Eubie Blake Music

Charles Thompson was a contemporary of Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson, and was one of the leading figues of the second generation of St. Louis ragtime pianists.

This album, made up of live recordings from the early 1960s, finds Thompson in reasonable form, playing some of his best known pieces plus a few standards. His powers had declined a little from his 1948-49 American Music recordings, but he was still able to play in an entertaining fashion. Many of the performances are rather short, but these are historic recordings by a little known but important figue in ragtime.

Delmark is to be commended for this release: let's hope they re-issue the rest of the Euphonic back catalogue. Anyone interested in ragtime and early jazz should consider buying this CD.

This CD offers some of Jeanette Macdonald and Nelson Eddy's most beloved songs from their movies. Their natural chemistry is apparent in songs like "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life" and their individual talents are shown in the solos that they sing. These two legendary performers draw the audience into their songs and each is a special memory of the movie that it came from. Macdonald and Eddy were made to sing together. It is surprising that they were not sweethearts off screen after hearing their voices and seeing their movies. Their passion and tenderness towards each other is something out of a fairy tale. This CD has all the fun, romance, and innocence that was epitomized in their movies. It is a true treasure and a favorite in my music library.

These recordings date from 1975 (the ragtimes) and 1976. Vox was the Naxos of the LP era. They made rare repertoire available at cheap prices, in interpretations that usually were no more than serviceable. One definitive advantage of the CD reissues is that the Vox LPs were often marred by poor, noisy pressings, hampering a full appreciation of the recordings.

In this survey of piano music in America between 1900 and 1945, some of the expected warhorses are there - Gershwin's Three Preludes and Copland's Piano Variations - but mostly we get rarely if ever recorded pieces, roughly arranged in chronological order. The very principle of this collection does entail some frustration, both for its unavoidable omissions (where are Ornstein, Nancarrow, Ruth Crawford?) and because it gives us only snippets from all these composers (some of them so rarely heard that it only serves to whet and frustrate one's appetite), and sometimes only excerpts, either from complete Sonatas (Ives, Barber) or from cycles (MacDowell's Woodland Sketches, Thomson's and Riegger's etudes, Griffes' Four Roman Sketches). But then it is invaluable for all the rarities it offers, so let us happily welcome what we get.

MacDowell's five excerpts from Woodland Sketches are rather uninteresting short tone poems in the style of Grieg, but Loeffler's language is more adventurous, conjuring the mysteriously sensuous harmonies of Scriabin and Debussy, with flights into Rachmaninoff.

Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, William Schuman are all much better known for their big symphonic scores or, in the case of Thomson, his operas and film scores (as well as his music criticism), making the inclusion of some of their piano music all the more welcome. Thomson's Third Piano Sonata from 1930 was written for Gertrude Stein whose interest for modern music was greater than her piano playing abilities, and offers the peculiarity of being written only for the white notes. It is mostly in the form of a simple, two-part invention and, despite the liner notes' claim, often sounds like "music for children" - say, the first steps of "Mikrokosmos". Maybe Thomson's "early and notoriously dissonant Sonata da Chiesa" (according to the notes) would have been a more interesting choice. The two etudes are excerpted from Thomson's 1943 Ten Etudes, each of which deals with some particular technical difficulties. The two chosen by Shields sound like (slightly out-of-tune) tango and ragtime all-right, and their small musical substance makes me think they must offer more fodder for playing than just for listening.

Like Thomson, Copland, Piston and Harris were pupils of Nadia Boulanger in Paris, but Barber, Schuman and Sessions were not. Still, their compositions share some common traits: they are usually stern, neo-classic in general outlook in that they are based on melodic and harmonic processes (often derived from Bach and the classical forms: 2-voice invention, chorale-like chord progressions, Passacaglia, Fugue) rather than the search of novel sound effects based on percussive attacks or clusters (as Cowell, Antheil and often Ives), and each movement often develops a certain specific compositional idea (sometimes overreaching their basic material to the point of satiation, as in the slow movement of Harris' Sonata or the introductory one from Sessions "From my Diary"). They never relinquish their ties to tonality, but their firm establishment is the modern times derives from their use of dissonance and bi- or polytonality. Even when they are not called as such, both Schuman's "Three Score Set" and Session's "From My Diary" mimic a Sonata construction (with slow introduction in the case of Sessions). Of all, it is Copland that establishes the most personal and immediately recognizable voice (to the point that the middle, choral part of Schuman's piece and some like passages of Harris strongly evoke the Brooklyn-born composer).

Other than Copland's Variations, my favorite pieces are those from the early modernists, Antheil, Cowell and Ives. Among the set's rarities, Wallingford Riegger's choice of 6 out of his 12 studies "New and Old" (1944) also offers an exceptional discovery. Riegger began his artistic course as a traditional Romantic composer but gradually evolved a much more personal language based upon dissonant chromatic counterpoint and eventually twelve-tone procedures, sounding very different from what Schoenberg and his school derived from the process (see Riegger: Symphony No3, Romanza, Dance Rhythms, Music for Orchestra, Concerto for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, Music for Brass Choir, Movement for Two Trumpets Trombone and Piano, Nonet for Brass and Wallingford Riegger: Variations / Sym No.4 for a good presentation of his orchestral work). As implied by their titles (further developed in the composer's explanations that introduce them in the score), the etudes illustrate certain compositional processes, but they are much more than mere didactic and cold exercises, offering instead dazzling virtuosity and mesmerizing sonic imagination, making it all the more frustrating that Shields didn't record the complete set.

The survey is completed by a fine program of 13 ragtimes - indeed one of the most vernacular inventions of American music - lasting 40 minutes in all, some of them highly elaborate and virtuosic, as Robert Hampton's "Cataract Rag", Lucky Roberts' "Pork and Beans" and Eubie Blake's "Troublesome Ivories".

Where I have scores and/or comparative versions to allow for an informed opinion, Shields is mostly excellent to outstanding, to make one wonder why he didn't have more of a career (this is his only recording I am aware of). He's got the required virtuosity, snap, muscularity and sometimes frenzy (Ives' two Studies, Antheil's Sonata, Cowell's "Invention" and "Advertisement"), and a fine sense of color and atmosphere (Griffes, Cowell's "Exultation"). Only in Cowell's "Aeolian harp" do I find him, compared to the composer's own recording (Henry Cowell plays his own Piano Music), square in tempo ("Tempo Rubato" is the tempo indication) and greyer in his colors and dynamics.

But part of his program Shield plays on an inferior piano which can't sustain a chord, and the sound of the pedal mechanism can be heard in some like a short maracas rattle. In some of the pieces Shield's humming can be heard, not outlandishly out-of-tune like Glenn Gould's, but strangely raspy, as if produced with the help of a kazoo.

Composer Lejaren Hiller and Shields himself for the ragtimes contribute remarkably interesting, informed and informative liner notes.

Since I'd never heard of Richard Dowling, I had modest expectations, but I like to listen to all the ragtime pianists. (Years ago I borrowed pianos to play "closet" ragtime myself, just to get at those gorgeous chords of Joplin and Joe Lamb). Well, Dowling surprised me with his lyrical, lovely playing! He's a real discovery, and a favorite, along with Dick Hyman. I like also Max Morath for his bouncy and congenial playing & singing. So you give Dowling a chance, and I hope he records more tunes from the large ragtime repertory.

This is a great collection of rags of various styles. The Graceful Ghost is just a wonderful flowing rag bordering on classical, and at the other end is the very fun Entertainer's Rag. Richard Bowling plays them all well. The three Zez Confrey cuts are not to my liking so much, but the rest is a set of play over and over things.

Since i am into ragtime i was curious about orchestral movements.
I play alot of piano rags but you also would believe it was composed for orchestra

gunther schuller and his ragtime ensemble are in my eyes the bestest in this sector. They play the rags like they use to be.
i can recommend this CD to everyone who likes ragtime.

I love ragtime, but I don't love this CD. If you like the sound of a very loud snare drum dominating many of the tracks, then you'll like it. Before you buy it, try to borrow it from your local library to make sure it's for you. I wish I had. Let the buyer beware!

once again gunther schuller brings us the beautiful sound of orchestrated ragtime. but instead of focusing on Scott Joplin, he mixes in modern day rags. Mattapan Rag, composed by the tubist, shows how ragtime can be effective outside of the typical ABACD format established in early rags. a great suprise is the Smokehouse Blues. while not a "rag" it does use the ompah base and syncopated treble and therefore is very welcome. it also shows how southern ragtime is much dofferent from midwestern.

I first heard the New England Ragtime Ensemble on PBS many years ago, and the wonderful sounds from these talented musicians has stuck in my head ever since. The 17 tracks on this album are generally quite up-tempo, though the "slower" songs certainly wouldn't qualify as ballad (and hence would not be ragtime).

I was surprised to find any ragtime collection that does not include Joplin's "The Entertainer", but they have clearly not been wanting for good material to fill a CD -- every one is a winner. My favorites are Rob Carriker's "Matapan Rag" and a delightful (non-piano!) arrangement of "Dizzy Fingers".

Any fan of ragtime will love this album. I did.