Schwetzingen SWR Festival: The Power of Beauty

An evening to recharge your batteries. Artist-in-Residence Sophie Pacini performs her personal favorites. Pain and hope, grief and solace: this is the emotional landscape into which Schwetzingen Artist-in-Residence Sophie Pacini draws her audience with her program *Bittersweet*. In 2025, the pianist released a CD under this title featuring uplifting favorites, and this concert now expands the range of composers and works. Schubert’s late Impromptu in A-flat major and the middle of his three Sonatas in A minor, along with Schumann’s *Carnaval*, Mozart’s melancholic Fantasy in D minor, and Liszt’s Sixth *Hungarian Rhapsody*: these are great masterpieces that expand the mind and heart. But we also get to discover a long-forgotten composer: with *Souvenance*, Cécile Chaminade draws a connection back to Mendelssohn’s *Songs Without Words*. And suddenly a quote by Anton Bruckner comes to mind: “Because the current state of the world is, spiritually speaking, weakness, I take refuge in strength and write powerful music.” This power is contagious. “It’s worth it,” says Sophie Pacini of *Bittersweet*, “to believe in your dreams and not give up. If I can pass on even a little bit of what music has given me through my own music, that makes me happy.”