Jason Victor Serinus

William Bolcom's Delightful Piano Rags

Jason Victor Serinus  |  Apr 1, 2017

Hankering for recorded music that is witty, engaging, and filled with surprises—music written with a twinkle in the eye? Check out the Spencer Myer's new Steinway & Sons recording of the Piano Rags of William Bolcom (b. 1938). Also available as a hi-rez download, Myer's delightful takes on Bolcom's rags dispel any notion that the rag is a predictable but ultimately limited art form.

In Jed Distler's too-short liner notes—I wish they had given this eloquent piano expert more space, but the CD issue doesn't even mention that all but two tracks on the recording were captured in 24/192 at Sono Luminus Studios in Boyce, VA—we learn that Bolcom first discovered the rags of Scott Joplin and others in 1967, when he was a 29-year old faculty member at Queens College, CUNY. He immediately began to compose rags of his own, at one point even trading rags by mail with the late composer/pianist William Albright.

From Bolcom's first rags, the Three Classical Rags, to his latest efforts, Estela: Rag Latino, Knockout: A Rag," and The Brooklyn Dodge, which were completed by 1998, it is clear that the form inspires his mind to fire on all cylinders. The inventive twists and turns first appear in the second rag on the 16-rag recording, Glad Rag from Bolcom's first three-rag collection, Classic Rags. Inspired by Joplin's ragtime opera, Treemonisha, the work includes a surprising slowdown where you'd least expect it.

From there on, it's one rhythmic and harmonic surprise after the other. The early Poltergeist, one of Bolcom's three Ghost Rags, is a major tease. Bolcom describes it as an exploration of nearly every "frozen" appoggiatura and substitution in the harmonic book. Whether you know what that means, you will certainly recognize the intentional old-time melodramatic feel of Dream Shadows, which the late pianist, Paul Jacobs, describes as a "white telephone rag" that would not sound out of place in a Joan Crawford flick.

Moving closer to the 21st century, Knockout: A Rag includes literal knocking on the piano. I found it so energizing that I ceased my note-taking and, instead of ducking from the blows, jumped up to dance. Estela: Rag Latino has been described as Bolcom meets Bernstein on the West Side, and is inventive as all get out.

Everyone will have their favorites in this representative sampling. I loved Old Adam from The Garden of Eden, and thought the opening hilarious. In a very different vein is "The Serpent's Kiss," a very silent film traversal that includes a pouncing bite, devious turns, and strange percussive effects. You may not wish to listen to all 16 rags consecutively, in one sitting. But playing a few at a time, as one might sample sweets on a dessert cart, can serve as a reminder that, despite the headlines of the present day, joy can prevail.

COMMENTS
dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 1, 2017 - 5:38pm

I bought this 2 hours ago from ProStudioMasters in 96/24, because the rude and somewhat hostile HDTracks has not helped with downloads on my Mac (although I follow the instructions), and the HDTracks preview buttons don't work (same poor support). If that isn't bad enough, HDTracks is 192k only at $25 USD, while ProStudioMasters is only $18. But that's not the end - the ProStudioMasters download manager immediately flashed the message "All tracks are downloaded" and did not download anything. So far their support does not answer, nor has anyone on the "public" posting section. There's another site called HighResAudio that might be a possibility, but they haven't responded either.

It would seem that "high res" vendors are at least as snooty as their tracks are high resolution.

Jason Victor Serinus's picture
Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on April 1, 2017 - 7:53pm

For the past three or four years, I've had no problem whatsoever using HDTracks' download manager. Log into your account, and take a look under your order history. There you should find what you may not have downloaded. As for ProStudioMasters, my last download did not go to my downloads folder but rather to one of the last folders I had created. Do a search for recently added files, and you may find what you're looking for. I expect a search under "Bolcom" would also work.

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 1, 2017 - 9:06pm

As a long time programmer, software engineer, and cryptographer, I assure you that I know where every byte is on my computers. In my HDTracks order history, there are a couple of things, but those were extremely painful to acquire given HDTracks' extremely unfriendly download process. When I developed Windows software, we were very particular about making sure that active/buffered/incomplete processes had status indicators of some kind, whether percentage bars or a simple hourglass. A lot of the junk being released on Mac and Windows (especially Mac) doesn't have status indicators.

Jason Victor Serinus's picture
Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on April 2, 2017 - 9:19am

the HDTracks downloader shows the progress of each track as it downloads. It also shows if a track does not download completely. In that case, once the download is complete, you can go to your order history, reopen the downloader, and download the incomplete tracks. I've done this, simply by experimenting until I figured out what to do, and everything worked smoothly. I hope they can clear this up for you.

jason

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 2, 2017 - 4:26am

It won't be cleared up for me because I'm unlikely to order from them ever again. That undoubtedly applies to numerous other customers who have had the same customer support experience there.

If HDTracks were serious about having better relations with customers, they would need to 1) Replace the rude unhelpful person who replies to their support emails, and 2) Offer these downloads at a competitive price (i.e. $18 instead of $25).

HDtracks Team's picture
Submitted by HDtracks Team on April 7, 2017 - 1:41pm

We're very sorry to hear about your experience. We take customer satisfaction very seriously. Our records indicate we never received a response to our email to you. Please always feel free to reach out to HDtracks Customer Service at: support@hdtracks.com and we will do our best to help resolve your issue. There are situations where a customer has an old browser/software or issues with cookies that can affect the user experience but we are generally able to walk customers through every issue. Thank you.

The HDtracks Team

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 7, 2017 - 4:33pm

Thanks - I got your email today. It would still be good to know why you offer 192 khz only on the album in question, when ProStudioMasters has it in 96 khz for $7 less. I bought the Jimmy Scott album reviewed here from you as "192k only" for $25, when 192k is way overkill for that recording, and I don't even have a 192 khz DAC. Next time, I'd be inclined to buy 96k from the other guy, unless you have a good justification for offering only 192k.

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 11, 2017 - 2:37pm

The saga continues -- I got the email from HDTracks support with the $25 certificate for a download, and after entering the order with certificate, getting a "no money required" and "download now" prompt, when I clicked to download I got a blank screen with the message "Safari can't open the specified address: hdtracks://Run

That's not a valid Web address. I've been through all of the "you need this and that and to change your settings etc." support that I have time for. I am out of time now and I'd like to get my music. My browser is fully capable of downloading files "As Is", so how about HDTracks just getting me what I ordered?

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 3, 2017 - 9:22am

I finally got the download from ProStudioMasters - a painful story, and one that they promise to look into for a fix. Meanwhile, the music: If you were looking for an album that will be extremely revealing of the tonality of different systems, look no further. I've heard that some piano music can be very difficult to reproduce accurately even on good systems, but listening to this for the 5th time on different gear, I don't sense much difficulty besides some of the strong dynamics. What I do hear are greater differences than I hear with other music (on the different systems), especially in the "body" or palpability of the piano. Highly recommended.

ednazarko's picture
Submitted by ednazarko on April 2, 2017 - 7:16am

...over the last few years. Most frequently, a couple tracks in an album, or an entire album, fails download. Curiously, each time the fix appeared to be downloading a new downloader, or at least that's what support tells me to do (a day after I email), and then it works fine. As a computer guy, that makes zero sense. In this case bits SHOULD just be bits to a downloader. I suspect they had a problem on their end, fixed it, but told me to update. (On Windoze, btw.)

I've also had situations where the discount codes were entered into their systems incorrectly, so something that was supposed to be multiple use wasn't set up that way. That took me four months to get corrected... but that last month I used my computer code tester approach for an hour of iterative forensic testing and sent them proof that the problem was theirs.

The bigger problem for me, last two years, some of the file names have been full of errors, or toxic. Tracks with repeats in the file name, sometimes a letter or two "stutter", sometimes three or four words in the file name repeated. Three albums, the entire file name showed up twice in each file name, so long that Windoze barfs. Download fine, can copy paste to my backups OK (sometimes even that fails), but when I do a conversion to Apple Lossless (for my phone and car) I get "filename too long" errors on some or all of the tracks on an album when I try to copy or move files. Really annoying when it's caused by internal repeats. Having to edit filenames to clean out junk... not priceless. I complained and was told that they don't do any QA, they host what they're given.

I'll be downloading this today. I enjoy Chesky's New York Rags, which also expand on the definition of rags.

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 3, 2017 - 1:02pm

Thanks for the detail. It tells me that HDTracks is run by a robot that doesn't verify anything, and when something is wrong, they're too lazy to fix it, unless the user is a computer programmer/hacker who does the investigative work for them. Looks like the nightmare of ProStudioMasters is the lesser of the two evils.

ednazarko's picture
Submitted by ednazarko on April 3, 2017 - 2:27pm

At the moment, it's all annoyances. I think they've been successful beyond what they thought, and are having growing pains. So far, they've made right on everything except the titles... and seeing how many new albums they've got coming in now, I reckon they just don't staff for QA.

BTW, the Bolcum rags are amazing. I've always thought someone should convince Dr. John to do a rags album.

Jason Victor Serinus's picture
Submitted by Jason Victor Serinus on April 4, 2017 - 11:30am

We're back to the music. It is great stuff, isn't it? Glad you're enjoying it.

dalethorn's picture
Submitted by dalethorn on April 6, 2017 - 6:11am

Oh yeah - I shouldn't neglect to reiterate that this recording is a great revealer - of amazing detail in a really good system, or problems in a less-than stellar system. If you're wondering whether your system (or room) is emphasizing any hardness or glare, this recording should tell you.

ednazarko's picture
Submitted by ednazarko on April 4, 2017 - 11:39am

BTW, for those who want to listen before they buy, it's on Tidal. The fourth cut in, Poltergeist, is hilarious if you've got a music or musicology background.

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