Margaret Brouwer: Reactions - Songs and Chamber Music
Naxos

Aptly titled, this latest collection of material by composer Margaret Brouwer (b. 1940), all five pieces world premiere recordings, distills her responses to recent global events into variegated musical form. The harrowing effects of war, violence, and isolation are addressed, but the album's hardly a gloomfest: its opening work, Rhapsodic Sonata, considers love from multiple angles, including rapture, and it ends on a bemusing note when All Lines Are Still Busy deals with that maddening modern-day experience of being put interminably “on hold” by a call centre. Stated otherwise, Reactions - Songs and Chamber Music presents a rewarding glimpse into Brouwer's rich compositional world and the broad tonal range it encompasses. It's one of a dozen titles in her discography, which presents recordings of material drawn from a catalogue of more than 200 works.

One of the most appealing things about Reactions is its variety. In addition to the aforementioned contrasts in style and tone, instrumentation changes throughout: violist Eliesha Nelson pairs with pianist Shuai Wang, mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty's joined by Wang and violinist Mari Sato, tenor Brian Skoog also teams with Wang, and Sato returns for the closing piece as both narrator and violinist. That ever-changing presentation bolsters the listener's engagement for the full fifty-six-minute presentation, most of it recorded at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where Brouwer was head of the composition department from 1996 to 2008.

With the music oscillating between moments of joy and anguish, the emotional tempest of being in love drives Rhapsodic Sonata, written in 2011 and revised five years later. Passion permeates the opening movement, “Cáritas,” the attack by the violin almost angry in contrast to the comparatively placid demeanour of the piano. That initial tension gradually subsides for a more reflective meditation, such that the intense dialogue between the musicians might be heard as heightened exchanges between lovers. Nelson and Wang prove to be excellent sparring partners for how deftly they transition from episodes of conflict to tranquil passages suggesting romantic ardour. Whereas the rapturous second movement, “…fair as the moon, bright as the sun…,” eschews emotional extremes for a lyrical expression of love, “Blithesome Spirit,” is, as one would expect, playful and high-spirited.

Texts for the four-part Declaration (2005) cast a wide net, with three respectively based on texts by Ann Woodward, David Adams, and Brouwer herself and the fourth using a short extract from The Declaration of Independence. Beaty acquits herself admirably in giving moving voice to the texts and their darker emotional hues. The opening “Thorn” despairs over the numbing effects of seeing violence and death daily on our TV screens, while “Scattering in Fear” focuses on the horror of children and families desperately trying to avoid death from gunfire. “…all men and women are…” serves as a reminder of the equality of all people, after which the dirge-like “Whom do you call angel now” adopts a heartfelt tone of mourning, its text from a set of poems written by Adams after the WTC attacks in 2001. The subject matter remains heavy for I Cry - Summer 2020, a work composed in reaction to pandemic-induced isolation, racial injustice, political lies, gun deaths, and children separated from parents. Though it's arranged as a four-minute instrumental duet for violin and piano, Sato and Wang forcefully articulate the anguish Brouwer was feeling at the time the work was created.

With Skoog giving resonant voice to its text, The Lake plays like shared reflections by a man enjoying a morning walk by the waterside. But what starts as an expression of delight at the sun sparkling on the waves and birds singing gradually becomes despair at the sight of toxic algae forming on the lake's surface and the dead fish scattered at the beach and floating in the water. Arriving as it does after pieces dealing with such weighty themes, the comical All Lines Are Still Busy comes as something of a relief, even if the situation it recounts is an annoying one most of us have endured at one time or another. Speaking as well as playing, Sato plays solo violin as she waits to connect with a real person and suffers through being repeatedly told “Your call is important to us” by an electronic voice before reaching an actual human being—who then just as quickly re-directs and disconnects the caller.

June 2022