If you go to one of those studios where unreformed hippies serve herbal
tea, coo over the healing powers of crystals, sell a pill made out of
Tibetan herbs to heal your lingering back pain, and use a private Room of
Silence for contemplation and yoga, they will probably be playing this CD.
The match between Ludovico Einaudi and the harp is perfect, too perfect:
sappy, "inspirational" music founded on a repetitive sameness of mood,
coupled with the ultimate easy-listening instrument. The result is an album
so relaxing, peaceful, soothing and reassuring that my ears remained fully
alert, my eyelids started drooping and my brain cells attempted mass
suicide.
Einaudi is a quasi-minimalist, a little too free with his material to
really be given the label. He is nevertheless a big fan of endless
repetition. To tell you the truth, there are some very nicely written
minutes of music here. A couple moments achieve actual emotional uplift, and
signal a composer who knows how to tug heartstrings. I can't remember where
they are. All eleven tracks are basically indistinguishable, and when I
think about listening again to pinpoint the good parts, I wince in agony. A
couple of tracks are also famous, and it's lucky that the booklet lists
them, because how would you know otherwise? "Una mattina" was on the
soundtrack to
The Intouchables (2011), and it's the shortest track
on the album. It's also the best. It sounds the same as the others, but it's
shorter, and that makes it the best.
Lavinia Meijer is one of the world's greatest harpists. I am proud to own
three of her earlier albums:
Philip Glass selections,
Visions and
Fantasies and Impromptus. She has transcribed all the works
herself, with the composer's approval. This music could not ask for a better
performer. In fact, it probably could not bribe one.
Ludovico Einaudi is a very sincere composer. Unlike the painter Thomas
Kinkade, Einaudi creates feel-good art out of a serious motivation to do so,
and with the professional craftsmanship and skill required to pull it off.
He's very good at what he does. He says, "I find that it is unfulfilling
simply to write music for music's sake. Music has to move me emotionally and
spiritually, and this is also true of the audiences I have in mind."
Many audiences have found that Einaudi's music moves them. I can't
challenge that but I can't join them, either. Easy-listening, "new age"
music focuses on one superficial, consoling kind of uplift because it cannot
handle deeper emotions or problems. Einaudi is an ascetic, a musical monk
denying himself - perhaps out of fear - the right to feel anything
complicated.
Truly profound uplift in art demands conflict. More obviously, if you want
to feel uplifted, you have to start down. All the most "inspirational" works
of music also have great moments of pain, doubt, or loss, from Beethoven's
Ninth to Mahler's Second, from Chopin's nocturnes to Strauss's
Four Last
Songs. The first draft of this review had about a dozen more examples
listed. No doubt you can think of your own. How would you feel at the end of
Casablanca if there hadn't been a war on? Who would watch
Much
Ado About Nothing if all that survived of it was the final dance?
This album is 57 minutes of continuous uplift. This imposes the physically
impossible demand that you somehow keep feeling more and more consoled for
an hour. Eventually, the sentient human rebels. Please, Mr. Einaudi, bring
us darkness. Bring us sadness. Bring us wit, flirtation, despair,
desperation, hopelessness, confusion, laughter, absurdity, longing,
jealousy, impulsiveness, daring, calculation, fear, ecstasy, or eagerness.
You need not capture them all; one or two would do. Art is the way that
humans communicate with each other about the unspeakable realities of being
alive, and easy-listening music is not about being alive. It is about
stage-managing life to avoid any unpleasantness. It is a solution which
denies the existence of a problem. It is the senseless imposition of one
single mood on listeners who are capable of feeling an infinity of moods.
For some people, it no doubt provides a comfort, something predictable in a
troubled world. For the rest of us, Ludovico Einaudi's music offers a
generic uplift that's inferior to the real thing, and clueless as to why we
might ever need it. This is not music to heal wounds; it is music to pretend
wounds do not exist. This music is numbing, insulting and delusional.
Brian Reinhart
