BUHR: The Music of Glenn Buhr (Glenn Buhr)

Album review

This disc of music by Glenn Buhr illustrates a sense of relationship to the environment this American writer finds in contemporary Canadian classical music. There could be no musical landscape more Canadian than that of the opening orchestral trilogy, Winter Poems, inspired by the vast view of the frozen land seen from Buhr's high-rise on the edge of Winnipeg. The overall tone is calm and lyrical, though nervous, rotating figures in the foreground seem to represent the city. A humorous setting of Edward Lear's The Jumblies (creatures who sail the seas in a sieve) is neatly sung by soprano Tracy Dahl in an attractive and pointed performance that brings out the music's wit. Buhr's Viola Concerto is a one-movement twenty-minute work in the form of an original theme with a series of character variations that grow more and more "contemporary" in style. Neal Gipp, the violist who commissioned the work, is outstanding, commanding nearly all the drama and penetration of a violin in his difficult part. The most dramatic work on the disc is Beren and Lúthien, inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, the poetic back-story to The Lord of the Rings. Beren and Lúthien are lovers whose actions put the plots of both epics in motion. They are represented by virtuoso parts for timpani and harp, respectively, strikingly played by Greg Hodgson and Richard Turner. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and conductor Bramwell Tovey are alert, accurate, and dramatic in their playing, though not without a sense that they were approaching and even, at times, exceeding their limits. Sound (produced by Andrea Ratuski and recorded by Anton Kwiatkowski) is a little dry. Nonetheless, there is no hesitation in recommending the disc.
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