Max Richter Sleep

Max Richter’s landmark 8.5 hour work SLEEP in an abrdiged 90 min. version. The SLEEP project explores new ways for music and consciousness to interact, a “personal lullaby for a frenetic world…a manifesto for a slower pace of existence.”

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.

2 CD product curated by Max - 1 CD of original compositions from Max’s catalogue of successful solo albums, and a second CD comprised of music and movie themes and soundtracks.

Stillness and repose lie at the epicenter of the latest of violinist Angèle Dubeau’s series of “Portrait” recordings, a celebration of that master of atmosphere, Max Richter. Richter, whose credits include the soundtracks to Waltz with Bashir and Shutter Island, writes postminimalist music—richly scored, with gently undulating rhythms, beautiful, shifting modal harmonies, and subtle electronic effects. There’s often an elegant simplicity to Richter’s music, as in the cyclical “Autumn Music 2,” but there are thrilling moments, too, as pulsating electronic drums emerge from the darkness in “The Journey, Not the Destination.”