This powerful video is so simple, and so perfect. Acclaimed Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi performs his “Elegy for the Arctic” in the heart of the real thing, as the man and piano float through the ice past the Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway. They ride a platform built by Greenpeace in support of June 2016’s OSPAR meeting in Tenerife, Spain.
OSPAR is an international environmental committee of 15 countries—the U.S. is not among them—dedicated to “protecting and conserving the North Atlantic and its resources.”
If the video’s sound and image aren’t enough, the symbolism should be: ice suddenly rolls down into the sea behind Einaudi, almost like accompaniment, and a lone seabird swoops through the frame as if to underscore how man’s environmental mistakes affect all creatures.
Einaudi’s song is beautiful, with a haunting ache left suspended in the chill air as his final chord fades away.
