Pianist Brian Dykstra is something of a ragtime specialist, as well as a superb rag composer in his own right. I enthusiastically reviewed an earlier Centaur release featuring Dykstra playing his own works. The present recital, however, is entirely given over to classic rags by such early 20th-century masters of the genre as Joseph Lamb, Tom Turpin, James Scott, and, of course, Scott Joplin. To be frank, it’s a bit of a letdown.
Centaur’s dry and dynamically constricted engineering underlines the sometimes stiff impression Dykstra projects in faster selections, such as the awkward accentuation at the start of Joplin’s Peacherine Rag, or the rather characterless reading of Charles Johnson’s Dill Pickles Rag. And there’s a forced quality to Dykstra’s arguably superfluous embellishments in Joplin’s ubiquitous The Entertainer. Slower, more lyrical pieces generally fare better, although Dykstra’s straightforward, matter-of-fact readings of Joplin’s Gladiolus Rag and The Chrysanthemum don’t match Dick Hyman’s stronger sense of line and legato definition (Hyman’s 1975 RCA Victor cycle of Joplin’s complete piano works still awaits an integral CD reissue).
We also could imagine more tenderness, breadth, and truly sung out left-hand lines in Joseph Lamb’s The Ragtime Nightingale, while the same composer’s marvelous Top Liner Rag contains small fluctuations in pulse that are less nimbly negotiated than expected. The same goes for Joplin’s Solace, where the ritards do not naturally flow into the subsequent double notes. Yet a sensitively inflected rendition of Joplin’s concert waltz Bethena not only demonstrates Dykstra’s idiomatic and pianistic potential, but achieves a feeling of unity in a piece that contains more than a few awkward transitions. And Sunflower Slow Drag, a collaboration between Scott Hayden and Joplin, benefits from Dykstra’s clipped, energized treatment. More consistent performances and better sound quality would have warranted a recommendation for this wonderfully varied and well-programmed ragtime survey.
