Firestorm

Mona Sangesland, Flute; Bhavani Kotha, Oboe; Stephanie Lee, Piano

Firestorm is a trio for Flute, Oboe (doubling on English Horn), and Piano. It was written in early 2015. It is a fast and dramatic piece that portrays the image of a firestorm, using additional performing techniques such as hissing and snapping fingers to portray popping embers and many other fire-associated images. The piece is in ABCAB form with a brief coda. The A sections are mysterious, with fragments of material drifting about and gently crackling, eventually coalescing into the firestorm. The B sections are fast and rhythmic, based on a strong, driving theme surrounded by swirling chromaticism. The C section features that same theme transformed into a slow expressive solo for English horn with distant wind chimes and other effects in the background. At the end of the second A section, a huge dissonant buildup is jarringly interrupted by a major chord, leading back to a strong presentation of the main theme slowly in tremolo octaves in the piano with the other instrumentalists singing. This then leads to a final presto which transforms the traditional short short long pattern of the endings of many classical/romantic pieces into a parody of itself, loosing track of its E minor tonality and disintegrating into cluster chords and extended techniques before finally crashing back on the tonic at the end.