Customer Reviews

Century of Ragtime: 1897-1997

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

 

 

This 2-CD set featuring a wide array of artists is true to its title in presenting a good overview of the century. The first disc features piano solos and the second disc small-orchestra arrangements, each presented chronologically. One caveat is that ragtime fans may already own several of the selections, as they are taken from existing CDs (e.g., Morath, Rifkin, Zimmerman).

Not to sound grand (...), but I rather enjoyed this compilation, bringing to life such music from our American past century. It's nice to have the variety available at ones finger tips all in on CD set. A great jumping off point to delve deeper into Ragtime. As a performing artist, I use this CD in my period work for inspiration on creative pieces that reflect the spirit of early America. Though, if you happen to be a Canadian music fan from British Columbia, you might want to try the Canadian brass ensemble instead.

I have a rather extensive ragtime collection including such artists as Max Morath, Bill Bolcom, Guido Nielsen, Eubie Blake and Virginia Eskin, to name a few. "A Century of Ragtime" enjoys a favored place in my ragtime library for its diversity of artists, both on the piano and the ensembles, and in the selection of compositions included. The inclusion of several lesser know pieces adds to enjoyment of the package. I highly recommend this collection for anyone just getting started in collecting ragtime music, as well as for any collector who simply wants to have a lot of fun listening to really good music played by really good artists.

I agree with everything said in the other favorable reviews, including the observation that if you are already into ragtime, you may already have a number of these cuts on other CDs. I do. However, I wouldn't trade this collection for anything. One, at least in my case, there's not much duplication (virtually none on the second disc, which includes performances by a number of good groups I had never heard of). Two, this album has a bonus: really good liner notes, with something interesting on every rag composer and every performer or performing group.

I just bought this set of 2 cd's, and I have become really fond of it. CD1 presents a good selection of different pianists playing very different styles and thus showing that ragtime is not all the same. CD2 contains some really catching arrangements for small ensembles, most of them contemporary. Among the selected rags are classics as well as very seldom heard tunes, and a 20 pages booklet contains (very) short but informative notes on the compositions and the artists. If you are building your own ragtime collection, you will need this set for it's own value as well as a guideline to the different artists.

Compilations such as this actually do a disservice to any of the artists who appear here. I can well imagine that the compiler of this set is none other than Richard Zimmerman, who gave himself at least three cuts on the album, 2 of which can be downloaded, which places him in a tie with EUBIE BLAKE!!!!!!!!!! The whole album is pretty much a plethora of unrelated styles. The piano disc has boring Rifkin, the crazed, out-of-control piano-roll style of Zimmerman, the barrel-echoing pianos of Arpin & Wilson, the non-ragtime performances of Roberts and Blais etc.Thank the Lord for the others -as the disk would be a total failure. I'm not into bands so I'll refrain from making comments about disc 2.