1902 scott joplin piano rag8/8/2023 Listeners in search of a bit more energy in Joplin should check out recordings by Dutch pianist Guido Nielsen or even, on the Naxos label itself, the unorthodox but lively versions by Alexander Peskanov. The meditative opening strains, with their daring outline of a major seventh in the right hand, absorb the attention, but the buildup of energy Joplin intended in the final two strains just doesn't come off. Sample the magnificent Gladiolus Rag, track 7, to hear both the advantages and disadvantages of Loeb's approach within a single work. But the music seems at times to want to break out of its straitjacket - as indeed Loeb lets it do, but in a questionable way, with his decision to let the rhythms of the final Stoptime Rag swing slightly, something else Joplin expressly forbade. Of course, formality might have been fine with Joplin, who had operatic and balletic aspirations for his music that history let him realize only imperfectly. Occasional light ornamentation does not break the straight-ahead motion. Chicago: Illinois: Rag: Box 2, File XYZ: Yes: Tom Brier Collection A Real Rag 1912: Lawrence Blair Lew Roberts: Nashville: Tennessee: Rag: Box 1: Yes: Tom Brier Collection A Real Slow Drag 1913: Scott Joplin John Stark & Son: New York City: New York: Rag: Box 3, File UV: No. Loeb's deliberate approach brings out Joplin's harmonic expertise on the slower numbers, but in a quicker piece like the Rag-Time Dance, track 1, there is very little dance spirit to be found. A Rag-Time Wedding March 1902: Axel Christensen Christensen Pub. These interpretations fall even past the classic discs by Joshua Rifkin at the slow-and-steady end of the spectrum, treating Joplin in a very formal way. Did he mean "slow," or just not to play it like the trick pianists who held forth in saloons and Police Gazette competitions? Joplin's own surviving piano rolls don't offer definitive answers, and in any case cannot solve problems like articulation, but they are in the main, even given their mechanical limitations, quite a bit peppier than the Joplin recordings offered here by Texas-based pianist Benjamin Loeb. It is never right to play ragtime fast."), leaving plenty of room for interpretational divergences among modern pianists. Scott Joplin's performance indications tended to be of the negative variety ("Do not play this piece fast.
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