He placed his hands on the keys. He didn't strike them; he let them sink.
The opening chord of the Larghetto drifted into the cold air like a heavy sigh. It was in G minor, a key of deep, introspective melancholy. The melody emerged slowly, a solitary, climbing line that seemed to ask a question it knew would never be answered. Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 6: II. Larghetto
He saw Elena. He remembered the last evening they spent together in the public gardens before she was forced to marry a wealthy merchant from the north. The sky that evening had been the color of bruised plums. They had walked in absolute silence, the weight of everything they couldn't say pressing down on them. He remembered the precise texture of her woolen glove as he held her hand one last time, and the way her breath made a faint cloud in the freezing air. He placed his hands on the keys
The winter of 1892 was relentless in Moscow, burying the cobblestones in a suffocating shroud of white. Inside a cramped attic room on the edge of the Arbat district, twenty-year-old Alexander sat before an upright piano with yellowed keys. The room smelled of burnt tallow and bitter tea. It was in G minor, a key of deep, introspective melancholy