Daily News from New York, New York • 309

AS SEEN ON ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS, 1974 TODAY AT 2:00 PM DIRECTED BY AARON BANKS WEAPONS: SWORDS -B0-NUNCHAKU (STICKS) -STARS SAI BREAKING: BRICKS-' "THE MASTERS IN KUNG FU KARATE TAI CHI CHUAN AIKIDO ABTSAHD ANTIQUES TAEKWONDO JIU-JITSU JUDO- KENDO BAN DO HAP I DO in i 1 bu WOOD-STONE- CONCRETE-ICE PLUS ALL MARTIAL ARTS TOURNAMENT: KARATE VS. EAKHARKET Vera Brodsky Lawrence KUNG FU KICK BOXING VS. BOXING (FULL CONTACT)-THAI BOXING VS. KUNG FU. Every Sun.

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I -f Expect the truth. 1 Now you are ready for "Mandingo" Ragtime's Reluctant Queen By ROBERT JONES THE QUEEN of ragtime is feeling terrific. She has just come back from Houston where Scott JopJin's opera "Treemonisha" sent the natives into screaming fits. On top of that, she has put together a concert of music from her new book for the American Booksellers Convention and has seen the merchants turn the affair into a blast of sing-along and square dancing. It was chaos.

The queen of ragtime loved it. "It's amazing," she said. "People are participating, pushing themselves into this music. I think it's wonderful." Her real name is Vera Brodsky Lawrence, and the first thing I learned on meeting her is that she hates being called the queen of ragtime. When she hears the phrase she sits a little straighter, starts clipping her words, and her smile develops little square corners around the mouth.

"I'm not the queen of anything," she says. "I'm a musician and author." New Life for Scott Joplin Ms. Lawrence is the one who dug Scott Joplin out of the dust of libraries, took him away from the specialists and set him loose on the world. Without her, "The Sting" wiuld have had music by somebody else and there wouldn't be 16 listings of ragtime music under Joplin's name in the classical section of Schwann's catalogue. So whether she likes it or not Ms.

Lawrence is the queen of ragtime. But she does look more like an author, dealing out diet cola in a welter of typescript, proof-sheets, pencils and typewriter. A Stein-way grand is piled with volumes of Joplin, Sousa and intriguing things she won't let me look at. "Joplin is published and finished," she says. "I have a book coming out in October.

It's called 'Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents' and it has a dozen versions of 'The Star Spangled I want to talk about that." "I want to hear about your discovering Joplin," I say. "That's past," she says. "I hate talking about the past." Her own past is divided into a long series of compartments, each with a door and a lock. Most are locked. Ask about her career as a concert pianist in the 1930s and 1940s, and she'll just stare at you.

"That's not terribly interesting. What's interesting is the present." "But you were a terrific pianist," I insist. played everywhere. You were a staff pianist at CBS when being a staff pianist was a great thing. You played the world premiere of Shostakovich's second piano sonata when everybody else wanted to play it.

Tell me about it." "Look it up in the library," she says. 'I've thrown away all my scrapbooks." A Bit of History Ms. Lawrence is not lacking in mercy, however. She looks at my reporter's notebook, sees it's empty and relents a little. She rattles off a list of solo recitals, orchestral appearances.

She mentions her time as half the piano team of Brodsky Triggs, the duo that won raves and pleas from prominent composers who wanted the two to perform their works. She recalls how much she loved Brahms and how CBS ran 15 minutes overtime so she could play the complete Brahms F-minor sonata. Her husband died in an auto accident in 1964, and he gave up playing. "It's no pleasure being a weekend pianist when you've been a perfectionist," she says. She went to work as a music.

editor, quit to assemble a complete edition of the music of Gott-schalk. It took her a year, ran to five volumes and 1,479 pages and was incredibly the first time anybody had ever published the collected works of an American "composer. "Never say complete," she warns. "You never know when somebody will find a new piece in an old trunk." She chose Scott Joplin for her next project "not because he was black, not because he wrote ragtime. ust because he was great." She was relentless begging, raging, even threatening to get original copies, publishers' She met defeat only twice: no score of Joplin's first opera, "A Guest of Honor," ever was found, and one jealous publisher refused permission for her to include three rags in her collection.

She's still furious about that. "It would have been the first complete collection of any black composer's works," she says. "Now it's just a collection." Twenty-four publishers refused Joplin before The New York Public Library accepted it. Now they own the decade's hottest musical property, and the only surviving member of the Joplin family an elderly niece who lives in the Bronx no longer worries about the rent. Ms.

Lawrence has never met Joplin's niece. "But I hear she's, very, smiles the queen of ragtime. DINODELAURENTIIS AUWVERSAIPC1UK Now Playing ImAKKATTAHI Based on the big. bold best seller that soM over 9i million copies! Marring GUILD'S EMBASSY 46th ST. 12.

2 OS. 4:15. 35- 10 SO ItSOHXl rlY.SfATE TRIANGLE'S 1ICHI ROOSMEtlKSS 5MS MM JSBBT RICHARD WARD BRENDA SYKES and Introducing KEN NORTON as MEDE CO-SUrring LILLIAN HAYMAN based on the novel by KYLE ONSTOTT and upon the play based thereon by JACK KIRKLAND Ocreenplay by NORMAN WEXLER musk by MAURICE JARRE executive producer RALPH SERPE produced by DINO DE LAURENTIIS CHARLES BRONSON mBREOKOUr A COLUMBIA PICTURES RELEASE A. A P-BVISTA FEATURE ESI ON THE WST SIDE LOEWS ASTOR PLAZA j. Broadway I 44 th St.

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