1.

Harmony Club Waltz (1896)

6.24

2.

Maple Leaf Rag (1899)

3.17

3.

Augustan Club Waltz (1901)

5.03

4.

Elite Syncopation (1902)

3.32

5.

The Entertainer - A Ragtime Two-Step (1902)

3.53

6.

The Strenuous Life - A Ragtime Two-Step (1902)

3.55

7.

The Chrysanthemum - An Afro Intermezzo (1904)

4.26

8.

Bethena - A Concert Waltz (1905)

5.06

9.

Binks' Waltz (1905)

5.04

10.

The Ragtime Dance (1906)

3.59

11.

Gladiolus Rag (1907)

4.09

12.

Rose Leaf Rag - A Ragtime Two-Step (1907)

4.48

13.

Fig Leaf Rag (1908)

4.52

14.

Solace - A Mexican Serenade (1909)

6.25

15.

Scott Joplin's New Rag (1912)

4.13

16.

Magnetic Rag (1914)

5.22

Scott Joplin, was born near Marshall, Texas in 1868 and died in New York in 1917. Great American composer, and ragtime pianist, he was the son of a couple of black slaves living in the Mississipi Valley. The ragtime was very popular in the USA at the end of the XIX century. It was a type of early jazz music, particularly for solo piano, composed rather than improvised, and performed merely for entertainment. Joplin improved and developed the ragtime becoming a high level type of concert music needing, in some cases, a demanding virtuosistic piano technique. The ragtime became less popular when other forms of jazz took over, but it had a revival in the 1970's when Joplin's music was used as the sound-track for the movie "The Sting". His works have been published in 1971 thanks to the musicologist Vera Brodsky Lawrence. His opera Treemonisha, written in the last years of his life, was performed in Venice (Biennale Musica) in 1972, in Turin in 1980, and it received the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Pier Paolo Strona, Civil Engineer; researcher in structural analysis numerical models, photographer; author of books and calendars including this Cd cover photograph, and musician; plays the piano in Italy and abroad. His repertoire ranges from the most important classic composers to the ragtime, latin-american and asian music.

The cover photograph: took in Montreal, it is a reflection of the sun on the skyscraper window. The photo would like to give the idea, in one image, of the subjectivity in the creation and the perception of a work of art. In fact, each window warps in its way the same reality: "That's the way it is, if you like it" or "One, nobody, hundreds thousands", and other Pirandellos works. Probably the truth is in the window with the direct reflection of the sun, but there, it is impossible to understand the images.

Audiophile recording: made in June 2003 by valve microphones. The techniques have been selected with the aim to create in the listener the sensation to be seated playing piano himself. Piano Steinway.