Ludovico Einaudi

Ludovico Einaudi is a composer and pianist whose music sits deliberately between the concert hall and everything outside it. The writing is spare, repetitive and slow to change, built from short figures that recur with small alterations until the alteration itself becomes the event.

He trained in the conservatory tradition and studied composition under one of the postwar avant-garde's central figures, then moved away from that language towards something much plainer. What survived the training is the control. The pacing is exact, the harmonic shifts are placed rather than stumbled into, and the piano writing lies under the hand in a way that leaves dynamics to do most of the expressive work. Alongside the piano he uses strings, guitar, percussion and light electronics, all kept low in the texture.

The music has travelled far beyond concert audiences, into film, into dance, and into streaming on a scale unusual for any living composer, and the live audience does not overlap neatly with either the classical or the pop one. In a hall the effect depends on quiet: these pieces are built around decay and space, and a room that stays still hears a different concert from one that does not.