When Max Richter’s Recomposed first exploded into our collective ears almost a decade ago, a 59-minutes-28-seconds sonic starburst, the effect for so many people was total. We hadn’t heard anything like that, ever. Experiencing it felt as though we were being catapulted onto another plane, reverberated through the cosmos by this epiphanic soundworld. In this “alternative rendering”, Chineke!, the groundbreaking British ensemble consisting of majority Black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians, and the brilliant soloist, Elena Urioste, are playing on gut strings and period instruments: the sort that Vivaldi would have heard, and played, in his own time.
One of the most beautiful and definitive tracks in Max Richter's ever-growing body of work is "On the Nature of Daylight" from The Blue Notebooks, the album that brought him to the attention of many critics and fans. Since that breakthrough, he's developed a niche as a composer ready and willing to revamp the classics, as he did with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, as well as a sensitive and versatile composer of scores for films ranging from looks at the not-so-tame secret lives of domesticated animals (Die Fremde) to dystopian sci-fi (Perfect Sense). Richter's music for Disconnect is an intersection of those career paths: the score uses "Daylight" as its emotional and musical focus, surrounding it with pieces that echo and complement it…
Building on the musical material of the first record, Voices 2 extends the musical language into a purely instrumental and abstract direction. Where the first part of the project is very focused on the text of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, the 2nd part opens up a musical space to let these words and ideas sink in.
Max Richter will release a new orchestral composition to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth on 17 December. The world premiere performance of Beethoven – Opus 2020 will take place on 16 December at Beethoven-Haus Bonn, the birthplace of the composer and now a museum, cultural institution and research centre, and will be live streamed on Deutsche Grammophon’s Facebook page. Max Richter’s new solo piano single Andante Loops, based on music from Beethoven – Opus 2020, premiered today in Apple Music’s Beethoven Room. Beethoven – Opus 2020 and Andante Loops will be released together as a digital EP from 18 December. Max Richter said, “I give the last word in Opus 2020 to Beethoven himself, as a reminder that in spite of the challenges we face, the future is in our hands; if we choose creative and positive actions it will be brighter.”