October 3 & 4, 2003 7:30 pm
Great Hall, GBPAC, Cedar Falls
Sean Botkin, piano & Philip Rothman, composer
Brahms – Piano Concerto no. 1
Philip Rothman – Souvenir [world premiere]
Brahms – Symphony no. 3
Symphony puts together concert of Brahms’ pieces
By Harvey Hess
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
October 10, 2003
For those who love Brahms’ large orchestral forms, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center was a great event. Concert-goers who have trepidations about buying into the heavy master’s big-time orchestral achievements, however, still found the opener a great night.
The musicians rose to a paramount peak in their corporate accomplishment worth anyone’s careful attention and were brought to that high benchmark of music-making owing to the superb skills, discrimination and inspired mindfulness of Director Jason Weinberger’s awesome energy and finesse. Weinberger – as this reviewer has previously stated – is an answered prayer, a young but richly mature artist whose magnitude of learning, musicality and over-all artistic character continues to grow in virtue and refinement.
Solost Sean Botkin realized the score to Brahm’s Concerto for Piano no. 1, Op. 15 in D minor to the most picky taste’s satisfaction. Brahms’ exhaustive unrivaled genius for harmonic investigation struck one particularly in the Adagio. Botkin used the master’s fluency in modulation as a springboard for pianistic phrasing, among other things, which seemed at once both ‘dry,’ as Brahms can be, as well as an opportunity to ‘aerate’ the score. Botkin’s touch, both geneel and authoritative, vitalized all three movements. Indeed, this young pianist deserves consideration as one of the finest of a fine crop of exponents and proponents of the Brahms’ keyboard canon.
A fine decision in programming was manifest in Philip Rothman’s homage to Brahms, ‘Souvenir’ [in two movements]. Rothman, an award-winning composer who studied at the Juillard School [among other prestigious institutions], is a talented composer. Rothman’s art boasts melodic and lyric vitality without losing the echoes of Brahms’ grandeur and [yes] even intimacy.
The enchantment of the score [including its subtle and colorful orchestration] emerged from the symphonic complement with refinement and allure, especially from the winds and strings. If there is any justice, the music world deserves to hear much more of the music of Rothman.
The concert concluded with the Viennese master’s Symphony no. 3, Op. 90 in F Major. Weinberger’s occasional [and tasteful] use of rubato, suavely gradated dynamics straked a welcome tenderness across the score, even in the powerful concluding Allegro which is, yes, powerful, but not thunderous. Brahms’ ‘gravitas’ and monumentality [his work is emotive and moving and structurally clear in the same way as are the Pyramids of Giza] were brushed by luminosity and light, here and there, because Weinberger and the musicians found them in the score.
It was a wonderful concert to open a promising season in which Brahms will be augmented by the vitality of composers equally fine and more gracious.
Note: All reviews are edited for length and spelling.