Una Mattina

This is the most stripped and exposed of Einaudi's frequently performed pieces — a solo piano work that foregrounds the instrument's own voice, the natural resonance of strings in a wooden body, more completely than most of his other compositions. The opening melody is almost deceptively simple, the kind of melody that sounds inevitable once you have heard it, as if it always existed and was simply waiting to be transcribed. There is a hymn-like quality to the harmonic movement, not religious in any specific sense but carrying the emotional register of something sacred — of attention paid, of ordinary things regarded with unusual care. The title translates to "one morning," and the piece has that quality of the first hour of a day that has not yet been defined, of potential before it becomes particular. Technically the piece is accessible enough that intermediate pianists can learn it, which means many people encounter it through their own hands rather than through recordings, and that intimacy is built into the music itself. It is a piece for sitting quietly with, for allowing to take up space in a room without asking it to do anything except exist. Reach for it when you need a few minutes of genuine stillness rather than the performance of stillness.