Einaudi: The Tower

“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.

Popular Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi’s piano piece “Nightbook” is featured in the recent award winning film "Untouchables" and Hanna Devich is the first pianist to release it on CD as part of a collection devoted to his music.

Over the past few years she has worked with the Devich Trio, however when the group recently decided to disband as a result of governmental budget cuts she decided to continue her career as a soloist.

The pianist Hanna Devich was born in Budapest and comes from a musical family. She was invited at the age of ten to join the young talent class of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest where she received her soloist diploma in 1991. She then attended masterclasses with Gyorgy Sebok, Gyorgy Kurtag, Zoltan Kocsis and her father, Sandor Devich. Hanna Devich has been living in The Netherlands for a number of years and is highly regarded as a concert pianist, having performed and recorded extensively as soloist and chamber musician. In 2005 Hanna made the first recording of the Piano Concerto by Geza Frid for Hungaroton. In 2003 she met the South African violinist Sarah Oates and the Dutch cellist Jasper Havelaar and together they formed the Devich Trio, and in 2005 the trio won the public prize at the Uitmarkt in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

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.