June 10, 2014

  • Stunning 21-Century Chamber Music by Margaret Brouwer

     

    Margaret Brouwer: Shattered Glass; Chamber Works
    Sandra Simon, soprano. Daniel Silver, clarinet. Maia String Quartet. Blue Streak Ensemble
    Naxos 8.559763
    Total Time:  58:06
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Margaret Brouwer (b. 1940) is an award-winning composer whose music has been performed across the country and who receives numerous commissions.  She most recently was head of composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music.  Naxos earlier released an album of her orchestral music.  Her music is often noted for its emotional power and drama as well as moments of great lyricism.  That it does not fall so easily within current “camps” is no doubt another reason for its attractiveness.  In this new release, listeners have a chance to explore several recent works for chamber settings.  Often chamber music is the place where composers create some of their more personal and often intense music and it can be where there style is very concentrated as a result.  The present disc features an opportunity for listeners to explore this deeply personal musical expression.

    The CD takes its title from a 2007 work, Shattered Glass.  The music was written for MOSAIC and is a sort of mixture of differing sounds and ideas with constantly changing colors.  The opening intense section has moments of jazz-like percussion, but the central section shifts to more mysterious writing for flute and mallet percussion with some string writing.  Each instrumentalist in the ensemble receives interesting ensembles in what at times feels like a random ordering of sounds and motivic ideas though it is quite dramatic.  The Blue Streak Ensemble provides a committed and rather exciting performance.

    The more substantial work on the program is Clarinet Quintet in A (2005).  The piece was written as a response to American aggression overseas, in particular the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The anger and frustration Brouwer herself was feeling at this underbelly of American nationalism is explored in the outer movements of the work.  A more somber second movement serves as a reflection for the September 11 attacks with a brief moment of relief in the third-movement scherzo.  For this work, Brouwer used a serial approach for harmonic qualities in one layer along with other 12-tone techniques.  Middle Eastern influences appear with imitations of the Muslim call to prayer mixed in with hymn quotes.  The melodic fragments and imitations all create a sometimes complex and intense musical sound world with the clarinet providing the clearest delineation of the quoted material.  One of these announcements occurs early enough so that scrutiny can allow the listener to follow the deconstruction of these melodies.  And a fuller string quartet statement certainly draws further attention to this music.  This is a very intense work though and yet sudden flashes of lyrical lines allow for some respite.  It is a fascinating work that is certainly worth repeated exploration.  Perhaps one sense of this music is that it pits this seemingly “righteous” attitude that in one sense lives in a different theological world view and which is then horribly perverted by events beyond control.  The result is a work that some may feel is closer to Ives at times philosophically and which makes for a rather engaging listen.

    Another connection to 21st Century horror comes in a setting of a David Adams poem from his September Songs: 9/11.  “Whom do you call angel now?” is a modern art song set for soprano with viola and piano providing simple accompaniment.  The vocal line has an almost Medieval quality in its modal outlines at first and grows into a very beautiful somewhat more romantic-styled harmony as it progresses.  The use of the viola is a rather stunning idea providing a perfect warm contrast to the vocal line excellently sung her by Sandra Simon.  This is another of those hidden gems that is a part of this release.

    Lonely Lake (2011) is a fascinating modern approach to creating birdsong within a piece that depicts other aspects of the natural world.  The result is an often almost impressionistic tone poem with a sort of Satie-like feel at times as the waves gently undulate in strings and warm clarinet sounds in its opening bars.  The music here lies in stark contrast to the intense writing of the earlier pieces, though the music is very “modern”.  More traditional flashes of harmonic ideas, and the rather exciting builds in the music help provide some exciting energy as the music progresses.

    Finally, the album closes with two interesting arrangements for mixed ensemble of Debussy’s “Clair de lune” (a nice choice coming off the previous work) and the “Two-Part Invention in F” by Bach.  Demonstrating Brouwer’s wit and elegance all at once, they make for an interesting close to this personal set of original works.

    The quintet is really the piece that may make the greatest impression at first as it has some of the structure listeners can bring to the music first and foremost.  The pieces seem to provide a good variety of Brouwer’s style and may encourage many to discover her other recorded work.  Certainly, she is a musical voice that is well worth discovering and this is another example of what makes Naxos’ musical commitments so significant in recorded art music.