Composed: 2016
Duration: ≈ 13 minutes
Instrumentation: Solo Piano
Written during my medical studies, this two-movement sonata traces the boundary between consciousness and dissolution. The first movement opens with a restrained, lyrical theme that grows unstable, unraveling into turbulence. At its center lies a hallucinatory episode — Sogno velato (“veiled dream”) — a fevered, dreamlike state where order and perception begin to fail. The music wavers between lucidity and delirium before collapsing into silence.
Without pause, the second movement — A Morte — begins in compulsive motion, its pulse caught in sustained acceleration. The music drives forward with obsessive insistence, rarely releasing tension as fragments of rhythm and harmony collide. Near the end, the momentum reaches a breaking point — a final surge that extinguishes itself in exhaustion. Only then does the tempo begin to decay, the rhythm subsiding into the stillness of the closing bars.
Conceived in solitude, this sonata reflects a dialogue between control and surrender, awareness and collapse. It marks the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of musical narrative rooted in rhythm, structure, and transformation.
Written during a period of intensive study, the movement unfolds as a restrained but unstable lyricism shaped by gradual transformation. The material emphasizes long-range continuity, subtle rhythmic tension, and controlled harmonic drift rather than episodic contrast.
Opening Presto implacabile, the music drives forward with sustained urgency, maintaining its intensity with little release. Near the end, the momentum is abruptly broken by a sudden slowing into A morte, where the forward motion fractures into a bare, pulse-like gesture before falling silent.
RMM | Richard M. Martirosian 