Pianist, conductor, and musicologist
Joshua Rifkin enjoys a status of high authority and expertise in four distinct genres: Johann Sebastian Bach, the Beatles, sacred vocal music of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, and in piano ragtime of the early twentieth century.
Rifkin's work as an interpreter of piano ragtime has garnered the most attention among his varied interests, though the majority of it was done for Nonesuch in the LP era and relatively little has appeared on compact disc. Fans of
Rifkin's classy and well-ordered approach to ragtime will definitely appreciate the inclusion of his 1991 album Rags & Tangos in Decca's budget Eloquence series. Rags & Tangos is the first and, by September 2007, only album
Rifkin is featured as pianist made with the CD format in mind; 1979's Digital Ragtime for EMI was
Rifkin's first all-digital recording, but it dates from the tail end of the LP era.
Rags & Tangos allows
Rifkin to apply his artistry to some of the "other" composers in the so-called School of Classic Ragtime -- other than
Scott Joplin that is -- namely James Scott and
Joseph Lamb.
Rifkin sees a sense of affinity between classic ragtime and the contemporary, but historically only the distantly related form of tango, and winds nine tangos of Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth into the program; Nazareth is represented here more conspicuously than the other two composers combined. In a superficial sense, what relates the American mid-western mavericks and that from south of the border is that these works are scored as piano music, laid out in a simple and direct manner, intended for the popular market. One wonders if such relationship, to some extent, is achieved through
Rifkin's playing. His preference for leisurely tempos and tendency toward coolness -- while not evident in pieces designed for obviously fast tempi such as Scott's Evergreen Rag nor Nazareth's Choro Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho -- does tend to unify the sound of most of this album. One may correspondingly view
Rifkin's work on behalf of Johann Sebastian Bach as being similarly motivated; his preference for bare bones dimensions in the Mass in B minor is so done in the name of achieving period accuracy; however, the result displays the telltale signs of
Rifkin's personal stamp. Ergo, the similitude offered here linking Nazareth with James Scott and
Joseph Lamb may be more like verisimilitude.
Most listeners pre-disposed toward
Rifkin in ragtime will not care about these middling matters of musicology, and in the sense of delivering what it says it is, Rags & Tangos does exactly that. Those unfamiliar with this artist coming to this collection with the purpose of getting to know the music should be aware, however, that such homogenization of distantly related genres is the exception rather than the rule, particularly concerning the tango.