Ragtime

Scott Joplin | Format: MP3 Download

Product Details

• Original Release Date: June 24, 2008
• Number of Discs: 3
• Label: Madacy Special Products
• Copyright: 2008 Madacy Entertainment LP
• Genres:
• ASIN: B001N5JX68
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,312 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent collection, February 19, 2009

By 

Kristen S. Moore "SindarMonkey" (Bremerton, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ragtime: The Music of Scott Joplin [Collector's Edition Music Tin] (Audio CD)

While not a complete collection of Scott Joplin's work, this beautiful set contains 30 piano masterpieces by the King of Ragtime. Many pianists play Joplin too slow. Others too fast. But in this collection, the music is played at a perfect pace. In addition to the CD's, the set comes with six pieces af excellent artwork by Hambone (www.hamboneart.com) I definately recommend this to any fans of Joplin, ragtime or music in general.

1.0 out of 5 stars No, no, no, no, no!, January 13, 2012

By 

Julie (Houston, Texas, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ragtime: The Music of Scott Joplin [Collector's Edition Music Tin] (Audio CD)

To be fair, I must say at the beginning that I did not purchase this CD collection. This is only a review of the samples from the Amazon website.
As a Joplin fan who has enjoyed listening to and playing his music for the past 35 years, I decided to put my review on here anyway. I felt a moral compulsion to do so, since Ragtime is my greatest musical love.
Ragtime is not super-fast cartoon soundtrack novelty music. It is the seedbed of all great subsequent American popular music. Joplin is underrated and overlooked BECAUSE of hideous recordings such as this.
I won't waste time with a detailed excoriation of each track. Suffice it to say that many tracks suffer from one or more of the following flaws:
1. Poor audio quality. Some remind me of when I used to record myself playing ragtime on a Panasonic cassette player in the seventies.
2. Ridiculously fast tempo. Joplin included notes on many of his compositions warning the performer against playing ragtime too fast. Why do so few see these notes...is Rifkin the only one who read them?
3. Actual changes to the notes as written - jerky additions and embellishments. Look at a page of ragtime...there's enough black ink on it already. Joplin left nothing out - don't add anything, NOT EVEN A GRACE NOTE!
4. Soulless interpretations. Is the pianist racing with a metronome?
Just go buy Rifkin's CD if you are interested in hearing quality Ragtime. Arpin is OK, mainly because of his complete collection.
Please, consider the artistry and beauty of ragtime.