Max Richter Vivaldi: Recomposed

“Humphrey’s utter absorption and delight shines forth at every turn… strong toned, easy fluidity and immaculate technique” - Gramophone. Since winning the BBC Music Magazine Instrumental award in 2018 Fenella Humphreys has been in demand throughout the UK and Europe. Post minimalist composer Max Richter has composed many successful film scores, most recently ‘Mary Queen of Scots’, ‘White Boy Rick’ and ‘Black Mirror’. His 2012 ‘Recomposed’ topped the charts in 22 countries. His beautifully crafted intelligent work based on the famous concertos by Vivaldi retains only a quarter of the original music; Richter skilfully employs looped and phased parts of pure Vivaldi which emphasise his postmodern and minimalist credentials. Fenella partners ‘Recomposed’ with the powerful ‘Lonely Angel’ by Vasks and Pärt’s popular ‘Fratres’.

Having made a gradual switch during the 15 years since his first album was published from electronica to instrumental variations on ambient and minimalism, Max Richter is among the most commercially successful composers of our time. This album of his solo piano music belongs in the genre explored so thoroughly for Brilliant Classics by Jeroen van Veen, whose prolific recording history includes hugely popular albums of Philip Glass (BC9419) and Michael Nyman (BC95112), Ludovico Einaudi (BC94910) and Yann Tiersen (BC95129) and his fellow Dutch musician Jakob ter Veldhuis (BC94873) and himself (BC9454). The appetite for slowly moving, unchallenging, post-Minimalist music is apparently infinite, and so this new album is sure to be a success.

After its rediscovery in the second half of the 20th century, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has become so popular that it has become a model of inspiration for similar collections that have the same subject matter, use similar instrumental forces and, often, are commissioned to be played alongside the original. Issued in conjunction with the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Astor Piazzolla (4 July 1992), Sixteen Seasons brings together on disc for the first time the four most famous Four Seasons : hence alongside Vivaldi’s Italian concertos, also the Argentinian Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas of Piazzolla (in the version by Leonid Desyatnikov, a composer of Ukrainian origin), The American Four Seasons of Philip Glass, and the “Vivaldi recompositions” of British Max Richter. To guide us through these seasons – which are spread over different continents, climates and musical styles – is Concerto Mediterraneo, an ensemble made up of musicians from all over Italy and directed by Gianna Fratta, while the eclectic Alessandro Quarta shares the solo violin role with Dino De Palma. The liner notes by historian Alessandro Vanoli and meteorologist Luca Mercalli complete a project that also stands as a reflection on the profound relationship between man and the alternation of the seasons and the role played by climate change from Vivaldi’s day to the present.