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OMG... My family rented the movie "Insidious" to watch tonight (v. scary, if a bit cheesy in parts), and about half way through the female lead character, who is trying to calm down after a rough experience, starts playing a record... and it's "Nuvole Bianche." Of course, after a couple of minutes scary things start happening. I may never think the same way about the piece again.

But it was neat to see his music featured in a movie that got wide exposure, and they gave him screen credit at the end.

Hey,YouTube had the exact scene:

[video:youtube]v=f7UUtLZ1Sgw[/video]

wow, I didn't know there was a big Einaudi thread like this.


I'd appreciate if anyone could give me an idea of approximately what ABRSM grade would Einaudi's famous Divenire would fall into.


just to have an idea of when I will be ready to play it



PS: favorite Einaudi piece?

Hmmm... crescendo, I don't know grades, but I will tell you that Divenire is wicked hard, mostly due to the hand independence issues compounded by the blistering pace that he plays it at. I can play it, but only sort of, and not with the light delicate touch he is so good at.

On YouTube there was a member running a "favorite Einaudi piece" poll recently. I voted for Ancora, but I believe the winner was "Nuvole Bianche." I would've voted for it in my top 5, so I can't argue with the outcome. As I wrote in my comment on the voting thread, naming a favorite Einaudi piece is like asking which one of your children you love the most.

Here's the link to the "vote for your favorite Einaudi piece" video:

http://youtu.be/mOLKPGpAFfw

Thank you Monica, I can really see you love Einaudi.


I'm definitely gonna attempt some of his pieces when I'm ready



it's good to see musicians like this achieve fame and share their talent with us. The music business is hard on musicians like him

I'm going to see him play at the Glasgow Royal concert hall in November, same week as my birthday.
Can't wait

Lucky you, Dulcetta! And welcome to the forum.

Thanks Monica.
I watched some of your videos, you are really good !

I love Einaudi's music and hope one day to be able to play some of it. For now I'm learning where the notes are on the piano and the C major scale, so it could take a decade or so

Hi Dulcetta,
I'm happy to know that you (also) love Einaudi music.
About your learning curve, you will be surprise how fast you can learn to play piano, since you work with passion. That's what my experience tells.

Hello all,
I found this text about Einaudi where he talks about some of the best known pieces he composed. It's long but worth reading.

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Ludovico Einaudi may defy easy categorization, but this composer and pianist is already a megastar in Europe. With the release of his mesmerizing and elegant new album Divenire released in the United States on June 10th, 2008, Einaudi was embraced by American music fans as well. The album took up residence in the top 25 on the Billboard Classical Crossover Chart and debuted at #1 Classical and ...#78 on iTunes Pop Charts.

Einaudi’s My Space page dwarfed those of most other classical and ambient artists with a quarter million page views and thousands of plays a day. Divenire, which translates in English as “to become,” is a masterly mix that weaves together the best of a classical sensibility, electronic experimentation, a hypnotic ambient groove, and an almost cinematic sweep. It was nominated for “Album of the Year” at the Brit awards.

Part of Einaudi’s talent is deftly dodging arbitrary labels of genre and tradition. Once a student of the famed modern classical composer Luciano Berio and a fellow at the highly prestigious Tanglewood Music Center, the now 52-year-old Milan resident has written some fifteen film scores, several of which have won prizes as best soundtracks in Italian, German, and French film festivals, including the BAAF award (a precursor to the UK’s famed BAFTA prizes) for his soundtrack for British filmmaker Shane (Dead Man’s Shoes, Twenty Four Seven) Meadow’s new film This Is England, which has already won the Special Jury Prize at the recent Rome International Film Festival and the Best British Independent Film award at the British Independent Film Awards this past September. His score for Fuori Dal Mondo(by Giuseppe Piccioni) received an Academy Award nomination as Best Soundtrack Einaudi’s eclectic roster of past recording colleagues includes notable musicians from around the globe, including the Turkish electronica/world music magician Mercan Dede, Robert and Ronald Lippok of Germany’s post-rock trio To Rococo Rot, Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko, and the Portuguese keyboardist (and Madradeus co-founder) Rodrigo Leao.

Einaudi’s fan base is equally eclectic and widespread. He regularly performs sold-out shows at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including London’s Royal Albert Hall and the Barbican Centre; shows this spring take him to locales as exotic as Tokyo and Mumbai. With thousands of friends and thousands of visits a day, the popularity of his MySpace page dwarfs those of most other classical and ambient artists. With Einaudi already an immense audience favorite on Britain’s Classic FM radio, millions more fans across Europe have recently heard a cut from Divenire (the track “Primavera”), which was used in a Sony Blu-Ray advertisement that launched last summer. Divenire has already gone gold in Italy, following the success of Einaudi’s previous six solo albums, six film scores, a greatest hits collection, and an album of compositions and arrangements for harpist Cecilia Chailly. In the US alone, digital and import sales of Divenire alone have quadrupled during the last six months of 2007.

The pianist describes Divenire as an album that contains a real journey and larger narrative while it interweaves solo, chamber and orchestral sounds. “You know how in 17th-century paintings a single work depicts several scenes at once—the night, the sun, a landscape, a battle, whatever? I wanted to evoke that sensibility in Divenire,” says Einaudi. “The music for Divenire was inspired partly by the paintings of the 19th-century artist Giovanni Segantini, who painted the Alps,” he continues. “Before he died, he was working on a famous mountain triptych, the Alpentriptichon, which contains the whole cycle of life, nature, and death. And so the album Divenire is about those cycles.” “I was also inspired by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus,” the well-read Einaudi continues. “He said, ‘Everything is in flux’—like you can’t step into the same river twice. Everything is in a constant state of change, of metamorphosis. And that’s the idea I wanted to explore on Divenire.”

The first track on Divenire is “Uno,” a piece for piano and electronic loop, explains Einaudi, “It’s like the enigmatic DNA code of the album,” explains Einaudi. “It’s the source material, but you can’t decode it easily. You’re not sure where it’s going to go.”

In the title track that follows, the composer continues, “We hear the first introduction of rhythm. And it’s no longer just the sound of the piano—an orchestra comes in. When I compose music for solo piano, I’m more aware of little details; it’s like drawing in ink. When I’m writing for orchestra, I paint with a far bigger brush. Every sound and gesture is amplified: it’s bigger, but it also carries much more strength and weight.”

“Monday” sees the pianist returning to a solo setting. “This piece has a very precise quality, and a very intimate energy,” Einaudi professes. “I think of it as almost a folk ballad.

But in the following track, ‘Andare,’ the loop returns; the movement between the piano and the electronic loop is as if the piano has a shadow following it. But we also have the cello entering in a duet with the piano. ‘Andare’ means ‘to go’ in English, and I was really playing with the whole idea of going, of letting energy flow without knowing for sure where it was headed.

”The next track on the album, called ‘Rose,’ harkens back to the earlier piece on the album called ‘Monday.’ “’Rose’ actually draws upon the same source material as ‘Monday,’ though it’s not an exact replication, “ Einaudi reveals. “But the sound is actually reversed in ‘Rose.’ I wanted it to be as if you were looking in a mirror.”

The next piece, “Primavera” (“Spring”), sees Einaudi looking backward to his classical roots. “The name and style is something of a reference to Vivaldi’s famous piece The Four Seasons,” Einaudi observes, “This selection is with orchestra, with a real explosion of sound coming from them that just overwhelms the piano in a rather Vivaldi-like way. But I really was thinking also about how flowers just explode in the spring,”

The composer asserts Another reference to nature comes in the next track, “Oltremare” (“Beyond the Sea”). “This is another intimate solo work, a quite dark one this time, that forms part of the nucleus of the album,” the composer explains. “But here the form is quite complex and unpredictable. Everything is built on connections, like in a game of dominos.”

In “L’Origine Nascosta” (“The Hidden Origin”), Einaudi builds on harmonic possibilities. “On the natural piano, the harmonics series generated by playing decays very fast. So I used the electronic loops to sustain those harmonic series.

‘Fly,’ which comes next, is the brother of ‘Andare.’ Here, there’s a piano loop, but then the sound of the piano is generated into new territory, into the sound of a distorted electric guitar, which appears here for the first time on the album. The shadow finally becomes reality.”

“Ascolta” pulsates on a groove of electronic pulse. “Ascolta literally means ‘to listen,’” the composer explains, “and I think of this track’s obsessive loop as if you’re listening inside yourself, hearing your heartbeat.

And as the album comes nearer to a close as we reach ‘Ritornare’ (‘Return’), I was thinking of a Shakespearean tragedy like Hamlet, in when near the end Hamlet makes a speech that’s a statement, a bit of rhetoric; that’s how I think of Ritornare.

And the very end is the track ‘Svanire’ (‘Vanishing’). There is no piano, just the cello and orchestra, as if I’m just listening myself to this unpredictable melody. It’s like looking at a sunset over the mountains; the horizon line is indistinct. ‘Svanire’ is a farewell, with a sense that this day, this journey, is finished.”

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Thanks, Carlos! I found myself wanting to sit down and listen to Divenire again while reading these notes.

You're welcome, Monica. I knew you would be the first to comment
Btw: this text was in facebook, so some of you have already read it.

I’ve made this account especially to speak to you intelligent folk on this thread.
I’ve been playing piano for about 8months now and am having some problems with Nuvole Bianche. I have literally no idea when I’m supposed to use the pedals whilst playing it. Anybody know? How does everyone else play it?
Much appreciated.

Welcome!!!!
I've never played this piece so I can not say specifically what the best method. Now, I think it is important that you tell what is your experience with the piano, if you have a teacher, if you are a self-learning piannist, or if you know another instrument, etc.. I am sure that with this information is easier to help you.

Welcome to the forum, Nuclear! And to the beautiful world of Einaudi.

My rule for pedaling Einaudi is to pedal with the chord changes. In the first couple of lines, it's very easy to tell where the chord changes are, because the chords are being held for the entire measure. The rest of the piece just follows the same pattern.

It's a beautiful piece. Enjoy!

Thanks
I’m attempting to teach myself. Learnt the violin for a few years when I was 8, but in terms of the piano, I used to teach myself what the piano sheet music meant but never actually had the guts to go near the ivories.

I’ve currently learnt and memorised: Nuvole Bianche, River flows in you by Yiruma, Comptine d'un autre été by Yann Tiersen ect. I learnt Carol of the Bells a while back, managed to vaguely play it, then promptly forgot it.
My obsession and love for a piece tends to overrule any hope of my logic questioning whether I should learn piano ‘the proper way’ instead.

I have another quick question. Theres some pieces by Einaudi and by other individuals that seem a lot more complicated than what I’m currently learning. Is a never ending amount of dedication and passion for a piece enough to bridge that gap? I’m worried that attempting something that’s like grade 6-7 or some of Einaudis more difficult work might…I don’t know…teach me bad habits or may be detrimental in some way. Is that true?


Thanks

Nuclear, your question may be 'quick,' but the answer is pretty complicated. The downside of tackling a piece that's more complicated than you're used to is that you may learn to "play" it in a flawed fashion, which may make it difficult for you to play it correctly when your skills develop. Another potential downside is that trying to tackle pieces that are too advanced for you can make you feel frustrated and discouraged and give up, which isn't good, either.

That being said, there are many of us who have pursued our "passion pieces" earlier than we were technically ready for, and I count myself among that group. I don't regret doing so, but I think I am making better choices now of repertoire, and I've decided that I would rather play simpler pieces better, and more of them, than spinning my wheels trying to master a piece that was too complicated for me. ymmv.

The nice thing about Einaudi is that he's got a LOT of beautiful piano transcriptions available, at the entire range of difficulty. I just flip right by the wicked hard pieces that I can't play yet and seek out the ones I have a fighting chance with.

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting in this thread, even though it's been going for six years now!! I am actually going back and reading the thread from the beginning. I'm up to page 21, which might be meaningless since I believe the number of posts per page varies for everyone. Anyway, I am reading posts from early 2007 right now.

So, I have finally decided to work on an Einaudi piece. I have the "Best of" book, so I played around with the first few pages of a few pieces, and I decided to start with I Giorni. I want to play Le Onde eventually, but it seems like that piece requires a bigger commitment to get the notes in the fingers, so that will have to be my second Einaudi piece.

Anyway, I hope I can post here if I have any questions, or even just to do some Einaudi-talk.

ShiroKuro, I'm now a fan of his works too because I've heard his pieces many times here played by many different people. I even heard it played in a movie just a couple days ago..lol.
His compositions sound nice bring out the "sonorous" tone of the piano.

Did everyone here who plays Einaudi have to purchase his sheet music?