Ludivico Einaudi has a flight to catch in an hour. It’s one of many he’ll be taking in the coming months, as the pattern of his tour shifts between Europe and Eastern Asia. But for a man who is about to be almost constantly in motion, this morning there is a certain stillness as he pauses to think about his answers.
“At the beginning, I think I was seen as a completely classical artist, but I don’t think that completely represents who I am,” he begins. “Every box is a narrow box and I think I am an open artist as a result of the different music I listen to.”
Einaudi’s work is characterised by its mix of flow and restraint. The Italian composer and pianist is the world’s most-streamed classical artist – he has more than 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify, where his top track, Experience, has almost 560m plays. The piece has 569,574 UK sales, according to Official Charts Company data. It is his second biggest-seller, behind 2004’s Nuvole Bianche.
He appeals to older radio listeners and younger TikTok users alike and has created the soundtracks for critically acclaimed films and TV series, including Nomadland, The Father and This Is England.
His latest album The Summer Portraits is out this week and most dates on the supporting tour, including five days at London’s Royal Albert Hall, are sold out. His compositions, which could sit alongside those of classical minimalists such as Max Richter and Michael Nyman, are also touched with an understanding of popular music.
“I would characterise Ludovico's approach as being that of quietly taking the road less travelled, thinking long term and, despite all the noise, following his own compass,” says Tom Lewis, co-president at Einaudi’s label Decca. “It is quite extraordinary that this quiet walk has yielded a touring career that includes cities and countries that most western pop never reaches and music that has infiltrated the lives of billions of people around the world.”
His fellow co-president Laura Monks says that Decca will be pulling out all the stops for the Albert Hall dates.
“The residency is hugely exciting for us,” she says. “Over the years we’ve worked incredibly closely with Ludovico’s team, promoters and agent to build these moments that help us give back to his biggest fans. We’ll be hosting fan events and working on some exclusive merch bundles to really maximise the moment. Ludovico’s shows are totally inspiring and a near spiritual experience for most people.”
In terms of Einaudi’s appeal on DSPs, Monks says he has had “deep respect” from streaming services.
“He has an incredibly lean-forward and young listenership likely because his music helps people focus and has long been a study aid and we have worked hard to foster this connection,” she explains. “His music is universal, so we build followers in every corner of the world which contributes to the sheer size of his reach.”
Monks also notes that “the magic of Ludovico’s music is that it enhances people’s emotions,” which comes in handy for sync placements.
“For a long time, music supervisors have known the power of his composition to bring out the feelings of a scene,” she says. “He appears everywhere, most recently on the final of The Traitors, and it’s a definite superpower for music discovery. I think that’s why his music has worked so well on social media, he has a huge amount of UGC and has been incredibly successful on TikTok with ‘micro-syncs.’”
Lewis cites 2013 piece Experience as an example of Einaudi’s power.
“It is now a streaming and shortform content megahit,” he says. “It was released over 10 years ago and first engaged the world when it was synched in a BA advert. I love that the seeds for its success were planted in streaming's nascency and before anyone had any idea what shortform content even was. Yet there was something in the music and its quiet confidence and intentionality resonated and, bit by bit, it reached the whole world. In many respects he created a genre and a way of listening way before its ideal listening medium was even invented.”
High praise indeed. And with that it’s time for Music Week to quiz Einaudi about his new record, his relentless touring schedule and his impact on the music industry so far…
Ludovico Einaudi on stage at the London Palladium
How would you sum up the story of The Summer Portraits?
“Two summers ago I rented a house on Elba, in Italy, by the sea. In the bedroom were a series of little paintings made with oil and wood, representing details of the nature surrounding the house. I was told they were painted by a lady who owned the house in the 1950s and who would go there with her family and children every summer and leave a new painting. It made me think of my summers in the ’60s and ’70s, with my family by the sea in Italy and how that was a special time of freedom. I remember seahorses in the sea. It was a special time, when you discover everything. You taste things for the first time. You have a group of friends, maybe your first love. Your day seems like a week.”
How do those memories relate to this particular album?
“When you make music you start to create this world of thoughts inside you and you create a room where you start to think and remember. You look at all of your sketches and you say, ‘Okay, this is the room where I want to be.’ And then you look, after a while, the puzzle starts to be complete, and you say, ‘Well, this could be the group of musical paintings that could create a wider painting of my summer portraits.’”
You tour all over the world, but you’re very popular here in the UK. Why do you think that is?
“I have always been in touch with music from the UK. At the beginning that was the music of The Beatles. When I was seven years old, my mother was playing The Beatles and my sister was introducing me to that whole wave of music. It was a big influence for me, musically and culturally. And I come to this country a lot, I feel very connected with this culture. I feel it is a place where I could live easily and happily. I've been inspired by English literature, paintings, and the land. It's a colour that is part of my inner taste. Many years ago, even before Italy and France, I was invited here to perform and the radio stations like Classic FM would play my music.”
You are playing five sold-out nights at the Albert Hall. How important is your live work to you?
“Touring and performing is very beautiful. The live performance is where the circle of my activity is complete. At the beginning of my career, I was more concentrated on composing, but I was feeling there was something missing. I realised that when I started to perform, the relation with the audience gives you the meaning of what you're doing.”
It’s beautiful to see how music can become viral and touch so many people’s lives
Ludovico Einaudi
What importance does live performance have commercially?
“Today, the main income comes from concerts, because sales of albums are not really relevant any more. However, there is an enormous amount of streaming, with an incredible amount of people listening to my music and it creates a desire to come to the concert. I have an overwhelming number of requests from all over the world that I have to control otherwise I could tour all the time. Streaming has opened my work to places where it wouldn’t have arrived before, like Central Asia, last year I played in the square in Samarkand and in Kazakhstan. I was in Saudi Arabia. This year I will go to China, Japan, Taiwan.”
Back in November, you played an impromptu concert on the piano at St Pancras station in central London. How was that?
“I like to surprise myself! It’s beautiful to see different people, the different approaches of an audience.”
Ludovico Einaudi at the piano in St Pancras station, London
You’ve mentioned the global reach of your music, which is now extending to TikTok. Your piece Experience has become an especially popular sound on the platform. How do you feel about that?
“It’s beautiful to see how music can become viral and touch so many people’s lives, with unexpected moments of people’s lives. I’m open, unless you see a connection with something you don’t like. But I feel with my music there is an emotional connection that keeps it on a side I can connect with, they don’t use it for purposes I don’t like.”
Have you noticed a surge in listeners from a younger generation?
“Well, I am growing but the audience is staying young. There’s a very wide range of ages at my concerts, but I would say they are mostly between 20 and 35.”
Having been with Decca for two decades now, can you tell us about your relationship with them?
“It has always been an interesting dialogue, a discussion about what I wanted to do and what I did not. I have a very close relationship with my manager, with whom I have worked for 28 years. We are friends and he is very good at protecting my world. I have never wanted to do anything that was outside of my artistic vision in order to sell more records. Perhaps at the beginning I had some proposals from Decca that were not for me because they didn’t understand who I was. But they have always been very good at understanding why I say yes and why I say no.”
You’re often described as classical crossover or classical pop. How do you feel about that?
“I don't like the definition of classical and classical crossover because most of the time ‘classical crossover’ means someone who takes a piece of classical music and tries to transform it into a piece of rock music and that doesn’t make any sense for me. There's a different approach in what I do. I feel like a creative mind that is trying to embrace different worlds, but with a deep vision of the music. It is trying to create a dialogue between the languages, but in a profound sense, not just overlapping styles. It represents, deeply, what I am inside.”
How do you approach your soundtrack work? Is your method different?
“It is slightly different, but I still need to be inspired, even if in some respects it could be viewed as a job because of course it must work for the film. But I still need to be artistically inspired, even for a small scene. I want to approach it in the same way I write all my music. When I compose for things, at the end of the work I feel exhausted. It’s a sort of double energy I need, because I need the energy I usually have for my music and the energy to fulfil the desires of the director.”
In terms of commercial potential, how do you feel classical is performing at the moment?
“It is such a broad range and it depends very much on the repertoire you choose, on the way a performer chooses to approach the music and the way the music is recorded is very important. I think, for many years, classical music has been recorded without a clear vision of the final sound. Sometimes the players don’t think about that. They think about the performance, they think about the technique, but the sound is left to the technicians.”.
A pressing issue for a lot of creatives is the use of AI. What are your thoughts on the matter?
“It will probably erase some jobs and not just in and around music. But on the other hand, it could be an interesting creative tool to investigate. I think the really creative minds will always be on top of that and the top quality output will be from us as humans. But I do think a lot of B movies will use AI music.
Finally, what do you think about the current state of music education at the moment? Are we doing enough to help young people study the arts?
“No, we do not. I would like to see the introduction of a lot more moments of creativity and listening and writing and drawing inside schools as part of normal activity. It could be done with very simple acts, such as starting the day listening to a piece of music. There we would create a little moment of meditation and openness. I think creativity needs to be properly outlined in schools for new generations.”
WORDS: ANNA FIELDING
PHOTOS: MARY McCARTNETY, CARSTEN WINDHORST
