Le onde (Italian “The Waves”) is an album released in 1996 by the Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi. The album is based on the novel The Waves by British writer Virginia Woolf, and was Einaudi’s first solo piano album.[1] The album enjoyed mainstream success, particularly in Italy and the UK.
The inside of the CD booklet reads “If it were a story it would be set on the seafront of a long beach. A beach without beginning and without end. The story of a man who walks along this shore and perhaps never meets anyone. His gaze lingers occasionally to look at some object or fragment brought from the sea. The footprints of a crab or a solitary seagull. I always take the sand, the sky, some clouds, the sea. Only the waves change, always the same and different, smaller. larger. Shorter. Longer.”
Posted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Onde
Author: mbarnesWhen Notte from Ludovico Einaudi’s album “Stanze” was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Mixing It last year it elicited the greatest listener response in the programme’s ten-year history. “Stanze” featured Cecilia Chailly playing 16 exquisite solo harp pieces (directly from Einaudi’s original piano scores). “Stanze” means rooms and is made up of cells, some of which are interconnected. In translation “Le onde” means “The wave” and is partly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s book of the same name. Featuring Einaudi on solo piano, it’s a more fluid, impressionistic work than its predecessor.
Einaudi’s music is finely crafted, pared down and strongly melodic. Easy to listen to, in other words. But the composer has pre-empted any accusations of it being ‘New Age’ (with the vapidity that term implies). He maintains that New Age music is merely ornamental, whereas his own music has more of an architectural structure. His analogy is apposite.
Brought up on a diet of Chopin, Bach, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Einaudi is a quintessential crossover composer, having also worked in the avant-garde and multi-media. Echoes of Glass’s Metamorphosis piano series run through Tracce, for example, but Einaudi is more lyrical. Although his music is very accessible, his preference for the strong musical line over the merely florid makes it satisfyingly substantial. The cover of “Le onde” shows a sepia photo of a beach, reminiscent of Michael Nyman’s The Piano. One feels that if Einaudi were to get that level of cinematic exposure he could be similarly successful.’
Posted from: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/einaudi-le-onde
