World’s most-streamed classical artist Ludovico Einaudi: ‘Music was the only way for me to survive’
The world’s most listened-to composer came from a family
of high achievers so the pressure was always on, but he found creative happiness, and joy on his yellow bicycle
Since January 2022, Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi holds the title of the most-streamed classical artist of all time. He has exceeded 39 billion streams globally, and his monthly listeners on Spotify surpass those of classical giants like Mozart and Beethoven.
Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Einaudi recalls his happy childhood before a turbulent spell in his famous political family. There was upheaval in his personal life too, but once he decided to commit himself full-time to life as a performer and composer his life changed forever.
When I was 16, I was in the middle of a turbulence because I was not interested in normal school at all, and this created a conflict with my parents. This is basically when, because I had been making music already for a few years, I understood that music was the only way for me to, in a way, survive, to live. Because it was the only thing that I really wanted to stay with and study. And so this was a moment of big decisions for me.
In my early life, I liked to stay with friends. Later on I became more introverted. I don’t know if really I’m a social guy. I think I see myself more like, maybe there’s a sort of distance between me and the outside world. Sometimes I sense I’m in my own world and I get inside it. I’m not the guy that likes to stay for long conversations with people.
In terms of my music in my teenage years I was not really writing, but I was playing the piano. I was playing guitar also, and I was playing with friends. I was playing a lot of blues. My mother introduced me to music. She played piano. She was not a professional pianist, but she inherited her skill from her father who was a professional musician. He was conducting orchestras and operas, and he was also a composer. She inherited music, and she played records at home so music was part of our lives.
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1948: Grandfather Luigi Einaudi (left) shortly after becoming president of Italy. Image: World History Archive / Alamy
My [paternal] grandfather [Luigi Einaudi] was president of Italy after the Second World War. He became Italy’s president in 1948. I was born later, in 1955, and I met him briefly, but he died when I was six years old. So I have few memories of him. My father was a publisher [who worked with Italo Calvino and Primo Levi]. He inherited from my grandfather a passion for books, because my grandfather had a grand collection. Before my grandfather was an economist, and he had a great collection of books of economy. So my father started to see all these books in the house, and he decided that he liked the idea of publishing. He started his publishing house in 1930, originally, at the beginning, sponsored by my grandfather. And then he went on his own. The publishing house was very successful in the time after the war, in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and it’s still there, but my father is not there any more.
I would not say we were a close family. I mean, there was a sense of family, but as soon as I started to understand the relations in the family, I understood that it was not idyllic. My father was a bit distant. Then he moved away from the family when I was 18. But before that, in my early childhood, I would say it was a nice atmosphere in the house. I liked it.
Ludovico Einaudi as a child.
It was strange, because I think the impression other people had of me was very different from what I was feeling. I remember I was feeling very uncertain and unsure about situations but people were thinking that I was very self-confident. It was the opposite. I was frightened by the situations, but it might have looked like I was a bit arrogant.
The younger me would be surprised by the amount of possibilities in my life. Maybe in those days I was feeling the weight of my ancestors, and my family, and how I could ever live up to that. So considering all that, I would say that the 16-year-old Ludovico would be surprised to see what has happened to me. But even now as a man, I think I still have things in common with my younger self. I think I have the same attitude, the same passions, the same way of looking at things. Maybe I’m a bit more confident with myself, so I know how to control my emotions more, but I feel quite close to what I was. If I could change anything I would try to avoid a bit all the doubts and reflections which made me waste time. But for the rest, I’m fine.
A breakthrough for me was when I decided to take the courage to do things in front of the audience and align my life as a composer with my life as a performer. I decided that I was going to be an artist, a full artist. This took me some time. I was in my thirties. I was doing music before that but I was composing for films and writing music for other people. That, for me, wasn’t enough. I needed the relationship with an audience. I love doing concerts. I love touring. And I think, for my balance, to stay all the time in one place and in one studio is not enough.
I was particularly happy with some of my works with directors. One is from England, Shane Meadows, with whom I made This is England. He was very open and, also, I like the fact that he was very creative in the way he was using my music. Sometimes I was writing for one scene and he was placing that music in a completely opposite scene. And this made me think and opened my mind into new dimensions and directions that I loved.
2023: Ludovico Einaudi performing at the Pirineos Sur Festival of Cultures in Lanuza, Spain. Image: DelfinJSF / Alamy
I had some trouble in my personal life – I was married once, and I separated from my first wife, and this was not, of course, easy, because I had two children with my first wife. So this was a moment of also suffering for everybody. I have married again since and I have another daughter, and we are all happy together.
I’m happy now that I have in front of me two years of very busy work, but sometimes I wonder if maybe I should have more time for me. I’m always working on something. The ideas still come quite quickly. Maybe they come even quicker than before, because I tend to be less critical with myself, I leave the door more open to the flow of ideas. And I’m also touring a lot, because I do, like around 80 concerts every year. They are all over the world so it’s a lot of travelling. And sometimes when I’m away, I feel I’d like to be more with my family, to be closer to them. The touring is very nice, the actual concerts, but all the rest is very boring.
If I could have one conversation with anyone I would like to have it with my grandfather, the one that I never met, the one that was a musician, the father of my mother. I’d want to know more about his life, about his motivation with music, how everything happened.
If I was to suggest one piece of music to introduce people to my work I would say Experience. I like the energy of this piece. I like the drive of the emotions that are inside. But maybe I would also say a solo piano piece like Nuvole Bianche because I like the intimacy and the sensitivity of that piece.
If I could re-live any time in my life I would go back to when I was maybe eight years old. I would go back to one of my summers in those years when everything seemed to be easy. The world was like a paradise for me in those years. I had a yellow bicycle and I was all day long with my friends, just enjoying life at its purest.
Ludovico Einduadi’s new album The Summer Portraits is released on 31 January on Decca. He will be performing at the Royal Albert Hall, London (30 June-4 July); Manchester Co-op Live (6 July); Dublin 3Arena (8 July); and Edinburgh Castle (10-11 July). Tickets are on sale now.
