Without intermission, applause, or interruption, for approximately one hour, the audience is drawn into an ever-growing dramatic tension through some of the most beautiful and virtuosic pages of the Romantic repertoire by Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin. C-sharp minor, the tragic key par excellence, serves as the Ariadne’s thread guiding this unusual recital.

Recital in C-sharp minor
“A flower between two abysses”

João Costa Ferreira piano
Luís Nascimento image

Program

S. Rachmaninov – Prelude, op. 3 nº2
F. Chopin – Valse, op. 64 nº2
A. Scriabine – Étude, op. 2 nº1
F. Chopin – Nocturne, B. 49
F. Chopin – Prelude, op. 45
A. Scriabine – Étude, op. 42 nº5
F. Chopin – Étude, op. 25 nº7
F. Chopin – Nocturne, op. 27 nº1
S. Rachmaninov (arr. A. Richardson) – Vocalise, op. 34 nº14
F. Chopin – Fantaisie-Impromptu, op. 66
L. van Beethoven – Sonata quasi una Fantasia, op. 27 nº2

About

Although this project was conceived around some of the most celebrated works of the “great repertoire,” it also carries an experimental dimension, rooted in its tonal unity. C-sharp minor imposes an aesthetic horizon and a psychological atmosphere that Liszt, referring to Beethoven’s Sonata quasi una Fantasia, Op. 27 No. 2, also known as the “Moonlight Sonata”, is said to have described as an “abyss.” An abyss that reflects the Romantic fascination with depth and darkness, and an imaginative world in which torment, mystery, and destruction intertwine to the point of vertigo.
Whether due to instrumental tuning constraints or to the belief that each key possesses distinct expressive qualities, works in C-sharp minor were extremely rare before the Romantic period. One notes, for instance, the near-total absence of this key in the otherwise monumental corpora of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. For this reason, the tonal unity centered on C-sharp minor became the guiding principle of this recital, conceived as a celebration of 19th-century musical Romanticism.
Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” one of the earliest works in C-sharp minor to enter the pantheon of masterpieces, may be seen as the dawn of a new era. As the culminating point of this recital, it embodies both the horizon of future composers and the legacy of the past they inherited.