I liked the two CDs immensely. I played them to the Ambassador of the European Union, a very refined Dutchman who plays the piano magnificently, who remained enthusiastic, as was to be expected.
Salvatore Pinna – His Excellency the Italian Ambassador in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire) (Previously in St. Petersburg, Russia)
I due CD mi sono piaciuti moltissimo. Li ho fatti sentire all’ambasciatore dell’Unione Europea, un olandese molto raffinato che suona magnificamente il piano, che è rimasto entusiasta, come del resto era scontato.
Salvatore Pinna – Sua Eccellenza l’Ambasciatore d’Italia nella Repubblica Democratica del Congo (Zaire)
This week I found in a record shop in London two cd’s with your music. Thanks for the music, and of course thanks to Naxos for recording them…
I like the works even more after listening to them again.
…I hope in the near future to have more of your work on cd’s, especially your two symphonies.
Roel J. Groen – Netherlands
I have just purchased your new CDs on Naxos and enjoyed them very much. Vol. 1 is particularly intriguing.
…..You might be interested to know that your two CDs are readily available even in a city such as Winnipeg in several local CD stores.
…..Once again, congratulations on your two recordings. I enjoyed them immensely.
D.H. – Winnipeg, Canada
As I listened to some of the pieces at your website, it became immediately clear that our listeners would benefit wonderfully from hearing your compositions. I look forward to reviewing & scheduling your music and introducing you to those listeners who have yet to discover your fine work. We are flattered to hear from the composer, herself!
Bill Baker – Radio WCNY Classic FM – USA
We have received both of them from Naxos and played everything from each of them since they arrived at the station. Your music is great and we have enjoyed introducing our listeners to your compositions.
Henri Pensis – Radio WUFT – USA
I did enjoy your pieces…..If you’d like to do a ‘phone interview sometime to talk about your works I’d be delighted to arrange it.
Mick Freeman – Radio WQUB – USA
Thank you! And congratulations on your success.
Robert McBride – All Classical Radio KBPS 89.9 – USA
I’m listening to them right now, and enjoying them very much.
John Michel – American Composers Forum – Composers Datebook – Radio WDAV – USA
Thank you very much for your contribution to music. It is greatly appreciated.
Ted Weiner – 89.9 WDAV Classical Public Radio – USA
It was a pleasure speaking to you and I enjoy your music very much.
Stacey Rodda – Radio 4 RTHK – Hong Kong
Other works will be scheduled for future programs. And thanks again, for sharing the gift of your music.
Casper Sunn – Radio WORT 89.9 FM – USA
Congratulations on your impressive achievements!
Renee Chaney – Radio WGMS classical1035 – USA
Thanks so much for sending the CDs— wonderful music and I’ll try to broadcast more of it soon!
Bernard Sherman – Radio KDSI – USA
I enjoyed it, and I will be sure to play more in the future.
Eric Michaels – Beethoven Radio WTMI – USA
I want to tell you that I was very impressed with your recent Naxos recordings. In fact I think I have played several of your works on that label.
Karl Scroggin – Radio WUIS/WIPA – USA
We enjoyed your first Naxos recording very much and will continue to find places to air selections in our regular broadcast schedule…….We’ve just received volume two and hope to find a featured spot for it on our Contemporary Currents program in the coming months.
Steve Hahn – Radio KUAT-FM – USA
You did indeed send me the cd’s and I think your music is very fine. Upon my return, my first priority is to get your music on the air in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area.
Mark Malinowski – Radio WBJC – USA
You have a new fan. I’ve been listening to Vol 1 of your music since I bought the CD 2 or 3 days ago.
I like what I hear. Especially tracks 2 and 5, which seem to me the most unusual and daring. The others I like too, esp the use of the piano in the symphony.
I bought Vol 2 this morning, and am liking what I’ve begun to hear.
I found Vol 1 a bit conservative at first: unchallenging and, mostly, approachable. That’s not necessarily a criticism, and I’ve revised this view a little already. I guess there may be a certain traditional way of using the orchestra, though there’s obviously a rich imagination at work and plenty of intriguing turns to keep one busy and listening but there’s no leaning on the orthodoxies of minimalism, thankfully, nor is there musical blandness masking as depth.
I do like the Naxos 21st century Classics series, and think Santa Klaus Heymann is to be commended. I hope it’s financially successful for him, and that he continues it. I’m sure this’ll put your name on a wider map than previously (as it did with Tveitt, to the great pleasure of the Bis label).
I certainly find yours a fresh addition to the collection: unafraid to show some life and struggle, even entrails and muscle through music.
…..PS: Elegant site.
Bert Bailey – Ottawa, Canada
I’ve been enjoying both your CDs over the weekend, digging them more as I listen. Again, a strong favourite for the top of my 21st century classics series by Naxos. ‘Hope it brings you a huge audience.
…..As I said in my earlier one: I think Requiescat is a marvellous work: inward, serene and laid-back, neither extroverted nor extravagant at all. (Remarkable, really, for one who seems to have such a masterful grip on ex. and ex. musical statements.) Yet it’s got an intensity and focus that gnaw at one. I find it induces not the kind of other-worldly reverie that Rautavaara evokes, but something more earthy and immanent. The vocal parts at the end are exquisite, too: sparingly laid out, and beautifully sung.
I love and admire Rautavaara, and welcome your music also for being sometimes dreamy – yet always in that less other-worldy way: more earthy, as I said, leaving the listener’s feet planted on the ground.
…..Messidor, which you said illustrates your taking dissonance to a certain limit (though not in such words), is also the piece that, while I was trying to enter your musical universe and understand it, I’d found most intriguingly dissonant. For my part, I’d attributed those sounds either…1) to the ‘Russian’ sound of the horns — a special unrefined brassy timbre I think I detect especially in older Russian orchestras, not their contemporary ones, which are so much more uniform with all others. 2) to the orchestra. Or, thirdly, to the composer.
Now that you confirm that it’s this last, let me add that I considered it maybe the most distinctive stamp or single feature of the musical personality that was taking shape before my ears. It was rough and unrefined and earthy and visceral …and I loved it! So refreshing, after hearing so much effette transcendentalism, as well as the acidic torturings of…..
There was play in Messidor…..there’s also an extroverted musicality; how refreshing!
The first two minutes of the closing ‘Fanfare’ on that disc is positively bursting with harsh dissonances of this kind: what joy! Joy because the following minute, so light and graceful, shows in spades that the composer is no crude primitive. Because the music is blessed with gracia, as they say in Spain: having a unique stamp and distinction.
Bert Bailey – Ottawa, Canada
Greetings. I’ve only recently become acquainted with your music through some fine Naxos recordings. You’ve found a big fan of your work.
Sean Hickey – Brooklyn, NY, USA
I am a classical music lover and I thank you warmly for having placed some of your musical works on the web at our disposal. For me it has been an absolutely unusual experience; music that one listens to without difficulty, with pure pleasure and which, however, is not banal. To reconcile these two things is a really difficult challenge in our times, a challenge that I think you are winning in a sure manner. Continue like this and thank you for all you will still offer us.
Enrico Ghidoni – Bologna, Italy
Sono un apassionato di musica classica, e La ringrazio vivamente di aver messo a disposizione sul web alcuni pezzi della sua musica; è stata per me una scoperta assolutamente insolita; musica che si ascolta senza difficoltà con puro piacere, e che tuttavia non è banale; conciliare le due cose è una sfida davvero difficile al giorno d’oggi, che lei mi pare stia vincendo in maniera sicura; continui così e grazie per quello che potrà ancora offrirci.
Enrico Ghidoni – Bologna, Italy
Thank you for the wonderful music I have just discovered on Naxos records. I have a second disc on its way from England now with “Favole” and other works. I hope there will soon be recordings of your 1st and 2nd symphonies. It is still wonderful to discover new works of worth and beauty in the 21st century. I hope you have many, many years of composing and good health.
Malcolm Parker – Santa Barbara PD, USA
I have just bought your fascinating cd on naxos and am excited by your wonderfully eclectic and very enjoyable music. I am no musician but love the joys of new discovery and your music is just that. We need to hear more of it in England. My thanks to you for a delightful new musical experience.
Peter Gildener – Penzanze, United Kingdom
I am writing to congratulate you on your wonderful music. I acquired one of the two Naxos discs almost by accident and am enormously impressed by the spirit and imagination that inhabits every bar. The first piece on the disc, “Firelights”, is particularly striking, and all the music is a great joy at a time when so much new writing is lifeless or, in many cases, so UNmusical! Keep it up, and in the meantime I am off out to buy the other disc!
Steve Chevis – Cranleigh, United Kingdom
At last! I have finally succeeded in obtaining a copy of volume 1! And it is just as good as the other disc. The symphony is so full of fantasy, Florestan embodies the character to perfection (and I say that as something of a non-fan of Schumann – more my loss I guess), and Messidor is just so much FUN! Don’t you worry about the local avant-garde. Who’s listening to their squeaky gates anyway? Think of Pierre Boulez, who stated that Britten and Shostakovich were totally irrelevant to the evolution of music in the 20th century! Who is the most-listened-to composer of the 20th century? Shostakovich! Who listens to Benjamin Britten? Millions! Who listens to Pierre Boulez………..? (Don’t all speak at once) I hope that your music will get to be heard by more people. It certainly deserves to. I love it! Roll on the Second Symphony! Have you written any choral music?
Steve Chevis – Cranleigh, United Kingdom
Congratulations you are great in music, and I read your THOUGHTS too, wonderful let me kiss your hands…..
Setrak Setrakian – Beirut, Lebanon
Wow!!! You are a very great composer! I listened all your music online and looked the scores. You are the best composer I found in the internet!
Udo Marx – Kiel, Germany
I recently purchased a Naxos CD of your orchestral works (Florestan, etc.) and have enjoyed your creative work immensly. I especially appreciated reading your comments on the compositional trends of the 20th century….
Raymond Weidner – USA
Dear Maestro, I was very happy to find you on the web. I think the same way in many things and I think that above all one must know music to be able to write it. Many composers from the War till our times have made us hear many stupidities seasoned with some aesthetic theory. Just because we are in an ecletic phase we can reckon with these past times. I am 36 and I live in Firenze. You will also know how many young composers recognize themselves in these words. I have listened to your first CD for orchestra and I propose myself again to do the same with the second.
Cesare Valentini – Firenze, Italy
Egregio Maestro, sono stato molto contento di trovarLa sul web. La penso come lei in tante cose e penso soprattutto che bisogna conoscere la musica per scriverla. Tanti compositori dal dopoguerra ad oggi ci hanno fatto sentire tante stupidaggini condite con qualche teoria estetica. Proprio perchи siamo in una fase di estremo eclettismo possiamo fare i conti con questo passato. Io ho 36 anni e abito a Firenze. Anche lei saprа quanti giovani compositori si riconoscono in queste parole. Ho ascoltato il suo primo disco di musica orchestrale, mi ripropongo di fare altrettanto col secondo.
Cesare Valentini – Firenze, Italia
“The performances of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, conducted by Fabio Mastrangelo, are astonishing. The orchestra shows great compactness in which the wind and brass sections distinguish themselves.
We can affirm that this first volume of Ms Brusa’s works is an unmissable cd for music lovers and that it further enriches the Naxos Series dedicated to the 21st Century Classics.”
Marco del Vaglio – Nuova e Nostra, Italy