Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Mark Grandison's Burn was composed specifically for the vibrant, dynamic playing style of the Polish virtuoso violinist, Janusz Wawrowski. A bravura piece came readily to mind, inspired by the incendiary, mutable process of fire. The work commences tentatively, as if sparks are intermittently flicking onto tinder-dry kindling. As the music unfolds one could imagine relentlessly shape-shifting flames taking hold, eventually exploding into an inferno. But the piece is essentially driven by a more abstract notion: one of music in a constant and unpredictable process of metamorphosis, full of tangents and detours, never quite arriving; that is until the final bar. To provide coherency to this through-composed form, almost all passages derive from the opening material: the piano's crisply and briskly arpeggiated 5ths, and the narrow constellation of pitches that form the violin's first lyrical statement.

Work Details

Year: 2015

Instrumentation: Violin, piano.

Duration: 9 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — for virtuoso level violin and piano

Dedication note: Dedicated to Janusz Wawrowski

Commission note: Commissioned by Janusz Wawrowski.

First performance: by Janusz Wawrowski, Jennifer Kim — 22 Nov 15. Polish Embassy, Sydney