Piano Music does not announce itself; it waits patiently to be known. Alessandro Sgobbio comes back to the piano alone as one returns to a long-held silence, without urgency and without proof. These pieces are open letters, written and left unsealed. Some emerged in the fleeting intensity of live performance, others during the suspended hours of the pandemic, when time softened and listening became a discipline.

Recorded on a Fazioli F278 grand piano and shaped with restraint under the masterful ear of engineer Stefano Amerio at Artesuono Studios, the album unfolds patiently. Each dedication becomes a point of convergence between composer, listener, and the absent presence for whom the music was first shaped. With eyes closed and hands in motion, the instrument opens into an interior terrain where memory and invention share the same breath.

What follows is best approached as a fragrance that reveals itself gradually, in layers.

Top Notes

The opening carries a gentle luminosity, brief yet warming, like light passing through thin fabric. A floral softness appears first, pale and translucent, recalling the powdery hush of orris rising from the keys. In “Fireflies” (dedicated to Sgobbio’s parents), memory turns instinctively toward childhood. It recalls the earliest grammar of love, the quiet assurance of being held. Gratitude lingers in the air, unspoken yet unmistakable, giving the ordinary a sacred hue through attention alone.

From within this tenderness, darker tones begin to surface. “Zolla” introduces earth, black currant, soil, and the trace of wind crossing ground shaped by seasons. Time presses forward calmly, neither threat nor promise. Smoke gathers at the edges, yet a steady sweetness remains, offering reassurance without denial. A pulse forms beneath the surface, measured and human, suggesting that, even amid uncertainty, something continues to endure.

As the illumination shifts, green notes take hold. In “Atma Mater” (an ode to his mentor, pianist Misha Alperin), vetiver rises with clarity and motion. The colors begin to explore themselves, lyrical and curious, occasionally abstract, yet guided by intention. Surprise appears without rupture. Joy emerges through the satisfaction of movement that understands its own direction.

Heart Notes

As brightness settles, warmth comes forward. The center of the album glows with a softened oud, sandy, sunlit, and humane. In “Ghaza,” sound behaves like heat absorbed and slowly released, enveloping the listener with a calm shaped by time. Beneath this warmth lies a sober recognition. Peace, once forged through history, has thinned. What remains is the quieter labor of shaping it again, not collectively or symbolically, but one heart at a time. A requiem, perhaps, without end.

Incense follows, curling gently through imagined spaces of prayer. “Racemi” shelters like a room that remembers having been filled. The air carries traces of devotion, hands once folded, grief briefly set down. Beyond the threshold, chaos waits, but here a pause takes form, a fragile interval where the self steadies. The piano narrows to a fine thread, each note close to disappearance, yet it holds. Like a candle flame that refuses to leave its wick, its vibrations persist. As the harmony slowly widens, unexpected turns reveal depth upon depth.

Smoke returns, heavier now. In “Third Ward (Elegy),” written for George Floyd, it is not the fire itself but what remains after that fills the space. Loss hangs unresolved. A repeated insistence takes shape, low and unwavering, echoing the will to survive. It continues until it cannot. The music bears witness without ornament, allowing absence to speak louder than sound. What it offers is not rage alone, but the ache of interruption, of a life cut short, leaving resonance where continuity should have been.

Base Notes

The final descent turns cool and elemental. Marine air rises, salt and seaweed carried inland by memory. In “Acqua Granda,” the piano sharpens into clearer gestures, rhythm breaking and reassembling like waves meeting resistance. Energy tumbles forward, restless and alive, as if movement itself were being relearned after stillness.

Earth follows water. “Feuilles” settles with the quiet authority of oakmoss. From a distance, its form appears balanced, almost architectural. Closer in, it reveals wider variation, textured by decay. Longing enters gently, but for the way the sun once touched it. Enough of the dawn filters through to suggest what remains possible, even as it recedes.

At last, the fragrance thins to its final trace. In “Third Ward (Coda),” musk opens its embrace, intimate, warm, and human. A voice seeks continuation. The scent clings to the skin, marking the space where a life might have unfolded, had it been allowed to do so.

In the end, Piano Music binds itself to the body that carries it, altered by warmth and proximity. It mingles with memory, softens the boundary between presence and absence, and leaves behind not a melody to be recalled intact, but a sillage recognized later, unexpectedly, in the air. Some experiences ask only this, not to be remembered whole, but to return faintly, altered, and unmistakably human.