Spaghetti Rag is an amazing Naxos disc that hinges on a program consisting of seemingly disparate elements -- mandolins, Italians, and ragtime. There is ample historical precedent for it -- the "James Brown" to whom
Scott Joplin dedicated his famous rag The Entertainer was the leader of a mandolin orchestra in St. Louis, and one of the things that strikes one's attention upon hearing the few surviving recordings of James Reese Europe's New York-based Clef Club Orchestra is the large mandolin section therein. Clearly, the mandolin played an important, and largely unrecognized, role in the development of ragtime, a medium usually thought limited to the piano. A number of groups under the general direction of mandolinist
Ugo Orlandi and pianist/composer Claudio Mandonico perform the 20 selections on Spaghetti Rag. These include the fancifully named the Italian Mando-Rag Club of the Città di Brescia, the Raffaele Calace Plectrum Quintet, and a theater orchestra-styled group called the Center Boys' Rag Band.
Rags written by Italian immigrant composers who worked in Tan Pan Alley dominate the program, yet the work of a mandolin player that never left Italy, Ermenegildo Carosio, proves the most impressive among the pieces here. George L. Cobb's Rubber Plant Rag sounds great in the period arrangement revived in this program, as does Operatic Rag of Julius Lenzberg and, naturally, the title track. About the only thing that doesn't seem to work entirely is the arrangement of
Scott Joplin's Solace as the inability of the mandolin to achieve a true legato puts a bit of a damper on a piece that depends so much on flowing movement. Nevertheless, the rest of the disc is great, and it is a revelation that The Entertainer sounds so well on the mandolin. The occasional insertion of ragtime band pieces to break up the program a bit and variability of the mandolin ensembles employed really ensures that Spaghetti Rag doesn't all sound like one thing. The contemporary pieces included by Neil Gladd and the aforementioned Mandonico fit in with the program and do not divert the listener into a post-modern purgatory. Naxos' Spaghetti Rag is lively, spirited, and exciting and will never make you feel like you are sitting in a restaurant.