Rheos (2003) 14’

string trio and piano

The ancient Greek word 'rheos' means 'flow'. Famous everything flows by Heraclythus sounds as panta rhei. From rheos derive such essential concepts as rhyme (assonance) and rhythm.

Why flow? Because I was fascinated by an idea of continuity.

Why rhyme? Because in physical reality we can only perceive continuity if it is logically divided, while division as operation is impossible without repeatedness – which is, in its turn, nothing but similarity in the distance (Stravinsky called it parallelism).

Why rhythm? Because in my piece rhythm is far from its usual function to measure the time; I hear rhythm as the breathe of a flow, its streaming consisted of multispeed amount of flows, something like a complex sound wave shaped by many simple waves.

Flow means (and Rheos presents) an integrity of components – rhythm, harmony, texture, line – which exist simultaneously in the piece being combined in different ways. However, harmony flows into rhythm, line into harmony, diverse kinds of figurations derived from basic structural points shape the texture etc. – but each transcends its borders in juxtaposition and interaction. The difference between the ways of combining them all is the main formal factor. A real continuum has no chance to be transformed into an opus. In other words, we mentally prolong and overcome the discontinuity of the piece by means of parallelism and contrast, the same things that build the form.

What can be caught from first sight when listening to Rheos is the texture. The piano part counteracts the united sound body of strings, while this body ramificates from time to time into microflows of different velocities. Both piano and strings play in similar power manner, both try to dominate.