Our friend, pianist Angelo Rondello returns to our stage with Reflection on Romance featuring seminal piano masterpieces by two of the piano’s finest composers, Chopin and Liszt.

The past two years have been a trying time for performers but also an opportunity for musical exploration and personal reflection. Rondello endured the shutdown by exploring new repertoire and vistas. Like many, he gained a deeper understanding of what is truly valuable, both personally and spiritually. This program features music that explores his introspection.

Perhaps no composer was as deeply personal as Chopin and if so, we hear a lifetime of personal experience in his 11-minute Ballade no. 4. Considered by many as Chopin’s greatest composition, it takes listeners on a musical odyssey with sweeping emotional ranges that stretch from intense questioning to unabashed declaration; from the deeply sublime to tragic despair.

Where Chopin speaks directly from the heart, Liszt paints a narrative picture from the outside in, so to speak. Nowhere is this more complete than in his Sonata in B minor, his crowning compositional achievement. The work is epic and tells the tale of the human condition through a somewhat religious lens, depicting the struggle between hope and despair, darkness and enlightenment, heaven and hell.

Realism and uniquely human perspective is at the core of this performance and these 19th century musical masterpieces. All who admire and adore the Romantic tradition will find these works to be essential listening.