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Max Richter

Six of the best pieces by Max Richter

We celebrate some of Max Richter’s most sublime and grounding music, ahead of our concert tour, A Musical Awakening.

By Rosie Pentreath

Max Richter is a rare composer revered by classical music aficionados and people with no prior music knowledge alike.

Like that of Arvo Pärt, Valentine Silvestrov, Pēteris Vasks and the like, his music strives for simplicity and feeling, over atonal intellectualism and complexity-for-complexity’s-sake. And like those composers, Richter with his music seems to transcend the mundanity of daily life, and awaken in us something deeper, more connected and utterly profound.

Born in Germany, Richter is a British composer, famous for projects like Sleep, which invited audience to experience a soothing work over eight hours at night to escape the ‘whirlwind of life’, Voices, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and his ‘recomposed’ version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which has been used for many TV and film soundtracks.

Richter studied composition and the piano at the University of Edinburgh, and then at the Royal Academy of Music, before learning directly with modernist master Luciano Berio in Italy. His contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus for a decade championed existing and commissioned works by the best living composers working today, including Julia Wolf, Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass, and Richter has also produced numerous solo works, collaborations and music for film and television.

Here are some of the most popular, acclaimed and evocative Richter works so far

 

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1. On The Nature of Daylight

On The Nature of Daylight comes from Max Richter’s 2003 studio album, The Blue Notebooks, which the composer described as a meditation on violence (“both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war”) and a protest about that year’s invasion of Iraq. The piece, written for string orchestra, is incredibly evocative, and melancholic, and has been used in many emotionally-driven moments in film and TV.

2. Vladimir’s Blues

Vladimir’s Blues is from the same 2003 Richter album, and is a minimalist neo-classical work for the piano. Like On The Nature of Daylight, it’s simple and repetitive, but no less emotionally complex in its execution. Textbook thought-provoking Richter.

3. Sleep

Sleep is an eight-hour epic of music designed to push back on the relentless “whirlwind” of modern life. Richter designed his work to tap into the actual science of sleep, and enliven and awaken his audience while they're in a half-dreaming state. So, a piece “not necessarily be listened to, but to be experienced.” The musicians in performance are ideally surrounded by sleeping people in this completely unique and ritualistic – hopefully life-changing, or at very least affirming and soul-connecting – piece of music. Watch the trailer for a film about Sleep below.

4. Recomposed by Max Richter: The Four Seasons

Max Richter’s reimagining of Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi’s most famous and most beloved set of violin concertos, The Four Seasons, was part of a series of other masterwork ‘remixes’ released by record label Deutsche Grammophon and it caused a literal storm in the conservative classical music establishment. Many weren't fans of variations they heard in this classical hit, others loved it. It’s a subtle and clever reimagining that just invites us to re-hear the rhythms, melodies, colours and convictions of the original work with small variations and fresh virtuosic fireworks. Netflix’s The Chef’s Table fans, you’ll hear ‘Winter’ in the gorgeous opening titles.

5. Voices

Voices – and Voices 2, released a year after the first – is an album of luscious, minimalist neo-classical music that is as uplifting as it is introspective, invitating deep listening and deep contemplation of what it is to be human. The first piece in the collection, All Human Beings, features a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in 1948 set out, for the first time in human history, the fundamental human rights to be universally acknowledged and protected in every country across the world. The contemplation starts from there.

6. Perihelion

Perihelion is a string work by Max Richter named after the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid or comet that is nearest to the sun. Richter’s music is moving and atmospheric, a rotating and mesmerising contemplation of things surely far vaster, and far more complex, than the human mind is capable of contemplating fully. Max Richter doing what Max Richter does best: utter beauty, utter simplicity.

Hear Max Richter's On The Nature of Daylight in our upcoming tour, A Musical Awakening, touring 4–21 September. Click here to book tickets, and view venues and dates.

 

Photo: Jennifer McCord