Riverscape Rhapsody: composer Fabrizio Paterlini on making of his latest enchanting album
Italian pianist and composer Fabrizio Paterlini has often been likened to Ludovico Einaudi — a comparison he neither courts nor shies away from. Known for his delicate, emotionally charged compositions, Paterlini has carved out his own quiet corner in the world of contemporary classical music, where stillness speaks volumes.
During his recent European tour, he sat down with Ikon to talk about Riverscape, a lockdown-born collaboration with Dutch visual artist Kristel Schneider. The project — a gentle meditation on rivers, time and nature — draws on the slow rhythms of the Italian countryside where Paterlini lives and works. From the water’s edge to the piano stool, he reflects on the creative process, the silence between the notes, and why music doesn’t always need to shout to be heard.
Your new album Riverscape takes inspiration from the movement and rhythm of water — both as metaphor and as mood. What sparked your connection to this theme, and how did it begin to take shape musically?
I have always been fascinated by the slow flow of the river. I live close to the longest river in Italy, and since I was young, I used to play and walk on its riverbanks. Writing music for it was just a matter of time and finding the right occasion.
The project is a collaboration with the photographer Kristel Schneider. How did her images feed into your process — and what did that creative exchange look like in practice?
I was contacted by Kristel during the pandemic. She told me about the photobook she was preparing on the river Allier, which flows nearby where she lives. So, she asked me if I was interested in writing music about the same matter, without knowing that I live so close to the river. The whole process of writing music and shooting pictures went smoothly, and we shared with each other drafts, be they music or images. Her pictures are evocative and incredibly beautiful, and they provided me with rich imagery I could use as inspiration for my music.
Your music often gets described as cinematic — but how important is the visual in your live shows? What do you want the audience to feel when the screen lights up behind your piano?
During the tour, I widely made use of visuals projected on a large screen behind us. The videos the audience sees are the ones taken by Kristel Schneider during her photography sessions. So the whole project is a continuous circle: a real audio-visual journey that takes the listener into the magic world of the river on stage and through the photobook Kristel has completed.
Your music is full of stillness and space — does living in the countryside give you that, creatively? Could you imagine making the same music in a city flat surrounded by sirens and traffic?
The connection between what I live and what I write is quite deep. As you can see from the titles of my albums and tracks, the connection between nature and inspiration is strong. I live in the countryside; I wake up during the wintertime in a cold and foggy land, and during the summertime, days never end, and you can fully enjoy the night since the weather is warm, and you can sit with a candlelight in the garden drinking red wine. Of course, this influences my music, which is clearly inspired by the rhythm of nature and its cycles. Not only did I write albums as “Autumn Stories” and “Winter Stories,” but all my production is full of references to the world of nature. Before living in the countryside, I lived for a very few years in my small town, Mantua. I still produced the first album of my career there, but for sure, moving to where I am now was something that increased my productivity.
Each track on Riverscape feels like a snapshot in time — ‘Misty Dawn on the River’, ‘When Autumn Comes’. What images or memories were you channelling when composing them? Are there particular stories behind any of those titles?
In this album, more than ever, titles are so important. I would say that once I composed the music, I tried to “see” what this music was telling me, and the title came accordingly. So, exactly as you read them, while listening to the music, I invite the listener to imagine a scenario like the one described in the title.
Listeners often use terms like ethereal, emotive, and passionate to describe your music.
Now that you’re sharing Riverscape with live audiences across the UK and Europe, have you found that the emotional response it evokes matches the atmosphere you set out to create?
This is an interesting question: I am not sure how this new album will impact my audience emotionally. There are certain songs, “River’s Voice,” for example,” in which the emotive impact is still quite high; certain others are more entertaining,” so the audience experiences a mix of emotions while attending the show.
You’ve said that writing sad music brings you happiness, and your sound has been described as ‘a glass of red wine on a summer evening.’ Where would you place Riverscape on the emotional spectrum — particularly at that delicate intersection between melancholy and joy?
I would place it in the “glass of red wine on a summer evening” mood. Most of the songs are cinematic and dreamy and can really take the listener on a journey. Also, the visual side of the project, with Kristel videos and pictures, helps even more to enhance this aspect of the music.
Your music is often compared to that of fellow Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, and it’s said he’s spoken warmly about your work. While every artist seeks recognition for their own voice, do you take pleasure in this comparison — or does it feel limiting??
I am certainly happy about this comparison, and I think my music was somehow influenced by his works, at least for the first piano solo albums I composed. When I discovered his music approximately 20 years ago, something sparkled in my mind, finding his way of writing music so “familiar” and natural for me. I then found my own path and style during the years, but I still love his works and his perfectly balanced compositions.
Elena Leo is the Arts & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.
