Album: Opus Spongebobicum
Author: Roberto Alessandro Filippozzi
Publication: Darkroom (source)
Date: 08/19/2008

Only last April there we talked of "Just 3 Organs" last effort of the German investigator Frank Rothkamm, active musically since boyhood and now a resident in America for some time, and today we find the 42 year old artist come to grips with a new work titled at least bizarre, and newly published through its own label Flux Records.

With this disc there is also a limited version (40 numbered copies) comprising a sponge (!), whole The character Spongebob has nothing to do with practically nothing, and references will certainly look into areas other than those known from the film... The work has an additional 'title' slightly more exhaustive, namely "40 Variations On The Secret Formula From Spongebob Squarepants", play on words that combines the vein ironic and bizarre by Frank to a half-idea of what we will find little in the 37 minutes disc, or - precisely - 40 variations ... Piano variations to be precise, on several occasions put together like the "Diabelli Variations" by Beethoven, as narrated in two interesting pages of the internal booklet.

Maybe someone you are already asking what is particularly 'dark' in a disc in less than 37 minutes condenses many as 40 variations of sometimes isolated piano tones (in the sense that certain ideas seem too 'intimate' to meet the tastes of pure listening), and while we must say that the work exudes not sure solarità*, perhaps one point that most deserves to be stressed is that "Opus Spongebobicum" sounds inevitably 'private', as a liberating act made solely with the plan.

I could not help but to think of a pianist closed in his room and totally devoted to his passion for the ivory keys as to isolate itself from the rest of the world, as if the inspiration sopraggiungesse in a short but absolutely spontaneous and intense momentum which is impossible escape ...

That analysis remains a work with certain interpretative difficulties and outside the box (at least ours), certainly made with very good taste, large capacity and lots of passion, but indicated mainly to lovers of the piano in its most classical.

*Eros Ramazzotti - Solarita

[ translated from the Italian ]

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