Igor Stravinsky, "Ragtime"

-- Liner Notes --
3. Ragtime for Eleven Instruments (1918)

Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Joseph Silverstein, Violin
Max Hobart, Max Hobart
Burton Fine, Viola
Henry Portnoi, Bass
Doriot Dwyer, Flute
Harold Wright, Clarinet
Charles Kavaloski, Horn
Armando Ghitalla, Trumpet
William Gibson, Trombone
Everett Firth, Percussion
Myron Romanul, Cimbalom

Production and Recording Supervision:Thomas Mowrey
Coordinating Pladucer: Franz-Christian Wulff
Recording Engineer: Hans-Peter Schweigmann
Cover-Photo: Speidel, Hamburg
1975 Polydor International GmbH
1975 Karl Heinz Wocker, Robert Layton
Printed in Germany by Neef, Wittingen

"Ragtime" is scored for eleven instruments including the cimbalom. Stravinsky wrote it in Morges in 1918, completing the score at the time that the armistice was being concluded at the end of the 1914-18 war. He later made a piano arrangement of it but the first performance was conducted by the late Arthur Bliss at the Aeolian Hall London, in 1920. As Eric Walter White puts it, the idea motivating the work was to produce some kind of "composite portrait" of the new type of popular dance music that had just emerged in the States, bringing it into the concert hall as In the past composers had done for the minuet, waltz and other dance forms. -- Robert Layton