Piano Rags Naxos 8.559114
- Composer: Scott Joplin
- Artist: Alexander Peskanov
Scott Joplin is an undisputed master, the self-anointed “King of the Ragtime Writers,” but it was a form he by no means invented; hundreds of examples were in print before his first known publication. Unlike writing in, say, sonata form, ragtime is a style more than a set of construction limitations – though not without form – and is so-named, according to Joplin, “…because it has such a ragged movement.” Ragtime music is favoured by a free sense of syncopation, which is when a steady beat is established and offbeats bounce against it.
The present disc opens with Joplin’s most famous composition, the 1899 (or 1897) Maple Leaf Rag, the best-known instrumental rag of the period. Legend has it that a white publisher walked into the upscale black Maple Leaf Club—something that, in those days, simply did not happen—and seated at the piano was none other than Scott Joplin, playing the Maple Leaf Rag. This publisher then bought the piece and, by all accounts, made a mint. True or not, this piece was Joplin’s jump to fame, and even though he outdid himself in Easy Winners, one of Joplin’s greatest achievements built on similar principles, it is the Maple Leaf which continues to hold our attention today: its use of scintillating syncopations over the barline, an uncommon practice even in the rag, gives this piece its sexy surface, coupled with its use of blue notes and sliding chromatic melodies.
This recording also includes the mainstay piano favourite The Entertainer. This interesting trifle, which became all the rage on intermediate pianos everywhere in the 1970s through a motion picture called The Sting, renewed people’s interest in ragtime, Joplin’s in particular.
Heliotrope Bouquet: A Slow Drag Two Step was composed in Chicago in 1907, a collaboration between Joplin and Louis Chauvin, a younger ragtime composer of note (and someone for whom Joplin had great admiration). The piece makes odd, uncommon use of a sensual Habanera beat, as does Solace—A Mexican Serenade. Latin music and Ragtime music were always thought to have similar rhythmic attributes.
Joplin wrote his Pine Apple Rag for a famous vaudeville group called the Musical Spillers, and they played it on two xylophones and a marimba accompanied by a theatre (that is a small, pickup) orchestra. It is a whiz-bang piece, dominated, at least in the music’s second strain, by a single rhythmic figure, again, another uncommon ragtime practice. When the Spillers did play it, it often received such an ovation that it had to be repeated.
The Paragon Rag is, for the attentive listener, something of a quirky departure for Joplin; in its second theme, one hears a composer trying to drop some of the expected conventions, in this case, the standard “oom-chuck” left hand one expects in a rag, and trying to stretch the boundaries of his form. He accomplishes a similar progression away in Elite Syncopations, where he even uses a chromatic bass line in octaves.
Pleasant Moments and Bethena are both cantabile ragtime waltzes, gorgeous with lush harmonies and lilting melodies (ragtime is usually thought to be an aggressive, hyperthyroid music, and these types of pieces serve as bromides). Both also feature, more so than many of Joplin’s other works, counterpoint, or a dialogue between the left and right hands (in contradistinction to the usual practice of the left hand being accompaniment, the right hand playing the foreground melody).
One of Joplin’s first compositions, Original Rag, should be of interest for the Joplinite (both newfound and seasoned) because it displays, from an early age, this composer’s innate understanding of his material. All the features we associate with the later Joplin are well in place: his ability to spin out long melodies even with syncopation; his chromaticism; his easy, directed sense of harmonic development (the sign of a real composer, and not so prevalent in the Tin Pan Alley hackworkers). Even in much later, lesser pieces like Fig Leaf—a High Class Rag or the Country Club Rag, we still can trace all the stylistic tricks back to the earlier works, and see that Joplin, even while pressing ahead, felt essentially attached to a certain, unshakable tradition.
Piano Rags Review
Anyone looking for a good, solid one-disc package of Scott
Joplin's piano rags will encounter a bewildering number of choices, ranging
from volumes within complete sets to recordings by chamber ensembles or even his
rags as arranged for orchestra. One would think that the new Naxos American
Classics disc, its first of Joplin, would automatically be a strong contender in
the category of direct, unfettered approaches to the work of Joplin as classical
piano music. Unfortunately, Scott Joplin: Piano Rags doesn't deliver the goods,
and the problem may lie in the choice of pianist, in this instance the otherwise
indomitable Alexander Peskanov, noted elsewhere for his mastery of Brahms,
Liszt, and his own (very interesting) piano music.
Peskanov approaches the music with care, taking all indicated repeats,
adding rubato to stretch out transitions against Joplin's inflexible march
beat, and making circumspect use of dynamics so that certain phrases die away
and others jump forward. But Peskanov doesn't add much in the way of spark or
excitement, nor do any of these recordings have the gentle sense of swing that
is idiomatic to ragtime. Peskanov's interpretation of Bethena is too fussy,
lingering over details to the extent that it obscures the form of the piece.
Performances of Bethena normally clock in at about five and a half minutes;
Peskanov takes nearly eight. There is an attempt to vary repeats in certain
parts, but mostly these gestures come off like sloppy improvisations and are
distracting to those who know Joplin's music well. Naxos' Scott Joplin: Piano
Rags is like a glass of soda water that has lost its fizz; it's a shame that
it's not better, but there are certainly a wealth of other, better recordings
of Joplin out there. Uncle Dave Lewis – All Music Guide