A pianist on top of the world

Last fall, Ludovico Einaudi became a superstar. He was already the most prominent neoclassical composer on the planet. Powered by a TikTok trend, he is now the most listened to classical pianist in the world. A look back at the Italian phenomenon who will give a concert in Quebec and three in Montreal over the next few days.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

A classical pianist

Introduced to the piano by his mother, herself the daughter of a pianist, Ludovico Einaudi was first trained in Turin, his hometown, before continuing his studies at the Milan Conservatory with Luciano Berio and perfecting his skills with Karlheinz Stockhausen. . He devoted himself, from his beginnings, to the composition of ballets, orchestral works or for various ensembles. He has sought since his beginnings to produce maximum impression with minimal playing – which still characterizes his music that is economical and in particular articulated around repetitive motifs.

Revealed by the cinema

Ludovico Einaudi has never set himself a barrier: he has notably collaborated with the Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko and the Armenian duduk player Djivan Gasparyan. However, it is the music on the screen that will bring him out of the shadows: in 1998 he signs the music for the film Aprile by Nanni Moretti and, in 2002, that of a revival of Doctor Zhivago who points it out in the United States. He will compose in the wake for the films I’m Still There (by Casey Affleck, with Joaquin Phoenix) and especially Untouchables (with Omar Sy and François Cluzet) who gave a real boost to his career – a bit like Amelie Poulain for Yann Tiersen.

Play less, feel more

From Luciano Berio, Ludovico Einaudi has learned one lesson in particular: making music connected to emotions. He ended up concentrating his art of composition around his piano and favoring a stripped-down approach. “I was listening to Miles Davis, too, who left a lot of silence between the notes, he confided last April to Paris Match. That’s what I wanted to do. His music is thoughtful, but there’s nothing intellectual about his approach. According to him, this contributes to making it attractive to as many people as possible.

Alone on his ice floe

Its immense success divides people and places Ludovico Einaudi on the fringes of classical music circuits. In interview at The Press, last year, pianist and composer Alain Lefèvre railed against his repetitive “tounettes” which he associated with elevator music and criticized his Italian counterpart for “being filmed on a glacier playing the piano stuff that a 4-year-old could compose”. He was referring to Elegy for the Arctic, which Ludovico Einaudi performed in Norway for a Greenpeace awareness campaign. His vision is diametrically opposed to that of the millions of admirers of the Italian pianist, which one Internet user summed up as follows under the video shot on the ice: “Simplicity and beauty, but with a complex message behind. »

Under water

underwater, Ludovico Einaudi’s most recent album, was released in January. Yes, it’s a containment album. It is, for the composer, a kind of “detoxified” diary of the imperatives of life before, of oppressive consumerism. “This period was like living in an earthly paradise, he told the Italian daily La Repubblica. I felt like when I was 18, when I didn’t know what my future would be like. “This year he embarked on a tour that will take him all over the planet, in venues that are probably even bigger than before since he is now a star of… TikTok.

Billions of streams

Cinema brought Ludovico Einaudi out of the shadows, but it was social media that propelled him into the stratosphere. The teenagers know neither the name nor the face of the Italian composer who is old enough to be their grandfather. Many of them, however, recognize his piece Experience from the very first bars. This was at the heart of a trend that went viral last fall, an influence that spilled over to streaming platforms. His ratings have since skyrocketed. On Spotify, Experience had racked up 230 million streams by mid-June, almost as many as hung-up by Madonna (251 million listens) and Running Up That Hill of Kate Bush (265 million). his piece Nuvole Bianche claimed nearly 284 million streams. It’s certainly not what Ludovico Einaudi had in mind when he tried to obtain the maximum effect with the minimum of music, but he shouldn’t complain about it.

In concert: Grand Théâtre de Québec, June 30; Maison symphonique (solo), July 2; Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on July 3 and 4.