Album: opus spongebobicum
Author: Frans de Waard
Publication: Vital Weekly (source)
Date: 07/23/2008

Work by Frank Rothkamm has always a conceptual edge. In 1978, at the age of 12, he started to compose music, on the piano. Later on he devised his own notation for music and kept on playing the piano until now. I might be wrong but one of the first times his work was reviewed in Vital Weekly was his 'Tuning' 12" as DJ Flux, which consisted of the sound of tuning a piano.

Here he offers '40 Variations on the secret formula from Spongebob Squarepants' - which comes with lengthy liner notes on 'variations' but how it connects to my favorite cartoon hero of the new millennium - I am even being waked up when he's on by the other, much younger fan when she's around. Much like I know next to nothing about classical music, it's not easy to value this work. Forty pieces of piano music, which go in one flow and which are certainly nice to hear. It's not the piano playing of say Satie or Debussy - that much I know - but more like 19th century piece of classical music with some 'strange'elements
thrown in that make this is quite a strange piece too.

Even when the overall concept left me with questions, the work as such was nice to hear. That's about all I can say about it. (FdW)

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