With the antennas of his remarkable musical sensitivity, Diamandiev captures the crescendo of a music-theoretical tendency — the tendency to confine harmony within the realm of the rational. Functional harmony is almost the ideal example: from its very definition (“functional”), it shows that it deals with the performance of a role and the handling of meanings, and thus relies on convention, rule, and abstraction — concepts detached from what is actually heard.

What the musician lacks under such conditions is sound itself, the tonal substance. It is precisely the tonal substance that becomes an indispensable condition, a primary point of orientation, and a fundamental concept in the author’s work. Harmony unfolds in the relationship between the tonal substance of the chord and its function, between the sonic reality and its rational interpretation.**

From a review by Kristina Yapova