In Sunday’s (3/4) Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), Steve Siegel writes, “Anniversaries are always a cause for celebration, especially when it’s a 250-year milestone. This year the City of Allentown celebrates its 250th anniversary, and Lehigh County its 200th, so what better way to honor this landmark conjunction than with a musical tribute? On March 10 and 11 at Symphony Hall, the Allentown Symphony Orchestra honors the event with a world premiere of its own commissioned work, a symphonic standard, and a performance by a superb young guitarist. The premiere is New York City-based composer Philip Rothman’s ‘Timeline,’ the standard is Beethoven’s venerable ‘Pastoral’ Symphony No. 6. Adding a bit of bravura is guitar soloist and 2011 Schadt String Competition winner Petrit Çeku, who will perform Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s ‘Tres Danzas Concertantes’ for guitar and orchestra. Appropriately, Rothman’s ‘Timeline’ is the celebratory concert opener. ‘My approach was to take the idea of a celebration, not to write a programmatic piece so specific about Allentown that it would never be performed again,’ Rothman says. … Rothman, 35, has a reputation for celebrating cities. His ‘Overture for Our City,’ honoring his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., was premiered in 1997 by the Buffalo Philharmonic.”
Posted March 6, 2012
