David Kaplan

David Kaplan is listed as piano soloist for the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra's "Halloween @ the Symphony" concert, performing Brahms's First Piano Concerto. A pianist of this name has an established concert career, but we could not confirm this listing is the same person, so this page treats him as unknown.

The program opens with Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, a vivid depiction of a witches' sabbath full of shrieking strings and crashing brass, before Anna Clyne's This Midnight Hour adds a modern, atmospheric voice. A suite from John Williams's Harry Potter scores brings familiar film music into the mix. The evening's serious centerpiece is Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1, a stormy, symphonic work he began writing in his early twenties during a period of personal crisis; its opening movement is famous for its dark, turbulent orchestral introduction before the piano even enters, and the whole concerto treats the soloist as an equal partner to the orchestra rather than a showpiece.