RECENT REVIEWS:

Breakdown  "Brouwer responded [to the film images] with speech-inflected melodies and sharp-witted musical puns."  --Steve Smith, New York Times 2/23/09

Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra 

"...superb offering by Margaret Brouwer, one of our best composers, and certainly near the top.  This Violin Concerto, written specifically for this ensemble, is simply a marvel to hear, combining phenomenally difficult solo passages with some of the most ingratiating melodies I have heard in a recent composition...  She is not afraid of the modern idiom... but at the same time never loses sense of that fundamental and essential musical ingredient called melody."  --Steven E. Ritter, Fanfare, May-June, 2008  

Concerto for Viola and Orchestra 

"The piece opens edgily. English horn, harp and marimba attempt to calm the viola's anxieties, and eventually the soloist emerges transfigured. The orchestra responds with an ecstatic outpouring, and bell sounds bring the movement to a quiet close.  Th e central movement bears a quotation from the Biblical Song of Songs: "...fair as the moon, bright as the sun..." In pre-performance remarks from the stage, Brouwer described it as a love song. The viola threads its melody through gentle rustles and cascades which gradually grow in richness and complexity. The finale is playful, even mischievous, with slides and scrawny on-the-bridge grunts for the viola, and sharply snapped pluckings for cellos and basses...

Brouwer has written skillfully and imaginatively for both viola and orchestra, and the music engages start to finish. How about a recording?"  

-- Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News 1/8/2010

 

See more on the REVIEWS page of this site.