Margaret Brouwer is a composer renowned for her music’s lyricism, imagery and emotional power. The five premiere recordings on this album span 24 years. Brouwer grew up in a Dutch/American community and her Symphony no.1 ‘Lake Voices’ encodes both a recurring Dutch hymn-like melody and the rhapsodic, sparkling sonorities of a lake vista. Rhapsody, Concerto for Orchestra provides dazzling sounds and virtuosic challenges, while Pluto, written during a period of loss, offers destructive but also restorative moments. Elsewhere, Brouwer evokes the beauties of nature and sailing at dawn.
Margaret Brouwer’s music has been admired as ‘Devoid of slickness...true to a vision’ and for ‘inhabiting its own peculiarly bewitching harmonic world’ (The New York Times). ‘A marvellous example of musical imagery’ (American Record Guide).
Brouwer’s honours include an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship, Cleveland Prize, and many grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, etc. She is continually in demand for new works, and commissions have come from the Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, American Pianists Association, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, and the American Composer’s Orchestra.
‘The American composer has the expressive skills to evoke the passions she sets out to describe – love, ecology, racism, even being trapped in telephone hell… Brouwer’s musical language – tonal with deft sprinklings of harmonic spice – draws the instruments into ardent and wistful conversations’ – Gramophone on 8559904
One of the foremost conductors of our time, Marin Alsop represents a powerful and inspiring voice. The 2023/24 season marks her fifth as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna RSO; her first as artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony; and her first as principal guest conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. She will begin a new position as principal guest conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra in the 2024/25 season. A full decade after becoming the first female conductor of the Last Night of the Proms, Alsop made history again in September 2023, as both the first woman and the first American to guest conduct three Last Nights.
