Ludovico Einaudi - Nightbook

Tracklist:

01-In Principio [02:52]
02-Lady Labyrinth [05:27]
03-Nightbook [05:40]
04-Indaco [05:17]
05-The Snow Prelude N. 15 [04:29]
06-Eros [05:28]
07-The Crane Dance [03:05]
08-The Snow Prelude N. 2 [04:07]
09-The Tower [04:35]
10-Reverie [04:37]
11-Bye Bye Mon Amour [07:30]
12-The Planets [16:38]

Italian-born Ludovico Einaudi's Piano music has struck a chord with audiences across the world, and his distinctive meditative style has confirmed his place in the music industry. His albums have soared high in the classical charts and his recitals have been sell-outs.

This is Ludovico Einaudi's new project, Nightbook - a musical meditation on the transition between light and darkness, the known and the unknown.

Expressive and with a more open compositional structure, sonic colours are created through the close blending of the Piano with the Strings and percussion and from the use of electronics which amplifies the sound of the Piano, projecting it like a shadow in all directions.

The project grew out of the ideas and "musical sketches" that Einaudi jotted down in a notebook whilst on tour around the world.

Einaudi describes the project as 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.

Ludovico Einaudi occupies the often disparaged space that used to be the preserve of new-age music, situated midway between classical music's studied restraint and pop's eager melodicism.

His two solo piano "Snow Preludes" here nod to the likes of Satie and Chopin, and Keith Jarrett's improvisations, while the cello and piano negotiations of "The Crane Dance" are conducted with pastoral delicacy. Elsewhere, the chamber arrangements of tracks such as "In Principio" and "Nightbook" incorporate gently chugging cello, marimba and subtle wisps and warbles of electronic noise alongside Einaudi's crepuscular piano figures.