Scott Joplin Music

OK, so all the "great composers" maybe weren't from Austria, Germany, or Italy. This CD, right here, justifies the quite justifable elitest attitude (also known as "Patriotism"). Maybe another title, "America's Greatest Hits" might have been appropriate, but then, a dunce or two would be whining for "A Horse With No Name," so "Classics" is it. Just look at who and what is represented on these cds: George Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" (you might remember THAT if you saw "Fantasia 2000") Leonard Bernstein conducts his own beautiful "Dances From West Side Story" (he also conducted Gershwin). There's John Phillip Sousa's "Stars And Stripes Forever," a piece of music so beautiful, so astoundingly patriotism-inducing that it'd even make a.....democrat stand up with his hand over his heart! The ubquitous (and greatly missed) Bernstein conducts Ives' "Central Park In The Dark," and "The Unanswered Question." And that's just the FIRST CD! CAN you improve on perfection? CD #2 is a resounding YES! Here's Berbstein again conducting Samuel Barber's "Adagio For String," and Aaron Copland's beautiful "Appalachin Spring." And here's where the rest of the cd hits you like an enormous amyl-nitrate rush: Seiji Ozawa conducts the San Francisco Orchestra performing William Russo's unvbelievable "Three Piece For Blues Band And Orchestra." Ozawa, the story goes, enjoyed "going out for a cold one" after orchestra rehearsals, and he was especially was fond of a local blues band, The Seigel-Schwall Band. He commissioned his composer friend, William Russo, to compose something that the Band could could perfom with the orchestra. And I know you're thinking, "OH yeah, Procol Harum Live In Edmonton, 'Conquistador,' yeah." NO: As much as I ADORE Procol Harum, there is NO comparison! The Seigel-Schwall Band was strictly a BLUES band, and Russo - whew! composed three pieces that not only altered, but definitely enhanced the Band's electric blues. Like I'm so fond of saying,"By Alteration, Enhances!" My brother is a classically trained symphonic musician, and one time - wow, 25 years ago - he was playing "Three Pieces" on my battered stereo while I was in the shower. And I couldn't WAIT to "dry off," and run screaming in the romm, "WAHT IS THAT YOU'RE PLAYING?" Trust me on this folks, you won't believe it either - and you'll thank Heaven that it's on a CD, because if it was an album, you'd wear the grroves right out by replaying it over and over. And OLD ON, it ain't finished yet: the remainder of the CD features Arthur Feilder conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra performin 3 of the fantastically-talented but almost unknown, Scott Joplin. You remember that great piano music in the movie,"The Sting?" That was Scott Joplin - and he's represented here with "The Entertainer" (I dare you to keep from tapping your right foot when you listen to this),"The Sugar Cane Rag," and the "Maple Leaf Rag." The cd closes with an undiscovered GEM, excerpts fro Joplin's opera "Tremonshia."
This is pure, undiluted AMERICAN music, people. PLEASE do yourself a favor and put down the metal, the "alt," the rapping, the country 'n western, and even my beloved Rock and Roll for
about 2 and a half hours of some of the most incredible - and not THE LEAST BIT BORING! - Classical Music. Music that AMERICA was responsible for!

Eclectic collection of some well known and some previously unavailable works. The first appearance of the complete "Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra" by Williams Russo and the Siegel-Schwall Band. Excellent recordings. Bargain price.

Finaly, a cd recording of one of the best cello ensembles inthe world. The Yale Cellists live up to their reputation in thisrecording. I originally bought this for the Popper Requiem, Op 66. The requiem is not frequently played. About 15 years ago, I asked Yo Yo Ma what his favorite piece was, to which he replied the Popper requiem. The original score for the Requiem is for 3 cellos and piano. This recording has multiple cellos on each part, making the layers more complex in a way suitable to a requiem, more like a choral requiem. The other pieces on this cd are wonderfully arranged. The Vivaldi Four Seasons arrangements are exceptional, as well as the Pachelbel canon. The Joplin tune at the end of the disc gives the cd a little pep, with most of the other pieces being very serious and solemn. This is the perfect cd to entertain guests with, or read the Sunday morning paper to.

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.

This cd has the best of John Williams all in one package. I would highly reccomend this cd to anyone who loves classical guitar.

This album was absolutely amazing. I find myself listening to it almost every day. The music to "The Mission" alone is worth the price.

The first song on this set is why I bought the whole album. It blows you away listening to the precise picking and the gorgeous way it is done. Not robotic like some freaks out there. This is true beautiful music. Runs together like a long summer drive in the country. It is just a perfect album to listen to at home or on the go.

First, this is gorgeous guitar playing by someone who knows what he's doing. John Williams (not to be confused by the film score composer of the same name) is a superb classical guitarist. Many of these pieces are *classical* in nature, while a few are more *popular*. Many are solo, the rest in small chamber groups. Some will get your toes tapping, some will start you daydreaming, and some will make you cry with their beauty. All of it is magnificent.

The title very aptly describes this great classical guitar album showcasing some of the best ever works of John Williams on 2 discs. The track selections are great as they span the centuries from the Baroque greats of Bach and Vivaldi to the modern day composers such as Stanley Myers and York. John even flirts with Blues and Jazz-style pieces and they actually sound very good. In addition, they did a much better mastering job on this version than on the single disc, "Classic John Williams" album that was released a few years earlier and so the sound quality is much better. John Williams' playing is without peer and his technique is superior to the vast majority of the exponents of classical guitar that are out there. I've heard recordings of many others who have tried to play "Cavatina" for example and they have never come close to the natural and flowing version that John plays. If you are a fan of this type of music or of John Williams' work, this is the best compilation that you can get that's out there. Highly recommended!