Pianist Sophie Pacini emerged in the 2010s as living proof that the traditional career path leading through well-established Classical-Romantic repertory was still viable. She has earned several major awards and has a growing catalog of albums, including the 2022 Aparte release Boundless, on which she accompanied clarinetist Pablo Barragán. A native of Munich, Germany, Pacini was born on December 12, 1991. She showed major talent even before taking any serious lessons, making her concert debut in 2000 at the age of eight. At ten, she entered the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria, studying with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and winning admission after two years to the school's new institute for highly gifted students. Pacini won the Jugend Musiziert ("Young People Making Music") prize in 2002 and 2005, gaining media attention as a near prodigy. She appeared in 2007 on the Klassik-Kids program on the ZDF television network in Germany. Pacini won several more prizes and scholarships in the late 2000s, but her next real breakthrough came in 2010 when she met top pianist Martha Argerich. Argerich invited Pacini to give a recital at her Martha Argerich Project series in Switzerland in 2011, and she has since emerged as the young pianist's mentor. Pacini graduated with honors from the Mozarteum that year but has continued to study in master classes from the likes of Dmitri Bashkirov and Fou Ts'ong. The following year, she made debuts at several European festivals and appeared on the ZDF show Stars von Morgen ("Stars of Tomorrow"). Her concert-season profile grew from Salzburg appearances with the Mozarteum Orchester and Camerata Salzburg to wider-ranging appearances with the Dresden Philharmonic and the Tokyo Philharmonic at Suntory Hall. In 2012, Pacini made her recording debut on the Onyx label, the result of a Rothschild Foundation prize she won. She moved to CAvi-music for recordings of Liszt and Chopin in 2012 and 2014. An ECHO Klassik newcomer prize in 2015 and subsequent signing by the Warner Classics label seemed to confirm Pacini's star trajectory. She released her Warner debut, a Beethoven and Liszt recital, in 2016, took the program on the road, and appeared that year with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, among other top ensembles. The following year, Pacini was designated as the Young Artist of the Year by the International Classical Music Awards for that recording. She followed that up in 2018 with the recital album In Between, performing works by Schumann and Mendelssohn. Pacini's personal and professional relationship with Argerich has continued as the pair regularly perform in duo piano concerts. In 2020, the Munich-based Goethe-Institut and Bayerischer Rundfunk named Pacini a Beethoven representative. She joined clarinetist Barragán in 2022 to issue the album Boundless on the Aparte label. ~ James Manheim & Keith Finke, Rovi