The ‘I Giorni’ composer shared his dream collaboration partner, musical upbringing and greatest inspirations in an interview with Classic FM’s Joanna Gosling.
The most streamed classical artist of all time, Ludovico Einaudi is known and loved for his calming and introspective solo piano music, which has been used by many to soundtrack their lives, from wedding days and new additions to the family, to study sessions and aiding concentration.
His process for creating an album is a little different, he tells Joanna: “If I am in the process of creating an album, I like to create a frame for the music. I like to frame it inside a concept, or an idea.
“And the frame is always different. It has sometimes been a book. When I composed [Le Onde] it came from Virginia Woolf’s book The Waves.”
Other sources of inspiration over the years have included Earth’s elements, mathematics, and a sojourn across the Swiss Alps in Seven Days Walking.
Ludovico Einaudi – Le Onde (Live at the Old Vic Tunnels / 2011)
The ‘impulse’ behind Einaudi’s new album, The Summer Portraits, come from a house he stayed in one recent summer whilst holidaying on a Mediterranean island with his family.
He told Joanna: “When I entered the house I saw on the walls there were some beautiful paintings made with oil on wood.”
They depicted the pine trees and distant sea view that surrounded the house, he realised: “They were all coming from the same hand, and I immediately started to take photographs of them. I found out that they were made by a lady from Rome who [previously] owned the house.”
Seeing the Mediterranean summer through another person’s eyes and art made Einaudi reflect on his own summers spent in Italy as a child: “For us in Italy, the summer was a very long time of the year. We finished school in June and went back at the end of September.
“I was completely free – I was spending all my time with my friends and experiencing all the beautiful parts of life because you are completely free! You walk without shoes, you have ice creams, you swim, you run, you enjoy the rain when it arrives, and you walk in the forest. You have your first group of friends, maybe you find your first love.”
Einaudi also described the music that surrounded him as a child, growing up in a musical family. His mother, Renata, was an amateur pianist, and her father had been a professional conductor.
However, the years of Renata’s childhood also saw Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy. When Renata was just 12 years old, her father fled the country rather than conduct the Fascist hymn that was obligatory at each concert.
“For my mother I think music was a way to be connected with him,” Einaudi told Joanna. “It was a sort of missing relation that she felt all her life, and music was a way to heal that distance.”
By Einaudi’s recollection, music was a constant presence in his household. His mother would play Bach, Chopin, and core classical works on the piano, as well as music by The Rolling Stones and The Beatles on the record player.
“I was probably eight or nine years old when I started to understand those feelings that were coming from that music,” he told Joanna. “This was like a sort of nutrition for my soul, to have those emotions coming from the music. In the coming years they started to become more and more important, and I couldn’t stay away from them. I needed them.”
Ludovico Einaudi — “I Giorni”
When it comes to dream collaborators, Ludovico Einaudi surely has his pick of the bunch. But there’s one perhaps surprising musician he’s keen to work with above all others.
“I’d love to do a collaboration with Eminem,” he told Joanna. “I have some experiences with rap music, and I think the two – my music with a voice like that – could work very well. It’s something that I’d love to do.”
Ludovico Einaudi’s new album The Summer Portraits is out now on Decca Records.
Vote for your favourite music by Einaudi in the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2025.
Ahead of the release of his newest album, The Summer Portraits, the Turin-born pianist and composer spoke to Classic FM presenter Joanna Gosling about his life in music, his greatest inspirations and the ‘extraordinary’ response people have had to his compositions.
“I try not to involve my brain too much,” Einaudi quipped, describing the music-writing process. “It’s very nice when an idea comes out without knowing why it’s happening. It’s a sort of impulse that comes out.”
Every moment he spends at the keyboard is recorded on his phone, from the briefest of improvisations to more filled-out musical sketches, capturing sonic moments that he can return to for ideas and inspiration, and to build out into full pieces.
