7:30 pm, Great Hall, GBPAC, Cedar Falls
Randy Grabowski, trumpet
Fine – Music for Orchestra
Williams – Concerto for Trumpet [1996]
Copland – Billy the Kid, Suite
Download Copland [30mb]
Symphony orchestra, guest artist dazzle audience
By George F. Day
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
February 7, 2007
On Saturday night, an enthusiastic audience braved the elements to attend the February subscription concert of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra. Jason Weinberger, music director, conducted the ensemble, and the guest artist was Randy Grabowski, [WCFSO principal] trumpet.
There were three works on the program. Each was written by an American in the 20th century; two were quite unfamiliar. It is almost certain that neither of those two had ever before been performed in Waterloo or Cedar Falls.
The first piece was Music for Orchestra by Irving Fine. In its brevity and liveliness it served nicely in the role of overture. The piece consists of four movements; each is short and filled with diverse rhythms and swiftly changing moods. Fine’s work is very difficult to play, I am sure, and the WCFSO had an unusually small amount of rehearsal time with it. But it was performed extremely well.
The next piece was John Williams’ Concerto for Trumpet, played by Grabowski. The work is clearly modern in idiom, yet there are elements of classicism throughout, from the fanfare-like beginning to the chorus of trumpets [that both support and compete with the solo instrument] to the prodigiously racing strings in the later movement to a haunting dissonance in the finale.
The star, of course, was Grabowski, who absolutely enflamed the audience with his stupendous cadenzas and incredible double and triple tonguing. It was a powerful performance – not only an aesthetic triumph but a physical, even athletic, one as well. I mean this literally. The applause that followed was tumultuous.
The evening ended with the orchestra’s interpretation of Aaron Copland’s ‘Billy the Kid’. This score is wonderfully evocative of the real beauty and vastness of the prairie as well as of the much romanticized legends of cowboys, outlaws and pioneers of the American West.
It should be noted that the weather outside the hall that night was well below zero, possibly the coldest night here in eight years. But the music we heard inside warmed the heart.
Note: All reviews are edited for length and spelling.