Pianist Beatrice Rana embarks on a sentimental journey this autumn

When Beatrice Rana embarks on a North American recital tour this fall, the 32-year-old Italian pianist anticipates an emotional trip down memory lane. She will revisit both Montreal, where she took first prize at the 2011 Montreal International Music Competition at age 18, and Forth Worth, Texas, where she won the 2013 Cliburn Competition silver medal and audience award. In addition, she will make her eighth appearance at Carnegie Hall and return to Chicago for a Symphony Center Presents Piano recital on Nov. 2.

Rana’s 2019 recital debut at Symphony Center featured works by Chopin, Ravel and Stravinsky. In 2023, she made her solo debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Lahav Shani on the podium. For her upcoming tour, she juxtaposes two works by Prokofiev — Sonata No. 6 in A Major and selections from Romeo and Juliet — with Debussy’s Etudes, Book II, and Tchaikosky’s Concert Suite from The Nutcracker.

“Being a pianist means to be a traveler, and to be a citizen of the world,” Rana said in a recent interview. “I am very privileged, because I think that to be a pianist really means to share the best part of everyone’s life. When people come to concerts, they are dedicating a good couple of hours to go out and to enjoy some art and good music. But at the same time, I feel that there must be a connection with what’s happening in the world, which is quite complicated in this period.”

When developing her new recital program, “everything started with the choice of the Prokofiev sonata,” said Rana. The Sonata No. 6 is the first of Prokofiev’s three “War Sonatas,” composed during the Second World War. “It’s quite a violent piece, and there are so many signals of the war, and at the same time, it’s also a work full of tenderness and beauty.”

“I decided to couple this with the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet for a very specific reason,” Rana continued. “Both the war and the fights [between] families, they are tragedies, and they are all about the same thing: not understanding each other. And my point of view about the whole situation is that, of course, there are certain situations that are really bigger than us, but that violence can be stopped already in the small dimension that belongs to us.”

In the middle of the program, the Debussy and Tchaikovsky pieces provide a respite from these weighty themes. “Inside this frame of Prokofiev, that is quite a tragic one, I decided to put an homage to childhood, which is the most innocent part of our world,” she said. Composed late in Debussy’s life, his Etudes have a dreamlike, pure quality that feels like “a return to childhood,” Rana said. The music of The Nutcracker ballet, a perennial favorite for family outings, evokes the magic of Christmas, as seen through the eyes of children.

Rana’s choice of repertoire illuminates her perspective on a question that musicians often wrestle with. As she phrased it, “Should music be something completely detached from what’s happening and be an untouchable world of beauty, or should it be human?” She said, “My answer, as you can see from the program, is that I think it should be human, because we are humans, after all. I think it’s also a nice way to be even more together with the audience, to be more connected to them, because at the very end, it’s about realizing that we are all living in the same world.”

This sense of interconnectedness informed Rana’s approach to a major project she undertook earlier this year. At the invitation of the Italian government, she curated and performed at the first-ever concert for the newly installed Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago and raised in the nearby suburb of Dolton. Rana shared the stage with Brad Mehldau, Gabriela Montero, Nobuyuki Tsujii and others at the performance in St. Peter’s Square. “The idea was to have pianists coming from all over the world, really the best pianists from all continents, and to give voice to different kinds of music-making, too,” she said. “There was jazz, there was improvisation from South America, so it was a very festive night.”

Along with the music, the Pope’s words were equally memorable for Rana. “I have been really inspired by what he said. Not only was he really supportive and enthusiastic about the concert, but he also gave a speech,” she said. “You expect someone in his position to talk about Catholic religion, but it was more of a humanity speech that he gave — not related to the religion itself, but to what being a human really means. And that was quite significant, to be so close to a person like him, to see that the Pope is a real person.”

From Vatican City to concert halls across North America, Rana aims to build authentic connections with audiences wherever she performs. “It’s always very exciting to come for a recital tour in America. From a European perspective, it’s really like traveling across different countries, and every city has a different personality,” she said. “And a recital tour has a much more intense and intimate impact with the audience; of course, I also love to go with the orchestra, but this is something different. The kind of relationship that you create with the audience through a recital is absolutely unique.”