In this warmly recorded selection, Peskanov approaches Joplin with the sophisticated mien of the classically trained. Uniquely evocative of their time and place, these piano rags, the playing tells us, are the American equivalents of Chopin mazurkas and Strauss waltzes. Peskanov nonetheless has no qualms about frequent departures from the composer’s notation. The scholarly Joshua Rifkin, whose Nonesuch recordings brought Joplin’s music back from oblivion in the early 1970s, plays it straight. Very straight compared to Peskanov who, in Maple Leaf Rag, for instance, ignores Joplin’s tempo di Marcia marking and sets off like a rocket – more engaging than Rifkin, if a sight more glib – repeating the entire first section after Joplin’s coda. His stylish and subtle tinkerings (improvements?) generally occur in the ever-present repeats. Little shakes, grace notes, chord fills and unscheduled ritardandi abound, while in Elite Syncopations Peskanov adds an unscripted third repeat of the final section, all three played poco a poco accelerando. Exhilarating it is, too.

Only in The Easy Winners (an unidiomatic left-hand chromatic run at 1'41") and Country Club Rag (over-elaborate octaves at 3'33") does Petranov overstep the mark. On the other hand, one sometimes wishes that he had not always succumbed so respectfully to Joplin’s instruction on later scores: ‘Do not play this rag fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast.’ The concert waltz Bethena is taken far too slowly (Rifkin is preferable here), though the langorous central section of Solace and the finale of The Strenuous Rag are genuinely affecting – if, that is, you accept that ragtime can be ‘interpreted’ with such expressive playing. The booklet claims that ‘few facts about [Joplin’s] life are available’ (really?), mentions his tragic brief second marriage but not his far more important third to Lottie Stokes, and also mistitles his first published composition, Original Rags, an error repeated in the track listing.