Move over, Beethoven. A modern composer is winning classical music.

On the eve of his U.S. concert tour, Ludovico Einaudi enters the Watergate hotel with a mild-mannered stroll. An evening networking event has transformed the lobby into a chicken coop. Young professionals strut in close proximity, squawking with laughter and pecking at their drinks. They pay little attention to the bespectacled composer trying to pick a path through them to meet his interviewer. 

Your correspondent shakes Mr. Einaudi’s hand, gestures to the baby grand piano in the lobby, and half-jokingly asks if he’d like to play it. Mr. Einaudi smiles and shakes his head. A cocktail party is hardly a conducive atmosphere for hushed compositions such as his latest project, “Seven Days Walking.”

“With my music, I like that it is more like an inner