Selections

I had heard Chopin's prelude "The Raindrop" very many times, because my father liked it. I began to like it, too, as I got older - nine or ten years - because the main melody is easy to grasp and very pleasant. At first the suggestive music of the main melody impressed me. But after hearing it ten, twenty, thirty times, once while I was seated in the parlour my father put that record on again. All at once I understood that I had understood nothing of what the "Raindrop" really was. (...)
Its true meaning was something apparently monotonous, so monotonous as to be just one note that repeats itself continuously, with a few slight variations, from the beginning to the end. (...)
That is the note that from the beginning to the end dominates and decides the meaning of the whole piece, that decides from the beginning to the end what man's life is: the thirst for happiness.

(Excerpt from the introduction by Luigi Giussani to the booklet enclosed in the CD)