A Conversation With Ludovico Einaudi (Interview)

Renowned Italian pianist and composer, Ludovico Einaudi is in New Zealand for the first time to perform tonight, the 18^th of February at the Aotea Centre in Auckland. The 13th Floor’s Dominic da Souza had the honour of sitting down with him the day before to hear his thoughts of music and other matters:

 

On describing his music and his musical beginnings:

Well I grew up in a family where I had my mother playing classical music, she was playing Bach and Chopin at home and then I had, on the other part of the house, two older sisters that were playing records by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and this music. So actually I grew up listening to, from the beginning two different worlds and different kinds of music. When I started to be a little more grown, well I was playing a bit of piano, then I started to get involved a lot with rock music, I played guitar, I was ten when I had my first guitar. Actually, in my teenage time I was more into rock music, you know Pink Floyd, and I was travelling around Europe seeing concerts of my favourite bands like the Who, and this – good times of rock music of course – I was playing also with some friends, a lot of blues on the guitar.

At the same time my other studies were not particularly brilliant, so at a certain point when I had to face my future and my life, I thought that music was the only place where I wanted to be and where I could really devote my time, even if I had a passion for photography, that I still have, but music was the space where I wanted to spend more time. So I decided if I had to study something properly it was music, so I started to study the piano in the conservatoire and also to study composition, because my main interest was about the creative aspect of music so I wanted to understand how you could compose music, to study harmonies, counterpoint, all the basic stuff.

So I went really deep into these studies, even if I was listening to rock music, but at that time it was the mid 70s I could feel that rock music was going into the 80s (laughs) so I said ok, now it is a good time to spend into the classical music because there [rock music] there is not much going on now at the moment that is so exciting. So I went to all the big studies and then I got also, because when you study composition then you arrive to explore also the Avant Garde music, so I had been into all the really crazy and Avant Gardish stuff like Stockhausen and Berio, and actually I ended up to study with Luciano Berio, that was one of the main composers of the post war time – and curiously Luciano Berio was teaching at a certain point in his life Steve Reich and more recently Max Richter.

The more I was studying the more I was confused, because it is not true you know the more you know the more is clear. And so actually the possibilities were a lot and I started to experiment with different things and there was a moment where I felt where I had to bring back all the world that I was coming from so that to try to find a space where I could have inside all the background that was connected to all the music that I had been in touch [with], so I think that the references are quite wide. In a moment I started to work more in a tonal range of music where I was exploring the possibility of writing songs with the piano where the influences were coming from, on one side popular music and folk music, and at the same time minimalism music and I started to feel that I wanted to explore.

This is the time where I started to write albums like Le Onde and Stanze and I started from the beginning, from the basics where I can establish something essential and from there I start to build something again. So this is the starting point, even if I had done a lot of things before, this is when I felt I started to find my direction. From then on, especially when I started to play my music and record it, I started to have more feedback and the music was played on radio and I was invited to do concerts. Of course, album after album it is a different exploration – also I feel that even when you have recognition and success it brings a sort of tension between what you do, and you want to change – every time you have done something and you don’t want to repeat it, you want to move forward. It is interesting how people relate in different ways to what you do and reactions, and it is interesting and more challenging as an artist to always go in another direction.

 

On his early musical influences:

In classical music, I very much like the sound of the baroque period, like Vivaldi, Bach. Even if there were some composers I was listening to a lot, like some pieces by Beethoven, even the sound of Stravinsky and also composers like Bartok, connected with folk music – this is a period I liked a lot. I was never so much involved with the romantic or even later the Schoenberg music, it was something I never felt, even if I understood the quality, it was not my cup of tea. Of course the music by Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, I think this was a big revolution in music, that this was a big response to what was going on in Europe and I think this created a new perspective, and in a way also a connection between worlds so through the music I could see how I could get back in touch with my roots with rock music.

 

On Phillip Glass:

What is really interesting in his work is even if you can feel all the worlds together, but then he is very precise and pure in his language. What I like of his work is it is very pure and it is not a pastiche.

 

On other contemporary composers:

Phillip Glass is one [that I admire], even as an aesthetic, not all his music is what I want to listen to, but I like his thoughts on music. Also Arvo Pärt, the concept inside his music, the connection with the ancient world and today’s world. And the more I grow up I think I need more and more to feel the balance between the emotion of the music but at the same time the architecture of the music so what I admire about those composers is that the architecture is really solid, you can feel there is thought behind that is really solid.

 

On pop music:

For the last few years I was really loving the work of Radiohead, and independent music, people like Bjork and all the scene around that, and even bands that later became more commercial, like Coldplay, I think their first two albums were very good. Right now I am a bit disappointed at the moment, it is quite a few years that there is not really someone exciting me as there were in the past. I don’t know why, sometimes I wonder if it’s me, and I am getting old or it’s more difficult. I mean now the production of music is so huge and every time I hear something it is something that maybe is very well crafted and very well done, the sounds are all perfect, but there is these bits missing, there is taking something special out. So I feel that everything I hear is something I have already heard. There were a couple of songs I enjoyed to listen to this year; I don’t know why I didn’t discover them before, but a couple of songs from Mumford and Sons. I remember I was travelling somewhere in a plane and I saw a beautiful documentary on them that I was really into, they play in Colorado, in Red Rocks, they are really strong live.

In the 90s there was a bit of a revival of the 60s, for example in Radiohead I was happy to hear what they bring from, some things from Jimi Hendrix or the Beatles. But after that, where is it going, because when you have done that, now when you hear someone who is taking things from that period you feel like it is already done.

 

On exploring sensations, emotions, narrative and ideas through music:

Sometimes it is the music that comes first, sometimes it is an idea that I like to explore, in terms of thoughts that I like to have when I compose, because I like always to have books around me that inspire me. Yesterday I bought here a beautiful book by Taschen, a facsimile of [Byrne’s] Euclid’s Elements, because a couple of years ago I did a project that was called the elements, and I am now back on this idea. Another one I want to get when I get when I get back is a book by Isaac Newton, to find the book called Principia [Mathematica]. Because sometimes it is very interesting to read about these great, the chance to read what I would never read in my life, things that you know vaguely when you are at school, but now when I look at those names from the perspective of a grown person, it’s a different perspective because when you are a student you study geometry and you are very bored but now it is different because I like to understand. Another book I have at home is by Kandinsky, I don’t know the English title, but it is about points, lines and surface. So it could be about those explorations or even about literature, I remember a few years ago I was very much into The Waves by Virginia Woolf, or Thoreau or Walden, journals, or travel books, it depends where I am.

The idea of time, The Waves, the novel is very much about that, from the title to the way the book is structured, the book is divided in chapters that are connected to the hours of the day, so it is like a big wave… So time has always inside, the shapes of time the variations of time. Even if I think about Thoreau, the way he went away from civilization in the 19^th century and he got more in touch with the time of nature, which is another perspective. Also, even when I was travelling in Africa, when I went to Mali, I was very much interested in the different perception and experience of time that you have in a place like that, where also the music gets in another dimension of time. I remember listening to the radio in Mali, you hear pieces of music that are 10, 12, even 20 minutes long, it is a very different format. Also when you get to meet someone, you say ok, let’s meet that day, in the morning, and that meeting could happen a couple of days later…

 

The difference of music from other artistic mediums:

I think music, it connects, for me, to a deeper level. To me it is creating this effect; it enters inside my brain, in my body, it is more able to change my emotions and to open my emotions in the strongest way. Music is something that can arrive and can touch you even if you are not conscious about it, and there is something that arrive to you like when you are walking and there is a jasmine smell that… music can also take you out of reality and the way that you are. Actually, for me, music is the way to uplift my life, to elevate my, I feel a better man when I hear music touches me.

 

Favourite album:

Just because musically it is great and as a concept I like it, I pick Sergeant Pepper

 

Favourite book:

Ahh, Italo Calvino, he is a writer from Italy, and actually there is a great book called Six Memos for the Next Millenium, it is six lessons, he wrote those lessons for the Harvard speech, because it is divided into the idea of the terms, slow, fast, and displaying the connection of those words with literature.

 

Favourite film:

I have to go back, I enjoyed very much when Blade Runner come out.

 

A perfect day:

(Looking out the window) A perfect day… well, this light! A perfect day is also connected with what you do with yourself, but also with the people, the connection you have, you can share what you are in a nice way with other people. It can also be a very simple day. Actually it’s probably, the simplest is better, the more perfect…