Daniele Priori December 03, 2022
To the Dal Verme Theater like in an aquarium. Ludovico Einaudi concludes his successful 2022 with fifteen appointments in Milan, from yesterday to December 18th.
Underwater is the title of the album that the Turin master has been touring five continents since last March, the end-of-year landing in the Lombard capital being unmissable, especially after the two seasons of disruption due to the pandemic. Since 2015, the repeated December appointment at Einaudi in Milan has become a tradition, always greeted with particular warmth by the Milanese public. Inter Milan and Dutch national team defender Stefan De Vrij, who missed this year’s World Cup in Qatar due to football commitments, was one of the most loyal spectators in the audience of the last editions. A commitment reserved only for pop stars, addressed to the master who, however, as a perfect Turinese, preserves an elegance, a style and a sobriety that he does not trade for success or sympathy at any price.
“THE MANE SLOPES?”
“The men’s skins? I only know a few of their covers,” he replied to some reporters, who asked him at least as much about the young Roman rock group of international fame, authors of soundtracks for Oscar-winning films like Nomadland and The Father. This year, too, the announced arrival of the composer in Milan has given way to the advance date, which is constantly being updated thanks to the sold-out advance sales in the previous months. Last replica added on the occasion of the holiday of December 8, the day of the Immaculate Conception.
Underwater, on the other hand, is the metaphor of purity: a flow of sounds without external disturbances. A fresher and more direct approach to the music, involving both the author and the audience in unison, enraptured by a flow of emotions stemming from the artist’s intimate face-to-face conversation with the piano. Federico Mecozzi (violin) and Redi Hasa (violoncello) as well as Stefano Arcuri (electronics and drums) frame the light touch of Einaudi’s black and white keys with the melodic colors of the strings. Fifteen tour dates, but actually even more this year for Einaudi, who has always reserved the most daring, experimental, innovative and committed projects in Milan, his adopted home.
That’s how it was in May 2014 in the heart of the Parco Sempione in the open air when he experimented with the encounter with African sounds and instruments on the occasion of PianoCity in the project Le Piano Africain. This is how it is today at the Teatro Dal Verme, which is not only a safe late autumn retreat for the maestro, but also a kind of laboratory in which he can continue experimenting, also with different forms and forms of expression.
IMMERSIVE SPACE This is the case of Climate Space, the immersive space created by Einaudi and dedicated to the themes of the environment and climate change, which will accompany the fifteen concerts in the Small Hall of the Milan Theater with a review of short films. There are three daily screenings: the first at 10.30am is reserved for schools. The one at 6 p.m., which will see the meeting with activists, scientists and journalists, while the one at 10:30 p.m. will be accompanied by a special live soundtrack. All this for free and without a concert ticket. On December 21st, to welcome the beginning of winter and the first 150 years of the Teatro Dal Verme, there will be the absolute preview in concert form of the opera Winter Journey, signed by Einaudi with a libretto by the Irishman Colm Toibín. It is the musical story of the winter journey of a migrant who leaves his country and family to seek a better and more welcoming country in Europe, where instead he finds only a sense of cold. Another winter. The work will be performed by the I Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra and the Torino Vocalensemble conducted by Carlo Tenan.