And There Was Light


The Collaboration between Nikolet Burzynska and Jolanta Sosnowska strated in 2017 and brought many artistic fruits. Every year the violinist premieres a new work by Burzynska who dedicates her compositions to the artist. Sosnowska has already first performed Burzynskas music in Poland, Skandinavia, USA and in Austria. Nikolet Burzyńska (born 1989) is a laureate of numerous international awards. Her works are performed by significant Polish and European orchestras, as well as world-famous soloists, like the American violinist Hilary Hahn.
The works written for Jolanta Sosnowska were composed within the Polish Ministry Program “Composing Commissions”, operated by the National Institute of Music and Dance in Poland.

Lightflight (2018)


Light and flight, flight to light, light-bulb, light flight … the title of the piece is very ambiguous. The composition was initiated by the exceptional violinist Jolanta Sosnowska and written for her. I was captivated by her agility and the airiness of her play, as well as the deep emotionality and naturalness of phrasing. /N. Burzynska/

Verdantlight (2019)


It was the energy of a green meadow which inspired me to compose the piece. Peace, harmony, simplicity and purity which it emanates, at the same its complexity, multicolor, vitality, fantasy of shapes and teeming of life provoked me to write „Verdant-Light”. The composition refers sometimes – in its character – to the music of ancient Greece or Egypt, in terms of playing the Cithara and Lyre, when music served to put one up in a higher mood, to purify. Verdant-Light oscillates between the athmospere of the ancient music and broad unrestrained expression. One can say, the violin is the light of the harp. The violin builds up the harp’s colors and influences their temperature just like the light in photography. The violin is sometimes a light which dominates and dazzles. It is becoming a subject per se. /N. Burzyńska/

Freelight (2020)


The lyrics in FREELIGHT for Violin and Choir (2020) are asemantic, while the vocal voices are sometimes treated like instruments. To my mind, an asemantic message is a more open and primeval carrier (unconstrained, in a sense, by the need to follow verbal content) of the emotional and energetic content of sound. The vocal as well as the violin part contains sonoristic elements and unusual performance techniques, such as gusty whistles, percussive vocal sounds in the vocal parts, or flageolet tremolandos, virtuosic flageolet glissando ricochets in the violin part. This results in a very vivid and colourful tonality of the piece, part of which is static and contemplative in its narrative. On the other hand, by the vividness of textures and colours, it becomes a journey through unexpected and diverse flavours.

Flux (2021)


Flux for Violin and 4 Double Basses comprises 3 movements. Flux is flow, or a stream. Flow is life energy, exchange, one influencing another. Flow energy is a mountain stream, a tide, the relationship between two people, bodily emotions, the gift of life handed down from generation to generation. This composition is characterised by constant motion, fast in the bookend movements, slower in the middle in an atmosphere of peace and harmony. The final movement returns to some of the musical material from the first one, but in a surprising way. It drifts between the grotesque, virtuosity, and echoes of the music of primal cultures, the wild sounds of nature.

Ecstatic Quartz Rainbows (2022)


Ecstatic Quartz Rainbows is like an abstract. The character of this piece is like a getting to the truth – a little ecstatic, a little moving, deep, it has something of lightness, wild freedom. The piece is not written in equal temperation, what influneces its colour and harmony. It is a nod towards reneissance masters as well as trans minimalists like Steve Reich or La Monte Young