Albums & recordings

Handel, Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy and others as comfort and encouragement in personal crises.

Music is the best medicine – internationally acclaimed pianist Sophie Pacini proves it impressively on her album “bittersweet”, released on 7 March 2025 by Avenir Records (digital distribution by Deutsche Grammophon, physical distribution by Note 1).

Inspired by an intimate, moving concert in a Munich women’s shelter, the ECHO Klassik winner wanted to give hope and light in dark hours to many others with a selection of her personal favourite pieces.

The result is “bittersweet” – Sophie’s own collection of encouraging masterpieces that feels like a gentle embrace amid crises and challenges. In a world often marked by uncertainty and strain, the music on this album offers powerful consolation – a reminder that beauty, pain and hope are mysteriously interwoven.

With great emotional depth, Sophie Pacini takes the listener on a colourful journey through popular works by Handel, R. Schumann, Brahms, Mozart and many other composers, whose music swings like a pendulum between lightness and melancholy. In 12 carefully chosen classics such as “Träumerei” (Schumann), “Clair de lune” (Debussy), the “Raindrop” Prelude (Chopin) or Handel’s Chaconne in G major, she invites us to let ourselves fall into the soothing sounds of the piano and be comforted in small and large crises.

“‘bittersweet’ is like a musical diary for me,” says the pianist. “The album reminds me of many moving phases in my life – phases that required reflection and courage, and phases that gave me strength and confidence. It is worth believing in your dreams and not giving up. If I can pass on even a little of what music has given me, that makes me happy.”

“PUZZLE” – with her ninth album, ECHO and ICMA winner Sophie Pacini looks through the kaleidoscope of the musical experiences that have shaped her life, presenting what is probably her most intimate album. It is a view of her own artistic journey, marked by eminent pianistic development and an eventful personal path on the international music circuit.

“On this album I have combined works that gave me support, courage, vision, insight and confidence in brief but, in retrospect, essential moments of my life. I have also made new discoveries about my buried Jewish family history and found further cultural roots in myself, which I feel anew especially in the first Chopin Ballade and the C-sharp minor Nocturne.”

Sophie Pacini presents works by Chopin and Scriabin – composers who, in the eyes of the music press, make her “the ideal interpreter of 19th-century piano music”.

A summit meeting of two generations of pianists

Vienna, New Year’s Eve: almost without an audience, Martha Argerich and Sophie Pacini met for a concert at the Wiener Konzerthaus. The two pianists share a close artistic friendship, which they also share on stage with their many fans. The musical journey led from Mozart to Liszt.

The Konzerthaus Wien and ARTHAUS Musik recorded this special duo evening, directed by Markus Aubrecht – the Blu-ray documents a brilliant encounter of two piano generations.

Clarinettist Pablo Barragán and pianist Sophie Pacini titled their joint album with sonatas by Prokofiev, Weinberg, Bernstein and Poulenc “Boundless”. Except for Poulenc’s sonata, the works were written during the Second World War and are highly virtuosic. Weinberg draws on klezmer, Bernstein on jazz, while Prokofiev and Poulenc choose a classical language treated with great freedom. Prokofiev’s famous flute sonata is presented here in a new transcription for clarinet.

After “In Between” spent months at the top of the classical charts, pianist and cultural philosopher Sophie Pacini presents her sixth solo album, perhaps her most personal in its choice of themes, and the beginning of her collaboration with the Cologne label myrios classics.

The album’s title refers to the touch of memory that every work anchors deep in the soul. The programme opens with the “Love Theme” from Giuseppe Tornatore’s legendary “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”, in Sophie’s words “dedicated to love as the journey of discovery through life on the way to its secrets”.

Released on 11 May 2018 by Warner Classics, “In Between” explores “kinship and elective affinity” from Robert to Clara Schumann and to Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn – with Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Toccata op. 7 and “Widmung”, Clara Schumann’s Scherzo op. 14, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, Rondo capriccioso and Songs without Words, and Fanny Hensel’s Lied op. 2/1.

Released on 9 September 2016: solo works by Beethoven and Liszt, including the Waldstein Sonata op. 53, the Réminiscences de Don Juan, the transcription of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Liebestraum No. 3.

Released in August 2014, “Chopin” features solo works by the composer exclusively. For this album Sophie received the ECHO Klassik 2015 as Young Artist of the Year.

In 2011 she was also awarded the Deutschlandfunk Förderpreis, likewise connected with a CD production: in November 2012 her solo debut with works by Schumann and Liszt was released.

Her first CD with the piano concertos by Schumann and Mozart, released in February 2012, resulted from the Prix Groupe Edmond de Rothschild that Sophie Pacini won in 2011 at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad under jury chairman Dmitri Bashkirov.