Vlado Sunko: Ispovidi

Vid Veljak, cello
Tonči Tranfić, piano

Some may find my compositions familiar, as though they have heard them somewhere before, but that is only confirmation of historical continuity through our many reincarnations.
(Vlado Sunko)

The album Ispovidi for cello and piano is a new discography release by Cantus featuring works by composer Vlado Sunko, whose musical path has from the very beginning developed between classical and popular music, yet always in firm connection with inner, spiritual, and emotional impulses. Sunko does not tie his творчество to a single system, direction, or school; rather, he sees each new composition as a beginning, an attempt to express the inexpressible through sound, to come closer to answering the question – who am I, really?

At the heart of his artistic approach lies the search for personal expression, but also fidelity to tradition in the broadest sense of the word. Open to a wide range of musical influences – from Mediterranean folklore and Gregorian heritage to jazz, rock, and elements of avant-garde music – Sunko builds bridges in his work between old and new, the concrete and the abstract, the universal and the intimate. In chamber music in particular, he finds a space for expressing his introspective nature, and the cello, an instrument of velvety tone and emotional depth, becomes the bearer of his most sincere musical thoughts.

The cycle Ispovidi, which developed in fragments over more than three decades, consists of seven miniatures for cello and piano that the composer describes as “songs without words” – musical notes of personal states, reflections, and spiritual maturation. Each piece brings a different atmosphere, emotion, and aesthetic poetics, from quiet melancholy to rhythmic unrest, from lyrical rapture to a thoughtful, almost meditative dialogue with silence. Although they were not conceived as a strictly connected cycle, taken as a whole the pieces read as a musical autobiography – a dedication to love, faith, loss, reconciliation, and the search for meaning. Alongside this cycle of miniatures, from which the album takes its title, there are also two Elegies (Sunko’s first works for cello and piano, composed in 1990) and the piece Lamento, written in 2020.

In the interpretation of cellist Vid Veljak and pianist Tonči Tranfić, the works have gained a new expressive dimension – a union of technical precision and poetic depth. The album offers not only an artistic but also a pedagogical contribution: works of varying technical demands are already present in the repertoire of young musicians, and as a printed edition they were published in 2020 by the Academy of Arts in Split.

Ultimately, the album Ispovidi is the diary of an artistic and human soul, a sequence of inner chapters transformed into sound. Music here is not merely expression – it is a means of searching, an encounter with oneself and with that which transcends us. And therein lies its strength: that it remains with us even after the final tone has faded.

strength: that it remains with us even after the final tone has faded.
The album was recorded at the Ivo Tijardović Concert Hall – Croatian Home Split, in December 2023. Sound recording and mastering were by Branko Starc, who, together with Tomislav Oliver, also signed the music production. The release editor is musicologist Srđana Vrsalović, while the accompanying text was written by musicologist Ivana Tomić Ferić. The photographs are by Matko Petrić, and the visual design is by Karlo Kazinoti, Mišo Komenda, and Hana Balta.

Cantus Ltd.; Croatian Composers’ Society
Catalog number: 88924508402
Zagreb, 2025