Ludovico Einaudi – Pianodao

Einaudi • The Summer Portraits

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Ludovico Einaudi is without doubt one of the most globally successful piano composers of our time. His latest single amassed a record breaking 2.5 million streams in a single day. His music is ubiquitous in film, television, and media. It is performed at your local school, and in the world’s most hallowed classical venues.

At the same time, Einaudi’s music continues to divide opinion. Some in the piano education community and classical establishment still dismiss his work as dull, derivative, poorly written, and even cast him as a charlatan.

In my article The Appeal of Einaudi’s Music, I explored what it could be that makes his piano recordings so widely and wildly popular, concluding:

“Music can occupy and fill many different spaces in our lives. Fundamentally, it can be truly accessible to us all. Einaudi’s compositions remind us that music does not always need to be intellectually supercharged, even though his pieces are cleverly and carefully crafted. Nor perhaps should we equate the best composition with a dazzling display of technical expertise, or the best performance with physical pyrotechnics. Great music can equally be driven by the flow of emotion, simple connection, and a quest for lingering beauty.”

If this seems a rather hyperbolic preamble for a sheet music review, it is in part because Einaudi’s latest album The Summer Portraits must be evaluated in the context of this larger cultural phenomenon. When he releases new material, it is always something of an event, but does his latest project meaningfully add to the larger narrative of his body of work?

The Appeal of Einaudi’s Music

Pianodao Articles • Full Archive

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

The inspiration for this article came from a discussion with my wife Louise, who is a clinical specialist in mental health; I am immensely grateful for her insights, which are peppered throughout.

I was recently amused by a message I received from a parent of one of my teenage students, who contacted me saying,

“I thought this might make you smile. Over the last 7-10 days I have never heard the piano practised so much. A beautiful piece which I am told is called Nuvole Bianche. When I enquired why I was hearing more practise I was told (and I quote) ‘it’s a proper piano piece’.”

It’s a story which I am sure could be echoed by many of my colleagues, both in communities up and down this country, and far beyond. And yet, many of my musician friends seem to regard Einaudi’s music with a sniffy contempt, a disdain that appears out of proportion to any offence it could possibly have caused.

In some cases this is undoubtedly rooted in a sense of injustice that he has enjoyed such commercial success from doing, in their view, so little.

More often perhaps, they are baffled that music so lacking in the complexity they themselves enjoy could be so highly prized by others. According to this view, Einaudi’s work is, at best, a gateway that might lead the uninitiated into the more rewarding musical territory that they inhabit, albeit a gateway they personally prefer to position themselves a very long way away from.

To adopt such a viewpoint is potentially to deprive ourselves of a deeper understanding of what it is exactly that makes Einaudi’s music so very appealing, and to so many. And if we can understand that, we might be better equipped to perform and teach Einaudi’s music with sympathetic intelligence, and more effectively decipher and communicate with audiences when promoting other music.

Einaudi: Underwater Extra

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Ludovico Einaudi’s Underwater proved one of the musical successes of 2022, and my review here equally proved to be one of Pianodao’s most widely read of the last year.

The immensely popular Italian composer’s first solo piano release for several years, Underwater showcased an evolution in his style, the pieces not only exploring the ‘felt piano’ sound but having a more concise compositional structure, less repetition, and a melodic intimacy that added to their wide appeal. I certainly found this music more satisfying to play than Einaudi’s earlier work, and I found that many who hadn’t enjoyed his previous work found these newer miniatures genuinely appealing.

Now, Chester Music bring us Underwater extra edition, a slim folio of three additional pieces, bonus tracks from the album that were previously unavailable.

The unexpected arrival of the publication coincided with my convalescence from eye surgery; having been confined to my bed for more than a week, they were the first three pieces I played once I was finally able to sit at the piano. Did I enjoy them?

Ludovico Einaudi: Cinema

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Ludovico Einaudi’s music continues to divide opinion, often derided by those whose preferred music is less accessible, while fêted by fans and adored by enthusiastic pianists, students and audiences around the world. And along the way, his music has perhaps nowhere found a wider (or more lucrative) embrace that in the movie theatre…

Cinema appeared as a CD album about a year ago, and features 28 of Einaudi’s memorable works from film and television, including tracks from the Oscar-winning ‘Nomadland’ and ‘The Father’.

The sheet music folio from publishers Chester Music is now with us, the subject of this review, in which I will also consider a separate publication of the music from the Nomadland soundtrack…

Ludovico Einaudi: Underwater

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Ludovico Einaudi’s early solo piano albums, which included Le Onde (1996), I Giorni (2001) and Una Matina (2004) established him as the most well-known contemporary piano composer, his most classic pieces ubiquitously appearing in soundtracks and school concerts alike.

Over the years, Einaudi has consolidated his phenomenal success with a string of albums that have expanded his sound. Eden Rock (1999) introduced a wider instrumentation, and string parts have continued to take a particularly important role on albums such as In a Time Lapse (2013) and Elements (2015). Electronic elements and treatments have featured too, notably on Divenire (2006) and Nightbook (2009).

Underwater is Einaudi’s first full album of new solo piano music for two decades. The music was composed while the composer was isolated at his home in Italy. Working without any distractions or the usual commitments that come with his busy schedule, we are told that it is his manifesto for life, and a statement on a period during which the world around him was quiet and silent.

“I felt a sense of freedom to abandon myself and to let the music flow in a different way. I didn’t have a filter between me and what came out of the piano, it felt very pure.”

As a sometime fan of Einaudi’s work, I found Underwater strikingly different to listen to (as have others), and have been looking forward to considering the sheet music folio, which has recently been published by Chester Music / Hal Leonard, and is the subject of this review…

Einaudi’s Seven Days Walking

Pianodao Music Library

Selected and Reviewed by Andrew Eales
Find out more: About Pianodao Reviews

Ludovico Einaudi’s legion of fans worldwide are no doubt already enjoying his latest release; Seven Days Walking: Day One was released in mid-March, and is to be followed by six further albums, each offering fresh variants on the first, culminating in a boxed set later in the year.

Hot on its heels comes the sheet music publication of the album, brought to us by publishers Chester Music and distributed by Hal Leonard.

For more information read on…