COMPACT DISC REVIEW

By

Jack Rummel

A Heap of Rags

Larisa Migachyov, piano

(No number)

Purple Chicken Rag / Gravel Rag / The Chevy Chase / Garlic Pudding Rag / Frog Legs / Candy Apple Rag / Top Liner / Heliotrope Bouquet / Weeping Willow / Gefilte Fish.

            Larisa Migachyov is a new name to ragtime.  Born in Russia , she studied classical music, but after immigrating to the U.S. she switched to engineering and is currently enrolled in law school.  We owe her pursuit of ragtime to a chance encounter with the San Antonio Ragtime Society and subsequent encouragement from Brian Holland, who is obviously a good judge of talent.  For her initial foray into CD-land, Migachyov has chosen several well-known rags, to which she has added four of her own.  It is a good natured mix.

            Her approaches to the classic rags vary widely.  Charlotte Blake’s Gravel Rag is light and bouncy, as is James Scott’s Frog Legs; both are taken a bit slower than previously recorded versions.  Eubie Blake’s Chevy Chase is played well, albeit a bit too parlor-like to have originated in the rough streets of Baltimore .  Heliotrope Bouquet by Louis Chauvin and Scott Joplin is given the lush treatment it deserves, while Joplin ’s Weeping Willow is pleasantly bounced up a bit.  The one disappointment is Joseph Lamb’s Top Liner which is played at a soporific tempo for a full seven minutes (!).  It survives, mainly due to Lamb’s compositional genius.

            The Migachyov originals would certainly fit right into the early twentieth century repertoire.  All use similar medium tempos, fairly simple chord structures and catchy, hummable melodies.  Her choice of titles, such as Purple Chicken Rag and Garlic Pudding Rag, hint at a bit of zany humor in her personality – an admirable attribute in today’s polarized world.

            Her touch is light and she tends to swing her performances.  The rags are seemingly played as written with no embellishments.  The quality of both the piano and the recorded sound is good, but when the total time of the disc adds up to only 40+ minutes, it is judged to be a bit skimpy by today’s ragtime CD expectations.  (This is offset by the lower price, it seems.)  There are no liner notes at all.  Larisa Migachyov has put forth a good first effort here.  She seems at home in the ragtime milieu and we look forward to even greater recordings as her immersion in the genre deepens.

            Available for $12.00 postpaid from http://cdbaby.com or directly from Quaternion Press, 25018 Granite Path, San Antonio, TX 78258.