Ludovico Einaudi, Barbican review - a long road to nowhere | reviews, news & interviews
Ludovico Einaudi, Barbican review - a long road to nowhere
Ludovico Einaudi, Barbican review - a long road to nowhere
Seven Days Walking provides a journey through unremarkable terrain
There is a video, part of Greenpeace’s laudable Save The Arctic Campaign, in which Ludovico Einaudi sits at a Steinway atop a small ice flow performing his Elegy for the Arctic. As he plays a descending scale, the camera pans slightly to the right just in time to see a chunk of glacier break away and crash into the sea. Perfect timing!
Einaudi was well defrosted by the time he hit London last night to open his week-long residency at the Barbican, there to perform excerpts from his Seven Days Walking suite of variations for piano, violin and cello, each “day” or episode released on an individual CD with a box set due in the autumn. The announcement of the new piece coincided with the news that Decca, with whom he has worked for 15 years, had signed a new global contract with Einuadi, “an artist with a uniquely global footprint whose music continues to grow a dedicated and dynamic audience”.
Certainly Barbican Hall was filled to capacity, the audience overwhelmingly under 50, with many in their twenties. They sat rapt, cheering to the echo at a couple of points during the performance, and calling out their appreciation at the end as they gave an ovation. The young guy next to me had a tear on his cheek. I’m just not sure what for.
Einaudi and cellist Redi Hasa and violinist Federico Mecozzi each looked as though they’d been kitted out at Muji, dark jeans and T-shirts, jackets and trainers. We are so cool. A light show played behind them: dancing colours here, geometric patterns there, a sunset…. Directly behind me, several guys on the mixing desk seemed to be taking instructions through leaky headphones. Then aircon whirred. Or maybe it was part of the sound collage?
As always there were some nice sonorities produced by the composer from (I think) an acoustic Steinway that was miked. But there’s no sense of development, merely waffle – and my old composition teacher would have marked it as such. Everything is around much the same tonal centre, endless minor right-hand triplets against scalic figures in the bass which often boomed out and growled. Occasionally there are blue chords and touches of chromaticism. There was a riff that hinted at the Dr Who theme, another The Snowman, and another at “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As both performer and composer, Einaudi is limited. What you have to admire is the way the performers remember it all for its very sameness makes it difficult to memorise.
Classic FM and Radio 1, plus endless ads and films scores, and of course Spotify are responsible for putting Einaudi centre-stage. And to be fair, as background music, he has a place. But there’s no escaping the thought that Einaudi owes much to family connections: his father was a publisher working with authors including Primo Levi and Italo Calvino, while his paternal grandfather was a post-war president of Italy. His mother, Renata Aldrovandi, played the piano to him as a child, and her father Waldo Aldrovandi was a pianist, opera conductor and composer. The route to his teacher Luciano Berio may not have been so difficult.
Ah, the power of cheap music. One longed for Dudley Moore still to be alive to perform one his musical parodies. Or for a bear or a wildcat to emerge from the Piedmontese shadows to liven things up.
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Comments
100% agree. I saw one of his
It is passionless, bloodles,
It is passionless, bloodles, convictionless.... Classic FM, Spotify etc have a lot to answer for and once-respectable record companies pour all the money and resources into this pap instead of fostering real talent.
If only your criticism shone
Well I'm sorry but it was
Well I'm sorry but it was pitch black and thus impossible to use the traditional pen and notebook I'd brought. Not that my detailed notes were required.
I’m not sure why you even
Very much doubt it.
Very much doubt it.
Einaudi is a melodist. Its
A melodist? Hmmmm. Discuss. X
A melodist? Hmmmm. Discuss. X-Factor is where he belongs. Bach - who has a cap B btw - is not 'a technician' but a great composer, a giant of western music. Einaudi has no technique, as composer or performer. He's as great a classical composer as Lloyd-Webber - ie not at all.
Let my main man Prokofiev
Let my main man Prokofiev reinforce what Liz says here: 'melody...should be clear and simple without being repetitive or trivial'. Or banal, which is all I hear in Einaudi. Lloyd Webber did also come to mind, but he at least had a few melodic inspirations early on, even if they were indebted to other composers.
Your entitled your opinion
What would you suggest for a
If I may jump in here, Reich
If I may jump in here, Reich and Adams. Both took similar points of departure to Glass, but evolved far more interestingly. Even their early works are thrilling.