Album Review: The Blue Hour by Federico Albanese

Managing to encapsulate in an album that fleeting period of transition between day and night is no easy feat, but it's something Federico Albanese has managed spectacularly. With The Blue Hour, the Milan-born, Berlin based 'piano poet' has crafted an album as elegant as it is melancholy, in which the lasting impact is only matched by each track's transience. That might sound paradoxical, but the delicate compositions, made up of little more than piano, synth and cello, are as fragile as the period of time from which they take their inspiration.

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The variety, beauty and sheer unfathomability of much of the natural world has inspired composers and musicians for centuries, being responsible for some particularly momentous works within the realm of classical music. The Blue Hour by Italian pianist Federico Albanese may be more modest and scaled-back, but it offers striking proof that the earthly allure extends all the way up to composers of modern classical, a movement that has quietly grown and established itself over the last decade. For his second album, Albanese has chosen to focus on one particular phenomenon: the period of time during dawn and dusk where the low position of the sun causes the sky to take on a shade of blue.

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