The ragtime category entered complete flower from the mid-1890s through completion of World War I, led by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), whose 1899 structure Maple Leaf Rag ended up being the design template and basic bearer for traditional through-composed rags. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw newly found interest in Joplin as a severe author, beginning with the New York Public Library’s publication of Joplin’s gathered works. Joplin’s 1902 rag The Entertainer figured plainly in the soundtrack for the 1973 Academy Award-winning movie The Sting, introducing a floodgate of Joplin releases. Even classical artists as not likely as Itzhak Perlman, James Levine, and E. Power Biggs hitched their stars to the Joplin bandwagon.
The most detailed, wisely produced, considerate, and creatively pleasing collection of Joplin’s total piano works came from RCA Victor in a five-LP boxed set, including pianist Dick Hyman. No much better Joplin cycle exists, and its very first total look on CD is long past due.
The music exists by category, with the rags set up in loose sequential order by structure, followed by marches and waltzes. Consisted of is Joplin’s captivating “School of Ragtime” Etudes total with Joplin’s initial remarks checked out by composer/pianist and Joplin associate Eubie Blake, who was 92 when he dealt with the microphone to speak. Hyman likewise provides the Grand Crush Collision march both in its initial text and in his own ragtime change.
Hyman’s pianism accepts the whole history of jazz piano, his simple and easy virtuosity is securely rooted in classical training. As Rudi Blesh appropriately specified in his dazzling and informative initial pamphlet annotations, the pianist “takes ragtime seriously without ending up being solemn and portentous, more as one should carry out in approaching, state, much of Mozart.”
2 additional qualities make Hyman’s Joplin stand apart: his smart pace options, and his perfect blend of classical forecast and jazz time keeping. Take Joplin’s 1899 hit Maple Leaf Rag. Hyman’s energetic speed, vibrant contrasts, and clear expression communicate pure happiness with a soupçon of brashness, so unlike Joshua Rifkin’s effete and rhythmically stiff traversal. The Cascades’ coming down runs are as crystalline and transparent as Rubinstein’s Chopin. By contrast, Hyman’s determined pace and ear-catching inflections of expression in Elite Syncopations provide shape and breathing space to Joplin’s polyphony.
Keep in mind, too, Hyman’s charming legato touch and discreetly lilting rubatos in Weeping Willow, Gladiolus Rag, and Solace, while Something Doing is pure lightness and effervescence. The pianist’s characterful animation keeps the episodic Bethena show waltz afloat and moving. And although Hyman plainly appreciates Joplin’s texts, the pianist is not above submitting the texture with discreet octave supports in the left hand, as he carries out in the challenging Euphonic Sounds, a rag that foreshadows aspects of stride piano. Since Hyman approaches each piece by itself terms, one obtains more range and meaningful scope from Joplin’s oeuvre than we experience from many other Joplin interpreters.
The initial LP edition dedicated the tenth side to twelve of Hyman’s improvisations on Joplin styles, which here are spread out throughout the 3 CDs, more than likely for timing factors to consider. They are large thrills, from The Entertainer’s bi-tonal coda to a short and unbuttoned Peacherine Rag that remarkably burlesques Art Tatum’s 1940 recording of Harold Arlen’s Get Happy.
A Breeze From Alabama is pure, untainted barrelhouse and boogie-woogie, while in Joplin’s New Rag Hyman can’t withstand inserting Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves– much better referred to as the summertime camp ditty “George Washington Bridge”. In other words, Dick Hyman and Scott Joplin certainly come from the coterie of cooperative performer/composer pairings that consist of Schnabel/Beethoven, Gould/Bach, Gieseking/Debussy, Larrocha/Alb éniz, and Hamelin/Alkan.
Complete disclosure: I satisfied Dick Hyman almost 60 years earlier when I was 8 years of ages, and he has actually been a buddy, a coworker, and a musical daddy figure to me since. We even played 2 pianos together in a number of performances. I clearly keep in mind hearing Dick preparing these Joplin pieces at the time of the 1975 sessions, and admired his outright dedication to the product, his focus and his versatility in the procedure of getting all of the music under his incredible fingers. Thanks to Sony/BMG for reissuing and beautifully remastering an essential recording job that belongs in every major collection.
