With Berlin Music, Brett Dean wrote a triple homage: to the classical duo line-up of violin and piano; to the violin virtuoso Midori, for whom the piece was written; and to the city of Berlin, where he lived between the mid-1980s and 2000 and whose rich cultural life he owes much to his development as a musician and composer. The first four, relatively short movements of the five-movement work form a suite of character pieces, which is followed by a longer final movement. In summary, this turns out to be the actual "main movement" from which all motifs and harmonies emerged. This includes tuning the G side down by a whole tone - an apparently small difference, but which has a great effect on the timbre and resonance of the instrument and suddenly makes previously impossible interval sequences playable. In addition, the violin in the third movement (a "moto perpetuo" in which Dean bows to Ravel's violin sonata) has to play with a practice damper, while the pianist changes the instrument and plays on a standing piano that is dampened by a pedal and is set up next to the concert grand Expressing nervous energy in tight college spaces.