Customer Reviews

American Beauties: The Rags of Joseph Lamb

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Joseph F. Lamb is generally thought of as one of the three greatest of the classical ragtime composers, the others being Scott Joplin and James Scott. It's a matter of taste, but many rank him almost as highly as Joplin, and this exquisite album shows why. Lamb's rags typically soar with wonderful, reverie-evoking melodies, unmatched in the ragtime canon. These melodies are offset by original, exciting, brisk passages. Virginia Eskin executes these gems wonderfully. She presents them always at the proper tempo and as written, without the filigrees that are so common in ragtime playing (Lamb doesn't need them!). The only drawback -- and it is a very minor one -- is that she sometimes treads a little too heavily on the pedal. This album is essential in even a small ragtime collection. In my large collection, it is one of my favorite and oft-played treasures.

Up until Joseph Lamb, the only ragtime composer who could satisfy me was Scott Joplin. These rags are excellent and distinctly different from Joplin's, although both composers are obviously from the same genre. According to the liner notes, they even knew each other.

The pianist has a great love of the material, and it shows in her playing.

I highly recommend this CD to all fans of ragtime.

its a good album but not very good
first of all in several rags virgina doesn't repeat where it says it must. second she plays several rags way to fast. Joe lamb was just like the others that ragtime must not be played fast the feeling get lost in the a rag that is played to fast like ragtime nightingale. I have the sheetmusic myself and it says "slow march tempo" not fast like virginia it plays.
but its a good album she plays with flair and style

I have owned this album since June 2000, and it inspired me at the time to find out more online and even to compose some rags of my own. It turns out that many of the melodies are made more "logical" by Eskin. However, she does use too much pedal, and she also does not take most of the repeats. It is unfortunate that she repeats only the first strain of "Ragtime Reverie," for there are no on-demand recordings of that work over the Internet.

A very good recording of infrequently recorded works and I glad to have it. As with Fluffy Ruffle Girls, it has the benefits of modern technology (clean sound) and deficits of generic pianism, played well but as if for a formal recital, or even a contest jury, without even a whiff of the sporting house origins of the genre. I prefer the middle of the road, technically clean, easy on the improvisation, but leaning away from the studio and the concert hall, as represented by Richard Zimmerman, Sue Keller and Perfessor Bill. There are some others who inject more "flavor", speed and a really rinky tink instrument as well to come off like authentic era mechanical pianos on 78's but are still fun to have around. The amount of sleeze you want with your ragtime is definitely a matter of taste (or perhaps obsessive historicity comparable to the seething furor over Baroque music performance).

My bone to pick with Virginia Eskin is her wearing a feminist revisionist agenda on her sleeve (and her front, back and forehead as well it appears). It is admirable to give exposure to a worthy body of neglected works by women, as in Fluffy Ruffle Girls, when few are aware that such works ever existed. (I might venture that to the general public today ragtime itself consists of little more than the soundtrack of "The Sting", if that.) It is another to assert that these works are actually superior to the entire body of ragtime music composed by men with the single exception of Joseph Lamb. In the notes to this (American Beauties) CD she makes the incredible statement that until she heard Lamb she had been under the impression that all the good ragtime had been written by women! Unless somehow she managed to completely avoid Joplin's well known work with over a dozen solid masterpieces of the genre, it is simply an astounding statement. If she wants to dismiss the vast body of mass-produced sludge, most of it attributable to men, that flooded the market during the ragtime era I would join her (and you can see a bunch of it at http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/music/smp/browse.htm). If she wants to dismiss James Scott I might understand. His works are the most vigorous of the big three, more difficult than Joplin, and he deserves his spot among the top three men of the era but I find them superficial, collectively one-dimensional, and even mechanical (ideal for the piano roll, I have that CD for comparison) by comparison. They lack the depth and breadth found in Joplin and Lamb, especially the wide range of moods and styles found in Joplin. But she cannot reasonably dismiss Scott Joplin except as an act of pure idiosyncrasy or chip-on-shoulder provocation.

Virginia Eskin is a good pianist and her playing of Joe Lamb's classic rags is quite enjoyable.
However, those of you who appreciate classic rags played with repeats of strains, be aware! Eskin (or the producer?) cuts out at least one of the strain-repeats on most of the rags. As I see it, this does not add any value to the anyway short pieces of captivating music of Joe Lamb. There are only two rags out of twenty on this CD that are presented as full versions (Alaskan Rag and The Old Home Rag). Why?

Joseph Lamb was a white guy from New Jersey who wrote a lot of rags at the same time as Scott Joplin and James Scott, and then dropped out of sight. When Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, the authors of the first major book on ragtime ("They All Played Ragtime"), tracked him down in 1949, he was living in a modest frame house in Brooklyn, making his living in the dry goods business. They told him he was considered to be one of the "big three" classic ragtime composers. Apparently this prompted him to retrieve and rewrite some rags he had written and put aside years before. So the music on this album spans a period from 1904 or thereabouts to the mid-1950's.

All in all, Lamb published some 38 rags. Many of these, including quite a few on this album, are outstanding. Nobody who has heard Ragtime Nightingale will ever forget it.

Lamb's rags are often complex, and for that and other reasons musically interesting. This theme is developed at length in the liner notes to this album by one Joseph Scotti, who adapted them from a Ph.D. thesis on Lamb written in 1977. Mr. Scotti has a lot to teach the lay reader who is willing to put up with his prose. ("Thus, in this most cantabile of rags [Alaskan Rag], Lamb injected one of the most startling rhythmic phenomena in the ragtime literature, a syncopation highlighted by the structural independence of" etc.)

Virginia Eskin, the performer on this album, writes: "I used to have a theory that the rags written by women were superior to men, until I strolled into Joe Lamb." Her performances bring out a number of the features emphasized by Mr. Scotti.

I can't argue with the reviewers who are critical of Ms. Eskin's technique. Overall, I think she does a fine job. Speaking only for me, I would rather listen to the simpler and more straightforward performances on (for example) "Joseph Lamb, Ragtime Master." Evidently Lamb himself was quite unpretentious. It would be interesting to know which version he would have preferred.

Ms. Eskin certainly can play piano. She can certainly read music. And she can combine the two well enough. What I found most distracting about this album, however, isn't the fact that she doesn't repeat many of the measures. It's that she tends occasionally to hit clinkers. After the first one or two, I found myself listening more closely for mistakes than actually enjoying the music. Another problem with this album is that her renditions are too bulky and heavy. I've heard much cleaner-sounding performances of Lamb's work.

I paid the money so I don't intend to return the CD. But it'll play well enough in my noisy car driving to and from work.