Brouwer: Aurolucent Circles. Mandala. Pulse. Remembrances. Sizzle

ROGER DETTMER: staff writer for www.classicalcdreview.com

March 2006

Although she was born in 1940 (just three years after Philip Glass, two after Joan Tower and one after Ellen Taafe Zwillich) Margaret Brouwer will be a new name to many, although starting in the late '80s she began attracting kudos as a composer, then solidified her reputation during the '90s, and has become America's foremost - and soon perhaps to be the most famous - distaff composer during the current decade...

...The dynamic range borders on awesome - from whispers of metal tintinnabulation that open the first movement, "Floating in Dark Space," to whirligig outbursts engendered in third, "Cycles and Currents" (whose rhythmic basis is the 13th-Century "Fibonacci Number Series" - read the composer's erudite program notes if you don't know what that means).  But the expressive crux of the work is its central and longest movement, "Stardance," the first to be written, with "bells ringing in the solo percussion as well as the [orchestra section's] percussion, positioned around the stage... Inspired by the poetic physical motion of Evelyn Glennie when she performs, Brouwer writes, "it became an important aim that there be motion as well as sound...."

The ensuing Remembrances from 1996 is a 15-minute "elegy and tribute to Robert Stewart who was a musician, composer, sailor, and a loved one."  It begins in sorrow but "ends in a spirit of consolation and hope" - a lovely piece, straightforward in its expressive means and ends...