Walking in Silence is available to listen to on YouTube and Spotify. Photo coutersy of Cường Tống

HÀ NỘI — After more than a decade of living, studying and working overseas, composer and pianist Cường Tống has released Walking in Silence, a new album with cellist Trần Hồng Nhung that reflects on loneliness, memory and healing.

The album looks back on more than a decade of experiences and artistic growth that Tống underwent while living overseas. It offers an emotionally resonant meditation on loneliness, memory and the process of healing.

According to Tống, the album is his most intimate and personal project to date, with its works emerging gradually over more than 11 years of living, studying and working in Beijing rather than being written at a single moment.

The album comprises nine works crafted in a minimalist instrumental style. Its narrative unfolds entirely through sound, expressed through dialogues between the two instruments and carefully calibrated silences woven into the structure of the compositions.

The pieces are arranged as an emotional journey, moving from encounters and moments of love to separation. In the end, what lingers is not the story itself, but the quiet spaces left within the human mind.

“Walking in Silence is a story born from the years I spent away from home," Tống said. "There were days when I was completely alone, walking for hours through an unfamiliar city, saying nothing and hearing nothing but the sound of my footsteps and the thoughts in my head.

"Every piece on the album emerged from those walks: walking in silence, walking alone. Some began as a few piano phrases quickly recorded on my phone, while others came to me unexpectedly in the middle of the night, prompting me to rush home and write them down before the feeling disappeared.”

In the album, the piano represents the inner workings of the mind, while the cello serves as a voice for emotional expression. According to Tống, he regards the cello as the instrument whose timbre most closely resembles the human voice.

Tống invited cellist Nhung to collaborate on the project. Nhung studied at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow and the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music. She was the only Vietnamese musician to serve as principal cellist of the Asian Youth Orchestra during the 2013–2014 season and won first prize at the All-Russian Suzdal Competition in 2017.

However, Tống said what he was looking for was Nhung's emotional restraint, subtlety and sense of quiet introspection conveyed through her playing.

Reflecting on the recording process, Nhung said the greatest challenge was not performing technically demanding passages, but mastering emotional restraint.

“The music creates movement, yet the listener should feel as though everything is standing still,” Nhung said. “That was perhaps the most difficult thing to achieve.”

The recording of Walking in Silence spanned three years, allowing the artists to preserve the precise sense of stillness and silence that the music demanded.

Tống first gained recognition at the age of 19 when he won first prize at the Autumn Concours in Malaysia in 2007. He later moved to China on a full scholarship, pursuing advanced studies in piano performance, composition and orchestration.

In 2008, he recorded a solo piano performance for Việt Nam National Television and appeared at the Kirishima International Music Festival in Japan under the guidance of People's Artist Đặng Thái Sơn.

After returning to Việt Nam, Tống became involved in music education. In 2022, he co-authored the piano fantasy Bay Vào Ngày Xanh (Flying into the Blue Day). In 2024, he joined the team of authors responsible for the Grade 12 textbooks Music 12 and Music Topics 12. — VNS