In the middle of the Arctic ocean and against the backdrop of Norway’s Wahlenbergreen glacier, Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi performed on a floating platform among the melting ice. The sound of the piano plays a duet with the sound of cracking ice formations as it melts into the ocean.
Ludovico Einaudi is known the world over through films and TV. His music has featured in titles including Black Swan and Doctor Zhivago. His phenomenal CD sales and ability to sell out major concert halls worldwide are confirmation that Einaudi is one of classical music’s success stories of recent years.
Ludovico was born in Turin, Italy and trained as a classical composer and pianist at the Milan Conservatorio before continuing his studies with Luciano Berio, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century avant-garde. His career began with a series of prestigious commissions for institutions such as the USA’s Tanglewood Festival, Paris’ IRCAM and recently the National Center of Performing Arts of Beijing, but he turned away from what seemed a glittering classical career to forge his own musical path, giving him the freedom to reconcile his wider-ranging influences.
In the mid-1980s he began to search for a more personal expression in a series of works for dance and multimedia, and later for piano. His music is ambient, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism, world music and contemporary pop. He has made a significant impact in the film world, with four international awards to his name.