The virtuoso will play a one-night concert in her native La Jolla featuring pieces she likens to “someone knocking on your soul’s door.”

Mirroring her life experiences in the music she plays, classical pianist Rossina Grieco will return to perform “Éclats d’Âme” at 7 pm Saturday, March 15, as a visiting presenter at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center.

Grieco, born and raised in La Jolla, began piano studies at four and became the youngest person to play Copley Hall with the San Diego Symphony at eight.

Grieco, now an adult with international recognition and an extensive list of prestigious solo concerts under her fingers, will play for a La Jolla audience for the first time in two years, which is “always really rewarding,” she said.

The concert’s title translates to “fragments of the soul” and will feature three pieces that together are “an unveiling of realization and a beautiful growth,” Grieco said. “It’s like a discovery.”

The program, from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 “Appassionata” to Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 to Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor, is “quite a spiritual journey to play” all at once, she said. 

The Beethoven sonata is a poignant piece, Grieco said, filled with much angst signaling he’s “trying to find something.”

The piece also contains a rhythmic structure that’s “echoed in the Liszt [sonata] as well,” she said, which adds interest and is like “someone knocking on your soul’s door.”

Since playing in La Jolla last, Grieco has experienced more of her own “soul-knocking” opportunities.

“What’s interesting about life is things can kind of unfold and be thrust upon you, and you decide how you react,” she said. 

“You take the things that happen to you, whether they’re good things, bad things, happy things, sad things, and you learn to make sense of them. … It’s really cathartic and healing.”

Grieco “doesn’t recognize” the person – or pianist – she was a few years ago, she said.

“Life crescendos and it grows, and you learn to take everything in and use art as a way to to describe your life. It’s helped me become a better artist.”

Playing in La Jolla “just feels really right,” she said. “It’s really sweet to remember how I felt as a kid and how I feel now.”

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