Veronika's Last Notes on Piano (Pelude to Nothingness) - Yousef Sakhnini | for Piano Solo

Описание: This composition is directly connected to Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho, in which there is a specific scene that inspired me to write it.
It is a tragic philosophical scene that I saw and analyzed by myself, which drove me to build the composition, and it is explained below (without any spoilers):
(For musical guidance, read further below).

During her stay in a hospital, Veronika was informed by her doctors that she could die at any given moment soon; it might happen in the next hours, days, or weeks.
One day in the hospital, she entered the piano room and started to play (given that she had studied some piano in her childhood). Here, in this scene, my brain just stopped and wondered: What if it’s her LAST piano playing ever?!

Two statements shaped the materials of the composition:
1) The fact that she started to appreciate her life and every small detail.
2) The fact that her life is in a countdown to its end.

For each statement, I created its appropriate musical part (and atmosphere), but somehow the two parts (atmospheres) are compositionally connected, just as the two statements are naturally connected as well.

(Am I here to live? Or to disappear?)

Musical guidance:

The introduction (00:04) includes different materials that shape the whole composition.

The series of the first four notes (F♯–G♯–E–D) is the core of the two parts (the two statements).

The conflict between life and death is expressed throughout the whole piece through the interval of a major second, which appears at the beginning in the 5th and 6th notes (B and C♯).

In part A1 (00:39), the right hand plays a repetitive background (as if the heart has started beating again), while the left hand plays the materials of the introduction, attempting to organize the chaos, rediscover meaning, and experience life, even if just for a moment.

A2 (01:54) is a repetition of A1 with a different ending.
Part B (02:27) In this moment, the music reaches a state where tension can no longer be contained. The familiar materials collide, accelerate, and finally break apart, as if the inner truth has grown too large to be expressed through sound alone. This explosion marks Veronika’s full awareness: the paradox of wanting to live precisely when living may no longer be possible.

"a tempo" (03:34) it's not resolution, but suspension. The silence after the outburst does not offer answers; it hovers between nothingness and rebirth (ending with a m2 interval) leaving the listener uncertain whether what remains is emptiness or the door of something new.