Pianist Sa Chen explores a complicated architecture of emotional extremes in the form of two major 19th-century works for solo piano: Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. Recorded in Berlin with producer Rainer Maillard, the album opens with a short prelude, Schumann’s Arabesque in C major. Composed in 1839 during Schumann’s long engagement to virtuoso pianist Clara Wieck—a courtship strongly opposed by her father—the piece is dedicated to Frau Majorin Friederike Serre auf Maxen, who supported their relationship. This short rondo’s delicately graceful refrain is punctuated with episodes of intense passion and culminates in a poignant denouement that suggests the wistful, hopeful sign-off to a letter between separated lovers. A similar emotional polarity is present in Kreisleriana, a suite for solo piano composed in 1838, revised in 1850 and dedicated to Frédéric Chopin. This dramatic work was inspired by polymath E.T.A. Hoffmann’s eccentric fictional composer Johannes Kreisler, with whom Schumann felt a close kinship—and whose mood swings parallel the alter egos Eusebius and Florestan that Schumann devised to describe his own contrasting musical personalities. The eight mercurial movements oscillate between lively and sedate tempos, with the suite as a whole woven through by sections of restless G minor and blissful B flat major. Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B minor, published in 1854 and dedicated to Schumann, broke new ground for the solo piano sonata form. Written as a single unit with no movement breaks and constructed out of the transformations of three motifs stated in the introduction, the sonata possesses a degree of thematic unity unprecedented in the Classical era. Unlike most of Liszt’s oeuvre, this piece has no descriptive title or programme, leaving its intended meaning an open question—the complex interplay between elements possibly representing the Faust legend, the fall of man, the dichotomy between heaven and hell and angels and demons, or nothing beyond the music itself. Technically demanding yet requiring a sensitive, poetic ear, the piece rewards repeated study. Chen herself grew sceptical of her initial rendition in her recording sessions with Maillard, so she returned to Berlin a few months later to bring a new perspective to the sonata’s grand narrative and fantastic imagination.