When composer Ludovico Einaudi joins me via Zoom from Milan, colour is very much on his mind. It’s the morning after a concert in his hometown, at which a fellow musician told him, “It’s interesting that compared to two years ago, where you used more watercolour, I now feel there is more of a sense of oil; it’s more dense.”

It’s an observation that dovetails neatly with the way Einaudi has long viewed the evolution of music – and life – in the 20th century. “Until the Second World War, everything was more black and white,” he says. “Maybe it’s connected to the images and the footage you see, and the fact that everything in Europe was completely destroyed.”

“After the war, there was the start of a new renaissance in life and in culture,” he continues, “and an explosion of colour and joy in the Sixties with The Beatles.”

Einaudi describes his current musical palette as one of “bright, sunny colours,” and his upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand as something of a self-portrait.

Ludovico Einaudi. Photo © Mary McCartney

In constructing that portrait, he approaches the program like a painter...