Sophie Pacini on Bittersweet

On Sunday evening, 27th July, pianist Sophie Pacini is giving a recital at Oxford Piano Festival. I had the pleasure of speaking with her about her programme choices for this performance, her latest album bittersweet, and her passion for music as a source of light and hope in the most challenging situations.

bittersweet is balanced between challenge, diversity and success. What made you choose those particular pieces? 

Since I was a child, I had this big wish to share music with people who don't have a connection with it yet. There was one place that made me curious, and that's safe houses where women can stay when they suffer domestic abuse. 

When I was a child, I had a good friend and her aunt suffered from domestic abuse, but nobody in the family cared. She didn't get any help, and one day I saw her with a blue eye and wearing sunglasses. That really hit me hard, and I often thought about what happened to her. 

This all made me wonder how it might be to do a concert in a safe house. It wasn't easy because everything is secret for obvious reasons. I was very persistent, and I managed to do a first concert in Bavaria's biggest safe house, where there was about forty women from all over the world. It's a beautiful example of inclusion, and how you can speak through music, and everyone understands it. I started to dive into my repertoire and to think about pieces that helped me through difficult times. It wasn't easy for me at school or home, because nobody could understand what I was doing, and they had no connection with classical music. I spent a lot of time with the piano on my own just to find out who I am, and I always felt I can communicate best through the piano.

Playing piano is for me a musical hug, and so I put all that together and it provoked this choice of music, especially the Händel Chaconne that opens the album. Every time I played that piece, the women started to cry, out of having the impression that everything is possible. The most beautiful sentence came from one of the women, who said, “please speak for us, give us a voice and tell our story. It was something that I did in private, for free, and then I thought, why not do an album, for everyone? 

The women encouraged me to talk about it.  I started to get invitations even to talk shows that are not about music, and it was a chance to also show the relevance of music and musical education as soul food.

I hear in your playing that you respect the composer, but you don't feel shackled to playing in a particular way. 

I follow the philosophy that I never can be objective as much as I try, and at some point, I decided that I don't want to be, because I didn't write those pieces, I simply try to give them life. I had people who really supported me on that journey. One of them was Martha Argerich. We play together very often now, but she first heard me when I was 18. She said the most important thing is that you have something to tell, and to not let anyone take it away from you - that you will never satisfy everyone's taste.

I notice you’re playing Schubert Piano Sonata D784 as part of your programme at Oxford Piano Festival. What made you choose this music as a centrepiece for the recital?

This piece was very important to me through Corona. It was after my mom got cancer and she was present during the recording. Schubert was diagnosed with syphilis right before he wrote it, and A minor is the tonality of death. It starts like a funeral march, and then comes this E major, a kind of prayer. That's one of the most beautiful moments in all sonatas to me, where I can free myself and float away a little bit.

The last movement, it’s this kind of Ländler, but always there is a bittersweet note, and he is brave enough to finish the sonata without any sign of hope. Maybe in that honesty there does lie a little bit of hope, because at least you accept that at the moment you don't have it, there is still place for development. 

In the Mozart Fantasy, which is on the album, and in the recital that you're playing at Oxford, you draw out the fact that Mozart wasn’t simply a fragile person.

That's wonderful that you say that. D minor is a super-important tonality – Mozart's Requiem, Bach's Chaconne, Beethoven's 9th Symphony… Here we have a piece that lasts a few minutes, and it starts like Bach in the cathedral, then searching for something, and the harmonies are not typical Mozart. I chose that piece to show that there isn't a typical Mozart as we know it - there's always a surprise about it. That's why I think it's so important not to be objective, because I can always show the surprises that are there by daring to do it my way.