Einaudi

Dear friends of piano music, 

sometimes it takes me quite a while until I have found an emotional connection to a composer's music and can then play it. It was the same with Einaudi. I didn't understand them for a long time, these beautiful but simple melody patterns that are repeated over and over again, in which his music seems to be caught. I didn't find it monotonous, I found it more torturous. And then I heard a story on the radio that opened my eyes and made me find my way to Einaudi. It is the story of a woman in her seventies who had a very difficult childhood, then devotedly cared for others in her family and in her job as a social worker, only to then, after doing all this, set off on a great journey of freedom. She traveled the world in a car that was junk for German security needs, to countries whose culture and language she didn't know, she approached the people there openly, made friends and was free and happy. Then she unexpectedly fell in love, she moved in with the man she loved, and the great disillusionment came: She immediately fell into the patterns of caring and self-abandonment that she had practiced for so long, and since she felt that she wasn't strong enough to break through and dissolve these patternss, she left her husband and went traveling alone again. I was shocked! A woman so strong and brave, who dares to do things I would never dare, realizes that the simple, plain, repeating patterns of her life are stronger than herself and therefore sacrifices the gift of late love to her freedom. What a surrender. But then I understood Einaudi, my interpretation of Einaudi. We are all determined by such simple, constantly repeating patterns, and just recognizing them is far from enough to free oneself from them - even if we want to. There are men who marry women who look almost identical to each other multiple times in a row, and whose relationships all fail, since of course that's not a particularly smart pattern for choosing a husband. But such patterns are also, for example, the expectations of our parents, whose more or less proven life patterns, such as a secure job, a family home and term life insurance, are also expected of us. How hard it is to break out of it, even if you'd rather be a writer and don't care about insurance! An almost banal pattern, on the other hand, is habits, usually the so-called bad habits - extremely difficult to get rid of. Whenever I hear Einaudi's music, or now also play it, I wish for insight and strength to recognize and break through these patterns. Some of them are good, they give us continuity and security, but others are really tragic - sacrificing one's great love at the age of seventy. She could have just packed him in the car and taken him with her - but his constant life patterns probably didn't allow for that. Sad, isn't it? Einaudi always makes me sad, but I've made my peace with his music now. 

Kerstin