Two Albums from Bryan Wright

Most reviews look at one particular release. This one doesn’t. Instead, I will compare two releases by the same pianist, with similar repertoire, but separated by six years.

Bryan Wright is well known in music circles primarily as owner and producer of Rivermont Records (which specializes in early dance band recordings and modern ragtime interpretation). However, he deserves to be better known as an outstanding pianist of syncopated piano styles.

Syncopated Musings would be an impressive debut album by anyone at any level of maturity, but I was stunned to see that Mr. Wright was only 22 years old at the time of the recording. I don’t think that I would have been able to produce something with this level of subtlety or maturity at that age.

Due to limits of space, I’m not going to examine every work recorded. Instead I will nominate a few that I think stand out. The first, May Aufderheide’s The Thriller! is played a little faster than Max Morath did, but it is cleanly articulated, with mostly punctuated and clearly separated notes in the bass, with the occasional little changes in the melodic lines, and dynamics (e.g. the second strain is played a little louder during the repeat). I’m not a big fan of repeating sections, but if you’re going to do it, there has to be some variation, and Mr. Wright does so while holding the listener’s attention.

Arthur Marshall is not well enough known by many people who listen to this music, and Mr. Wright chooses Ham And! for the second piece. It is not played or recorded often, but this is by far the best rendition I’ve heard. There are, again, wonderful and noticeable changes in dynamics with great emphasis on the “blues-like” riffs in the right hand in the third section.

Scott Joplin’s Country Club is also played with similar conviction, with a slight increase in tempo in the third section. It’s this kind of attention to detail which keeps the listener listening. Joplin’s Magnetic Rag is played with similar reverence, and with small amounts of rubato which accentuate the phrases.

In Pastime Rag No. 4 (which is full of chord clusters, very harmonically advanced for early ragtime) Wright plays it slower than Bill Bolcom did in his 1970s recording, but with a swinging lilt that gives it a “vaudeville” touch (while at the same time being informed by classical music)—an aspect of the piece which I had never heard before. A delightfully new interpretation and played with gentle, soft dynamics.

I’ve known Harry Jentes’s Bantam Step for decades, and always wanted to play it, but never felt that I could bring it off. Mr. Wright does so in fine style, with sharp attacks in the right hand, excellent variation in dynamics, and occasional added notes in the right hand (particularly in the last section as there are long held notes, probably best suited for band arrangements), and added fifths in the left hand. It is both satisfying to hear and stylistically accurate. I’m sure the composer would have approved.

My two favourite tracks are Scott Joplin’s and Louis Chauvin’s famous Heliotrope Bouquet, and Joplin’s ragtime waltz, Bethena. I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I think that the former receives an even better rendition than it did from William Bolcom. It’s not an easy piece to play, particularly if repeats are observed, and Wright keeps our attention all the way through again with his charming and subdued use of rubato and his subtle soft ending.

Bethena starts with use of soft pedal, and minimal use of sustaining pedal. It is played fairly quickly and not at all sentimentally. This is a perfect rendition, and does not become loud until the second section.

Now, to compare Syncopated Musings to the next recording, the first was recorded in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2004, and on a Baldwin piano—a similar type of piano sound one hears on the Nonesuch recordings by Paul Jacobs and William Bolcom. Breakin’ Notes was recorded in 2010 in Tokyo, Japan, on a Steinway Concert Grand. While both sounds are acceptable, I have always personally preferred the Steinway sound. I think I prefer the overall studio sound of the second album, as well.

Breakin’ Notes is a complete split from the musical layout of the previous CD. The first half are (mostly) rags from the earlier period of ragtime’s history. Four works by Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke form the center of the programme, followed by works written after ragtime’s initial period of popularity.

Efficiency Rag has not been recorded that much (except, of course, by William Bolcom), and we can hear how Wright’s playing has matured over the intervening years. It is played neither too fast nor too slow, with great attention to articulation and good shaping with dynamics.

Kinklets by Arthur Marshall has not been recorded much (I can only think of Morath’s and Bunk Johnson’s recordings off the top of my head), and Mr. Wright plays it with a similarly detaché style, occasionally adding little changes to the rhythm in the right hand, and adding a Eubie Blake-style “walking bass” at times, which we know is historically accurate from Marshall’s own comments about his and Joplin’s playing. A very distinctive and unique interpretation, easily equal to Morath’s classic version.

Julia Lee Neibergall’s Hoosier Rag is much more effective as a piano solo than I thought it would be thanks to Mr. Wright’s interpretation (the only other version of which I know is by Morath’s string group recorded in the 1970s on Vanguard). It’s interesting to hear Neibergall’s occasional deviations for the oom-pah or octave-chord patterns in the bass so common to most rags. Wright will also not hesitate to change the score a bit to add greater interest, for example, in Joplin’s Euphonic Sounds, he speeds the third section up a little. It makes the listener sit up and take notice.

Wright also shows his considerable command with two “modern” rags: Martin Spitznagel’s jaunty and novelty-like Red Elephant Rag, which darts up and down the keyboard with a lovely “blues-like” third section; and David Thomas Roberts’ haunting and elegiac Roberto Clemente, wherein Wright once again shows his exceptional use of dynamic contrast.

The highlights of this album are the four pieces by Bix Beiderbecke. Three of them were never recorded by Bix, so we only have the sheet music to go by, and sheet music is often notoriously inaccurate in such matters. In a Mist is the “magnum opus” of the four pieces, and although he doesn’t play it exactly like Bix, I agree with his approach, i.e., that it should not be played like Debussy, but instead fairly metrically with very judicious use of rubato at the ends of phrases. In doing so, Wright cleverly shows the listener that these works are not just “doodling” at the piano, but well-conceived “frozen” improvisations with distinct sections.

I once played Upright and Grand, and have known about Frank Banta’s recording for most of my life, but did not feel I could make it “work.” Wright does a great job here, playing it mostly “straight,” with no vaudevillian glissandi (as Banta once did in an early 1920s recording), then adding his own little coda based on previous material which deviates from the written score.

No fact checkers are necessary with Mr. Wright’s eloquent and beautifully designed booklets; he is a pure scholar through and through, and one can be absolutely certain of near-perfect accuracy in his well-written and thoughtful notes in the beautifully ornamented booklets accompanying both albums.

While both CDs are outstanding, in my opinion, it greatly increases one’s appreciation for the music played (and the expertise of the performer), if both albums are played one after the other.

I wish there had been more space to look at all the tracks in greater detail. But the last word will also be Mr. Wright’s: the final track on Breakin’ Notes is The Legend of Lonesome Lake by Eastwood Lane. I had not heard it before, and I suspect a great many others would be in the same boat. It is not my favourite work in these two collections, but it is definitely my favorite performance of all the tracks. Why? Because Wright takes an obscure work, that perhaps isn’t the greatest American syncopated piano piece ever written, but plays it with enormous conviction, in a suitable manner which highlights all the rhythms, structures, and harmonies in those works which preceded and followed it (with even a couple of harmonic progressions which Bix used).

We are afterwards left with a genuine sense of accomplishment, not just for the performer, but for the subtle, stylish and detailed way in which both the music and the program notes are laid out for us. And that, in my opinion, is what real musicianship is all about. These albums would be a welcome addition to anyone’s CD collection. Recommended without reservation.