Valentina Lisitsa, the internationally renowned pianist, performed a concert on October 16th at the Teatro Electra in Iglesias, her second performance in Sardinia after her debut in Cagliari on October 11th. She presented a repertoire entirely dedicated to Franz Liszt, with evocative transcriptions from Wagner and moving ones from Schubert, the monumental Totentanz, and six Études, including some spectacular d'exécution transcendante and famous transcriptions from Paganini, such as La Campanella, up to the Hungarian Rhapsodies No. 19 and No. 6, considered among the most difficult to perform.
Music becomes a concrete gesture
The evening transcended the musical dimension. The concert was, in fact, organized for charity, with proceeds going to Casa Lions, the Cagliari-based shelter that for nearly thirty years has hosted cancer patients, transplant recipients, and long-term patients, mostly from other parts of Sardinia, seeking hospital care.
" The decision to give Valentina Lisitsa's concert a charitable purpose was a natural fit with Casa Rosa's DNA. When organizing an artistic event of this magnitude, capable of attracting a large audience and evoking great emotion, we feel a responsibility to transform the beauty of art into concrete help for the local community ," explains Maristella Casula, Events Area Manager for the La Casa Rosa Association , the organizer of the event. The aim is to make culture an opportunity for concrete support. " We chose Casa Lions for its extraordinary mission of hospitality: it offers dignity, relief, and a safe haven to patients and their families, also easing the logistical and emotional burden of treatment ," she adds.
The Ukrainian artist herself has repeatedly donated her music to charitable causes. " For me, donating music to a good cause doesn't mean making grand gestures: it means giving back what I can ," the pianist explains. This commitment has developed since childhood, when, as a child prodigy, she was told that talent was a gift: " Even if it were just a drop in the ocean, even if it gave someone just a moment of hope or relief ."
