AMERICAN CLASSICS Naxos (2014)
Chamber music performed by Blue Streak Ensemble, Maia String Quartet, Daniel Silver - clarinet, Sandra Simon - soprano
- "Margaret Brouwer has an ear for creating some exquisite sounds and textures that listeners will find beguiling. The performances are first rate as is the recording ..." Read the full review on The Classical Reviewer
- “The playing is superlative throughout and the recordings are of audiophile quality.” Read the full review on Gramophone, December 2014
- "The music switches from a cool neo-Classical demeanor, all buoyant rhythms and sleek textures, to howls of Expressionist anguish - and then back again without a hitch. The emotional vividness of the result is remarkable, and the performances by the Blue Streak Ensemble and the Maia String Quartet with clarinetist Daniel Silver only underscore Brouwer’s versatility." Read the full review in the San Francisco Chronicle
AMERICAN CLASSICS Naxos (2006)
Orchestral music performed by Evelyn Glennie - percussion, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz - conductor
- “Based on this excellent new Naxos recording, (Brouwer) has an individual voice with a fine ear for orchestral colors. Her 2002 Concerto for Evelyn Glennie – ‘Aurolucent Circles’ – is immediately arresting, with its powerfully phrased opening voiced in the lower strings…The recording of the concerto (and the remainder of the disc as well) is both exciting and detailed, with a convincing sense of space around the instruments.” - Fanfare, May 2006
- "The overarching impression of this recording - and to me the mark of a greatly successful one - is that (Aurolucent Circles) must be incredibly interesting and exciting to experience live" - David Bloomenberg, MusicWeb International, 2006
- "The featured work is a percussion concerto – Aurolucent Circles in three movements… even from two speakers Brouwer’s signature waves of sound from side to side and front to back are as startling as they are coruscating…The dynamic range borders on awesome" - Classical CD Review, January 2006
LIGHT New World Records (2003)
Chamber music: "Lament," "Light," "Under the Summer Tree," Skyriding," "Demeter Prelude"
- "Composer Margaret Brouwer is that rarity, a contemporary composer whose music is accessible and engaging for a wide range of audiences, but whose work doesn't sound like movie music. She's not afraid to be spiky when spikiness is indicted, but there's never a sense in any of these works that she's using atonality for its own sake. And often her sonic world is utterly luminous in its beauty." - Sarah Bryan Miller, St Louis Post -Dispatch, January 2004
- "Brouwer's music does have a sense of stylistic independence and an openness of spirit that must be very hard won, given the pressures at work in the US during the era when she learned her craft. The melodies are memorable, they're cut of Brouwer's own; the instrumental writing is unique, sharp, and always expressive...Brouwer combines classical order and determination in her work, but also loves to make candy for a discerning ear. The result is not detachment, but a kind of energetic hopefulness, suggesting a strong emotional core we've yet to hear rise to the music's surface. What we have already is magic enough to go on with . . . " - Paul Ingram, Fanfare, May/June 2004