Einaudi: Best of Solo Piano Music

When Einaudi burst onto the classical music scene some 20 years ago, critics were at first unsure how to react. What to make of a composer who has arguably broken through the boundaries of traditional classical music, forging his own path and attracting millions of fans? How to classify his soothing, peaceful, stunningly beautiful compositions? No one could have foreseen the astonishing precedent Einaudi has set, having had an important role in bringing classical music into the mainstream and at the same time asking us to forget our traditional categories and labels, and just sit back and enjoy his unique works. Pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen has long been a fan of Einaudi's deceptively simple style. Here he has brought together a personal selection of the composer's best works, and any listener unfamiliar with Einaudi up until now will soon see why he has garnered the enormous fame and attention he enjoys worldwide today.

Jeroen van Veen remarks, "Contrary to ordinary classical music, minimal music demands little of the listener but to escape life's troubles for a moment; no comprehensive musical structures ask their full attention." All his compositions are more or less based on the music he heard heard when he was a child, when his mother played Chopin Preludes. Einaudi (grandson of the politician Luigi Einaudi) loved the almost hypnotic soft sound of the upright piano. Because of her he started to play the piano and tried to find his own way. The melody (if there is any at all) always goes down, hardly leaving the classical path of harmonies. His music is ambient, calm, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism and contemporary pop.