ALBUM: Ludivico Einaudi - Divenire

We are now enterting the realm of classical music. To anyone who doesn’t appreciate classical music… take this as a warning.
Ludivico Einaudi, the Italian contemporary writer, has been in business for quite a while now. Despite gaining international fame and credit with his mature songwriting, even playing a concert in London the previous year, you still need to actually listen to him to get what it’s all about. So I will waste no more breath…

Opener Uno wouldn’t be called the staple up-tempo entrance to any other album. Slow, some beautiful chords, occasional raindrops of electronica in the background, builds a picture. Not sure what the picture is to be honest, but a picture nonetheless. With lots of rain. The title track is next, and has an army of strings backing it up through its racing chorus sections, all beautifully complimented and brought to rest by the Big E’s keys. Quite rousing… in a pompous way.
Monday is a more standard Einaudi piece – mostly sombre throughout, abrupt modulations here and there, and a general harmony-over-melody style (with transitions with the harmony from set in bass clef to treble clef). Enough with the technicalities though, as the track is actually quite shit. Next please.
Andare: basically Monday Mark 2, but with bongos. Next.
Track number 5, Rose, is a much more positive-sounding piece. It relies a lot on reversed wah-effects, which gives the impression that our favourite Italian contemporary is jamming in random stuff to make the tracks more different. A decent listen nonetheless, although.
I am now imaging a snowy scene: that’s what the beginning of Primavera makes me feel. All snowy and fluffy. God, I hate Christmas. Strangely enough, these six degrees of separation don’t make me hate thee track. In fact, it becomes wonderfully epic at around the second minute, complete with spiralling violins on top of shrills. This would be a great Cradle Of Filth song, come to think of it.

Break-time: pause the album and go get some coffee or something. It is an hour and a quarter of toff music, after all, and you will need caffeine to keep your eyes open.

Back? Good. And now, the customary behemoth of a track. Clocking in at 11 minutes long, Oltremare really does portray the amount of patience needed to listen to not just this, but any classical music. (Patience is a virtue: you will be rewarded with repeated listenings.) Whilst this song may only be fully appreciated as apt background music, there are a lot of changes and no concurrent motifs – and ornamentation is kept to a minimum. And yet, it all gels.
Whoa, there’s a song here under 3 minutes and a half long. A speed record in classical terms. The only actual interesting part of it, is the long building note… rising and rising in volume… and resolves beautifully at its head.
Fly turns into an organised vortex at its end, as Einaudi finally embraces the electric guitar as another piece of his ensemble. We return to more electronic samples with a delayed hum on Ascolta – this works pretty well, but the song writing remains pretty much the same in terms of style as the rest.
Ritornare – not today thanks.
Here we are, at the end of our long journey. Svanire is a gorgeous composition, and a good note to end on (a happy one. I can finally breathe). Stressed violins weep with joy… the string harmonies hold notes entirely in the major key… and even though it has a respectably good enough melody going for it, it does get boring eventually. A first for Einaudi, however – as the piano acts only as harpsichord would here, i.e. complimenting particular notes.

After a number of piano-based albums, Einaudi has chiselled himself a spot in this particular style of music’s ever-vast, colourful wall. And rightly so: on some of his recordings, the single use of the piano gives his music a definite depth to it. For instance, works like Nuvole Bianche, Dolce Droga and of course Le Onde convey meanings so purely with excellent writing which encompasses not only structure, but an acute sense of timbre. However… this was also a downfall to his long players. The sole use of his beloved black-and-whites would make each track sound samey, basically. And on new album Divenire, he works on this and succeeds: now familiar with a wider array of instruments, Einaudi is starting to realise his full potential.
Overall – 7.5
Get it? – Only if you’re patient. If not, I suggest some amphetamine combined with listening to The Prodigy.

On a completely different note, I found a great video. Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCHSvOjLUXA