
here, just a reference or two to hot
dogs, but otherwise the retelling is
harmonious even if there are car journeys
to set us in motion and not elysian
walks. Adolphe characterises the singing
and the sleep musics adeptly, not dissimilar
in the latter case from the Grandmother’s
nostalgia in the companion setting.
The bears are well characterised musically
and there are some sinuous melodies
here to amuse the listener. Some of
the writing bears an Impressionist stamp
but there’s also plenty of honest drama
to involve the imaginative child.
Two more pleasurable
invitations to sample An die Musik’s
thoughtful commissions.
Jonathan Woolf
An die Musik: (Robert Ingliss (oboe) Frank
Almond (violin) Richard Brice (viola) Daniel Rothmuller
(cello) Constance Emmerich (piano)) 
