Harmony and flair | polymath pianist Daniele Rinaldo

Mathematician and musician, there’s a harmony to Daniele Rinaldo, who combines being a world-class concert pianist with an academic who uses satellite data to track the economic impacts of warfare.

“Breathed life”

Daniele is back in Newton Abbot, Devon. He was last in the town in 2022, where, judging by their expression and enthusiasm he wowed local audiences. They said he “breathed life” into his repertoire. This autumn, he returns with a promises of contrasts: a performance packed with raw passion, lyricism, suspended silences, and pure exhilaration.

Having studied at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Rome’s Accademia Nazionale Santa Cecilia, and the Musik-Akademie in Basel, Rinaldo leads a fascinating double life. When he isn’t at the piano, he works at the cutting edge of environmental and mathematical economics.

Maths to music

Far from just a theoretical pursuit, his academic research utilizes highly advanced probability models to tackle critical global challenges, from analyzing the economic drivers of deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa to shaping policies for biodiversity conservation. And his musical career has taken him from Wigmore Hall and the Barbican to major festivals and concert halls across Europe and the United States.

Daniele’s programme is not a chronological sequence. His concert opens with a work composed in 1976: the quiet and calm, almost transcendent Für Alina by Arvo Pärt. Next, he’s chosen Maurice Ravel – Miroirs (1904–05) and then Frédéric Chopin – Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60 (1845-46). These three compositions were all ground-breaking works. Pärt had experienced a prolonged creative crisis, Ravel was part of a group considered to be artistic outcasts and Chopin’s Barcarolle was quite unlike any other piano music of its time.

Variety of visions

A contemporary piece follows the interval: Peter Nickol – Blue Mix (2002). Peter says, ‘Blues is one element that runs through the piece, recognisable in the syncopated riff near the start. Other elements, ideas, quotations, are layered and distributed in ways that could be assembled differently – hence the ‘mix’ part of the title.’

Finally, Daniele will play the monumental work, Franz Schubert – Sonata in A major, D 959. It is one of the four visionary masterpieces Schubert finished in 1828 which were to be among the very last things he wrote.

Promoted by Nadsa concerts, and sponsored by Austins Department Store, the concert will be performed at 3.30pm on Sunday 25 October at the Courtenay Centre Hall, Newton Abbot.

Tickets must be bought in advance: online at www.nadsa.co.uk or, failing that, at 01626 717730 (10am – 5pm).