Treemonisha: Overture (Scott Joplin)

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Treemonisha: Overture (Scott Joplin)
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and Singers
Rick Benjamin, conductor

Treemonisha, an opera in three acts by Scott Joplin
New World Records 80720-2

©2014 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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America's most neglected composer was one of America's greatest composers. That his music was ignored until the 1970s is a shame, he has so much to give artistically, musically. I'm glad that his score for Treemonisha was able to be restored and that productions have been mounted. Sadly, I cannot find any videos of the productions, especially the Houston Grand Opera production with the magnificent soprano Carmen Balthrop. We need more new productions of this wonderful, truly American opera.

vincentkruse

This is a little known but lovely opera I feel that Treemonisha shows that Joplin was just as good at writing Opera as he was at writing piano rags in my opinion.

PJGRAND

I can't quite accurately describe the glee I have that the score for this opera was discovered. Joplin was an excellent ragtime composer, but I always thought he had a poetry that went BEYOND piano music...(I am a pianist)...so it is as if nature lent us a glimpse as to the realization of that genius!

JuanCruz-rghg

I've heard pieces from "Treemonisha" played on the piano for, what? forty years; forty-five? I bought the hardcover version of the score at the same time I bought my first copy of the Collected Works, and the Nonesuch CD. I made some progress on the Works, but was not a good enough pianist to benefit from Treemonisha. Then, recordings of the piano rendering of parts of it came out, and I got fired up again. Of course that expensive book was long gone by now.

And now, here we are: the first time I have heard the orchestral rendering. It makes so much more sense; the orchestra can make you "see" the action. It reminds me of the moment in "The Wizard of Oz" when the sepia-toned world of Kansas turns into the the technicolor Land of Oz.

Joplin had a worse problem than the racism of the time (like that wasn't enough), or the hard road a newcomer must tread to get a significant career started in music. He did see some success; two fat books full of his scores point to it, as does the fact that we know his name today. Syphilis destroyed his mind and undermined his health for years, and killed him at a very young age.

The gentleman who called his work "Garbage then and now, " may have his own problem. Bourgeois papas of the day may have felt something similar when they came home to their nice house and heard their daughter playing the same tune on the parlor piano that Daddy had heard at the whorehouse the night before. These people are not miracles. The fact that we have Joplin's music today is the miracle. We can all learn from this, the good and the awful, and the power of the legacy of this unique musical mind. I can offer no apologies for it; no one is requiring everyone to love it. The attitudes and obstacles are still with us today. But we can look at this dazzling and beautiful light that has come to us, ever stronger through the decades, and by its illumination find our own way.

vicbubbett

Worked on this Opera this past summer at Opera Theatre St. Louis. Was a delight to work on.

Munchausen

Oh wow. Great! A forgotten gem... It's like a ragtime symphony! So cool!!!

captainbeastazoid

I worked intimately with his music for a year and a half and came away with the happy conviction that no one should ever doubt the genius of this man.

spencerdoidge