Sonata for 7 Cities is pianist Filippo Gorini's deeply personal project: instead of touring from venue to venue, he spent one month each in seven cities — from Vienna to Cape Town to Milan — immersing himself in each community through performances, teaching, and outreach to schools, hospitals, prisons, and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This album was recorded live in Cape Town's City Hall, where Mandela gave his first speech after his release from prison, in the presence of the people who gave the most meaning to Gorini's month there. During his stay (August–September 2025), he visited music schools in townships, taught university students, performed chamber music and concertos, and forged lasting connections with the city and its people. The programme opens with the world premiere of Federico Gardella's Sonata d'altura ('Mountain Sonata'). Written alongside his first opera, the work features a ritual 'gong' in the bass that rings like a fatal bell, surrounded by entrancing landscapes sculpted by harsh gestures in the piano's extreme registers. Schumann's Kreisleriana — eight fantasies inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann's kaleidoscopic character Johannes Kreisler, written in four days of feverish passion — follows, ranging from relentless speed and rhythmical drive to warm lyricism and nocturnal mystery. The recital culminates in Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-flat major D.960, his last major work for piano, written shortly before his death at 31. A long journey through tenderness and melancholy, sudden harmonic light and darkness, it is widely considered one of the most moving works ever written for piano. Filippo Gorini has performed at Milan's Teatro alla Scala, Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and Wigmore Hall, and has received the Premio Abbiati (Italy's most prestigious musical recognition, 2022), the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2020, and First Prize at the Telekom-Beethoven Competition 2015. His previous Alpha Classics recordings have garnered a Diapason d'Or and 5-star reviews in The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, and Le Monde.