Album review: Hanna Devich, Ludovico Einaudi: Nightbook (Challenge Classics)

Hanna Devich, Ludovico Einaudi: Nightbook (Challenge Classics)

Few contemporary composers have tapped into the public consciousness quite as effectively as Ludovico Einaudi, his repetitive, wave-like compositions utilising the comforting reliability of minimalism while his melodies unerringly trigger warm emotional responses.

Hungarian pianist Hanna Devich here emphasises the latter even further, on this first album of Einaudi's music performed without his involvement: where he plays comparatively “straight”, she indulges more rubato accents, playing up the sentiments in “Snow Prelude No. 2” and “Bye Bye Mon Amour”, and treating “The Tower” to a melodramatic reading conveying a dark foreboding – the tower as prison, perhaps?

Download: Snow Prelude No. 2 & No. 15; Bye Bye Mon Amour; The Tower; The Crane Dance