‘There is a fire in the brain, in the mind, which comes from the universal fire that makes solar systems and galaxies, asteroid belts and comets, huge orbiting spirals, circles, loops that bend back on themselves in giant symmetries and stream out across millions of miles in giant asymmetries. What we humans call music is the perfect expression of this utterly fantastic image.’ George Rochberg’s extraordinary statement perfectly characterises the contrasts between order and chaos, symmetry and asymmetry, development and repetition of his immense and symmetrical Circles of Fire for piano duo.