REFLECTIONS: Scott Joplin Reconsidered

Album review

Pianist Lara Downes has often played programs that merge popular and classical materials, seeking to explore the complexities of the American musical experience. It was perhaps inevitable that she would eventually turn to the music of Scott Joplin, whose music was shaped by many streams of that national experience, from classical music to the deepest wells of African American tradition. There are plenty of Joplin recordings, of course, but they're not as common as they were a few decades ago, and Downes' approach is fresh in many ways. Her program emphasizes the range of Joplin's work. There are not only piano rags but waltzes, a tango, a song with a text by Joplin himself (heard in a lovely rendering by Will Liverman, this is a world premiere, and the songs are almost never heard), miscellaneous other piano works, including one designated as a cake walk, and, as a frame, two excerpts from Joplin's sole surviving opera, Treemonisha, one of them a prelude arranged for piano by Downes herself. Some pieces are played solo, while others are arranged for a group, and Downes' stamp is all over the arrangements even where they are not her own. They mostly have the small ensemble of winds and plucked strings that was typical of arrangements published in Joplin's own time, but they avoid the rigid mechanical feel of recording that presents Joplin as some kind of nostalgia item in favor of a quieter tone that emphasizes Joplin's roots in classical music. Downes' own playing elaborates Joplin's musical texts with ornamentation (which Joplin himself applied, according to the evidence provided by piano rolls) and occasionally by altering the rhythms (which he generally did not, and which may disturb the delicate balance between different kinds of syncopation built into his structures). The album concludes with a spoken commentary of the kind one wishes more classical artists would offer, reflecting on Joplin's importance, on his reception history, and on how Downes herself came to his music, like so many others, through the rag The Entertainer. As usual, Downes has given listeners much to enjoy and much to consider.
© James Manheim /TiVo