Customer Reviews

The World of Scott Joplin, Vol. 1

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4 star:		(1)
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If you only want one ragtime collection, then you need a Joplin-only CD. This is not it. But Morath's "The World of Scott Joplin" is unique and wonderful. In addition to a nice selection of Joplin, he brings the music of Joplin's most important contemporaries (other than Chauvin) back to life. If Joplin is the Shakespeare of ragtime, Morath reminds us that there was also a Marlowe and a Jonson.

He also manages to sneak in two of his own pieces, which might seem like cheating, but they are refreshingly modern ragtime pieces and worth learning in their own right. The sheet music for those appears in Rudi Blesh's "They All Played Ragtime," which, incidentally, makes a pretty clear argument that you need more than a Joplin-only collection to really appreciate ragtime.

First, let me say that Max Morath is an excellent piano player and interpreter of Joplin, even though I personally prefer Joshua Rifkin. He plays well on this CD. However, I was disappointed that only 6 of the 14 tracks are Joplin compositions. The others are mostly by contemporaries of Joplin, and even though they are not bad, they are nowhere near the quality of Joplin's work. Nevertheless, this is a fine CD to own. If you are looking for a more comprehensive collection of Scott Joplin's piano rags or a more serious interpretation of them, I suggest "Scott Joplin Piano Rags" played by Joshua Rifkin and available on Amazon.

Some years ago I bought Max Morath's two cd's "The World of Scott Joplin" 1-2 and turned them into a double album. In the total of 26 rags Joplin is of course dominating with 11 tunes, but there are also fine examples on the compositions of James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Arthur Marshall plus a few newer compositions including two of his own. All beautiful, all beautifully performed! Morath has in his own words been living "a ragtime life" since childhood, grown up as he is in a ragtime-interested family and having performed himself since 1948. And you can hear that: Playing ragtime to him never becomes routine, but an ever ongoing love affair with the music and the style. And so it is an ever ongoing pleasure to the listener to listen closer and closer into his phrasing, his handling of the chords, his hardly hearable rythmical variations - in all, his supreme art of playing the piano. The sound quality is perfect - a more intimate music hall or club sound than the concert hall sound of the Rifkin recordings.

Morath is in my opinion by far the best ragtime pianist, and my best advice is: Save your postman for an extra ride and order both of them all at once. And when you have heard them a few times you'll also want his "The Ragtime Man"!

I grew up listening to a cassette with this album on one side, and the soundtrack to "The Sting" on the other side. To me this is definitive ragtime. Later on we got a Joshua Ripkin CD, but I never liked it as much as this one.