Einaudi: Eros

Ludovico Einaudi is the world’s most popular composer, and the source of hundreds of instantly familiar themes used in films, TV, advertising and synch activity (recent credits include American Airlines, This Is England ’86 and Black Swan). His music is playing somewhere in the world and being heard by a listener 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He is also the only classical artist who sells the most sheet music in the UK, coming a close 3rd behind Adele and Mumford and Sons in total sheet music sales. Einaudi sells out massive tours across Europe every year, and “Islands” is the first time that all of his best known material will appear on one destination purchase collection, targeted to reach as wide an audience as possible.

“A night-time landscape. A garden faintly visible under the dull glow of the night sky. A few stars dotting the darkness above, shadows of the trees all around. Light shining from a window behind me. What I can see is familiar, but it seems alien at the same time. It’s like a dream—anything may happen.”

This is how Ludovico Einaudi describes his latest work Nightbook, as something transitional between light and darkness, between the known and the unknown. This new album comes three years after the international success of the previous work, Divenire [To Become].

The album was gradually composed while Einaudi was on tour around the world, during which he kept jotting down his thoughts and ideas in a notebook, recording them in “musical sketches” that evolved into the groundwork of the present project.

Recorded in Milan and at the Planet Roc and Teldex studios in Berlin, the album involved various other musicians with whom Einaudi has worked over the years, such as the cellist Marco Decimo, the viola-player Antonio Leofreddi, and Robert Lippok.

Ludovico Einaudi’s ‘Nightbook’ tour in 2010 was an unqualified success. Following on the heels of his massive studio album, the lineup included a full string ensemble and some extra instruments too, providing a sensitive backdrop to Ludovico’s entrancing piano style.

The crowning height of the tour was the London concert, at the Royal Albert Hall. Here, the full theatricality of presentation could be exploited; the musicians arriving onstage from all compass points, playing in procession, the whole concert captured on DVD.

But, theatrical though it may be, the set makes for a delightful listen, available on a double CD set.

The 2CD set and the DVD are available separately; the DVD is the only available concert footage of Einaudi on the format.

This new ‘live’ double album with DVD captures one of the most exciting moments of the ‘Nightbook’ tour, a mammoth 60 date concert schedule (Europe & United States) culminating in a spectacular evening at the Royal Albert Hall on the 2nd March 2010.

Includes new arrangements from Einaudi’s repertoire including ‘Berlin Song’ and ‘Tu sei’ (previously unreleased from ‘Nightbook’ except as a bonus track with iTunes).

The 2 CD set comes with a DVD that is the first of Einaudi’s career.

The perfect gift for the dedicated fan or anyone discovering Enaudi’s music for the first time.