Alessandra Celletti
Black Baby (Scott Joplin)

The presence of "The Entertainer" on a CD dedicated to Scott Joplin is almost mandatory by now. What we might call the renaissance of the greatest composer and performer of ragtime dates back to about thirty years ago, specifically when movie screens worldwide celebrated the success of the film "The Sting." Joplin's piece, a highlight of the soundtrack, almost became synonymous with the film, and as a result, the popularity of the African American pianist who illuminated the dawn of jazz at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries resurfaced.

Considering this, in her album "Black Baby" (the title refers to a piece contained within that, unlike the other, represents a true modern premiere), Alessandra Celletti simply could not shy away from performing "The Entertainer." After all, it is a pleasant listening experience, full of rhythm and drive, as in the case of another rag, "Maple Leaf," Joplin's most famous piece when he was still alive and active, and the most requested, or "Original Rag," a piece that lives on the contrast between melodic and rhythmic ideas and is, chronologically, the very first in the Joplin series, although publisher Stark only published it in 1899, convinced by the sensational success of Maple Leaf.

However, what is most convincing about Alessandra Celletti's album is her interest in what we might call the classical branch of Joplin's production, a musician who did not rely solely on instinctive vigor and improvisational ease but also knew the fundamentals of harmony and all the forms of classical music practiced in Europe, including melodrama. It is no coincidence that the work he was most proud of was the opera "Treemonisha," of a romantic and 19th-century style, nor is it a coincidence that this album features "A Real Slow Drag," meaning the song that also serves as the finale of Treemonisha. The evolved and inspired pianism of Celletti enhances other themes like "Bethena" and "Pleasant Moment" (both in waltz time, the first more nostalgic, the other more cadenced), but also the contrapuntal soul emerging from "Weeping Willow" or the surges and tonal modulations of "Magnetic Rag," a piece in which Joplin wanted to dedicate time, writing by his own hand at the beginning, in the manner of the classics, "allegretto but not too much."