ISON: Echoes of the East

As times change and we move faster to accompany them, our traditions act as standing posts, grounding us, and guiding us through the changes, uniting people from different ethnicities in hope of a more balanced future. This recording offers an example of this combination of tradition and diversity, bringing together works by composers from various cultures whose music resonates with sonic and symbolic mementos rooted in Eastern Christian traditions, such as bell-like rhythmic patterns or chant-inspired melodies. Through these works, the piano becomes a space where past and present meet and transform, where tradition is not preserved as something static, but constantly reimagined within contemporary sound and life. SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Sergei Rachmaninoff was a celebrated composer, pianist, and conductor, and a leading figure of late Russian Romanticism.

After the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to the United States in 1918, never to return to his beloved country. His Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, was composed in 1913 and dedicated to Matvey Pressman, then revised in 1931 – the latter is the version used for this recording. The Sonata comprises three movements, with brief transitional passages linking them. References to bells and choral singing appear throughout, reflecting the rhythmic and polyphonic complexity of the Russian bell-ringing tradition and of Russian Orthodox chant, both familiar to Rachmaninoff from his youth.

Russian composer Georgy Sviridov’s musical idiom bears extensive connections to Russian Orthodox elements – including bells and choral textures -, in an intensely dramatic, tonally expanded language that echoes the traditions of his teacher, Dmitri Shostakovich. He composed two piano Partitas in 1947. Sacred influences are evident throughout this partita. Mourning Music combines low, repeated notes and dotted rhythms, reminiscent of funeral tolling.

The Intermezzo contrasts repeated recitation tones with high-pitched, bell-like figures, ending in a brief chorale. Solemn Music alternates dissonant, chant-like chords with jubilant bell ringing, before concluding in lamentation with a repeated descending minor second. Tatar-Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina is renowned for combining Western modernism with deeply spiritual, Orthodox-inspired elements. Chaconne (1962), dedicated to Marina Mdivani, merges traditional form with modern techniques in a highly virtuosic idiom.

This work reflects the duality of human and divine: the maestoso main theme, chordal and rhythmically stable, symbolizes divine strength, framing seven contrasting and agitated variations that embody human instability. References to the cross and to the numbers three and seven, linked to the Holy T rinity and to sacred numerology, appear in melodic contouring, structural design, intervallic sequences and patterned repetitions. VASILIJE MOKRANJAC Vasilije Mokranjac was one of the most prominent Serbian composers of the second half of the Twentieth century. His musical language diverges from the atonal and serial tendencies of the post-World War II avant-garde, instead returning to tonality and to classical and Romantic forms.

His piano suite Odjeci (“Echoes”, in Serbian) was composed in 1973; it has 11 movements, to be played attacca. A brief quotation of a Byzantine hymn in the first movement generates the thematic material of the entire suite. Suggestions of monodic chanting and the recitation of prayers alternate and merge continuously. Bells permeate the suite: initially consonant, they gradually grow more dissonant, while the sustained textures create a reverential mood that shapes the work’s narrative.

English composer and Orthodox priest Ivan Moody was known for integrating Byzantine chant, Orthodox choral textures, and a prayerful atmosphere into his music. He spent much of his life in Portugal. Mechtá (“Dream”, in Russian) is one of seventeen pieces from his Piano Book (2020). He dedicated this piece to me, in honour of my affinity for the Russian Romantic repertoire, as well as our joint tradition of singing in church.

Structured strophically, the piece incorporates choral textures and chords reminiscent of Orthodox bell ringing at the end of the strophes. ISON An ison is a sustained drone note traditionally used in Byzantine chant to support and accompany the melody. In the works displayed in this recording, the ison appears in different forms, connecting composers from distinct cultures and aesthetic worlds. It can be heard clearly at the beginning of Mokranjac’s Odjeci, where a sustained tone accompanies the Byzantine chant introduced after the opening bell rings.

In Sviridov’s Partita, imitations of drone notes (and chords) are periodically revealed, while in Gubaidulina’s Chaconne the main theme is presented several times at the opening, each time introduced and reinforced by a repeated pitch in the first few bars. Moody’s Mechtá features pedal harmonies in the first bars of each phrase. Rachmaninoff’s Second Sonata does not explicitly emulate a sung drone; however, its prolonged bass notes and pedal harmonies suggest instead the resonance of a low bell, whose overtones expand in the work’s dense and virtuosic textures. Therefore, in these works, the ison becomes more than a technical resource, materializing, instead, as a symbol of continuity, of tradition prevailing, and developing, across different musical languages, cultures, and generations, beyond the challenge of time.

Taíssa Poliakova Cunha Pianist; Professor, University of Évora (Portugal)