Ludovico Einaudi + Robert & Ronald Lippok

A regular presence in the “Amici della Musica” season in Palermo, Ludovico Einaudi returns to the Teatro Politeama for a concert outside the regular subscription series. The novelty this time is that, in a world premiere, he is joined in his musical excursions by brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok, founders of the German group To Rococo Rot. What will come out of the encounter between one of the most traditional instruments, the piano, and the avant-garde sounds of Robert Lippok's console? How to reconcile the warm colours of live performance with the artifice of electronics? Einaudi explains: “I'd like to let the sounds produced by me and by them travel through a game of echoes and continuous transformations […] a phrase on the piano, a looped response that suggests the cue for my reaction with another chord, the addition of a delay, Ronald Lippok's rhythmic insertion and so on…”. The project, developed by the musicians in great secrecy, has piqued the curiosity of the Politeama audience, and the nineteenth-century theatre, not usually accustomed to this kind of event, is almost full. Once the lights go down, with the little illumination left on stage one can barely make out the musicians' features: on the left Ludovico Einaudi sits at the piano, in the centre is Robert Lippok at the console and, off to one side, his brother Ronald on drums. Behind the artists is a large screen onto which, as the music begins, two video-art experts from Visomat inc. project minimal black-and-white geometric patterns.

From the very start, the images flowing before our eyes seem intimately bound to the music, and the relationship between the two may well be one of the possible keys to interpreting what we're hearing: the projected images function as pure "signifiers," devoid of any single meaning, so that the music played by Ludovico Einaudi with Robert Lippok comes across as multi-layered in meaning, even though the mood often seems melancholic. Even some of the more apparently "recognizable" sound effects (like those resembling a bird's call or a heartbeat) invite us to move beyond the most obvious meanings, letting ourselves be carried "further." The ongoing dialogue between piano and electronics generates refined suggestions that speak of loss and rediscovery, in a constant tension between order and chaos. Toward the end of the pieces, heightening the emotional tension, Ronald Lippok's drums come in, with faint ethnic-flavored touches that recall another facet of Ludovico Einaudi's musical output, even in an apparently unrelated context.

After the first two lengthy pieces, the Turin-born composer allows himself a brief pause to greet the audience at the Politeama, also introducing his fellow musicians. When the music resumes, fragments of Palermo appear on the screen, drifting and floating along with the music in an almost dream-like sequence. In the opening images one can recognize the very theatre hosting the show, lending the performance an unusual meta-textual dimension. At the same time, we seem to be prompted to reflect on the relationship between our city's glorious past and its uncertain future, just as the music expresses conflicting sensations of tension and release. This is certainly one of the most intense moments of the evening.

The three musicians play six pieces in total, but if it weren't for the audience's interruptions—often a bit too quick to applaud—one might think this was a single, continuous work. Between one piece and the next, in fact, recurring motifs echo back, giving the concert a circular quality.

At the end, by popular demand, Ludovico Einaudi and his fellow musicians grant an encore; but the lights won't come back on until the musicians have completely left the stage: it almost seems like a ritual of sorts. When the theatre is lit again, despite another long and well-deserved round of applause, it's truly over.

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