Music; Classical & Opera; Album reviews; Margaret Brouwer's "Aurolucent Circles"
ZACHARY LEWIS, Staff writter Time Out Chicago
March 9-16, 2006
...Glennie is the focus throughout, but she's not the only percussionist to note. Together with the other drummers and the string and woodwind soloists, the setup yeilds all sorts of shimmering antiphonal effects, which are still perceptible on disc. Generally speaking, the orchestra, too, behaves like one giant percussion instrument, jumping into the mix periodically to provide unison crashes and chugging string passages...
The brasses are the dominant force in Mandala, a 2001 orchestral work breaking down a Dutch psalm melody... Brouwer relentlessly varies the orchestration, at one point dissolving the increasingly agitated music in a mist of spoken whispers...
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