Infra Richter

A collection of 18 original piano works which takes us through the award-winning composer's eclectic output, embracing his work with the London Philharmonic (Memoryhouse), The Blue Notebooks, Royal Ballet-commissioned Infra and some of his film scores (Departure from The Leftovers, Miss Sloane). The album is recorded using an avant-garde conception instrument thus creating a completely new sound.

A collection of 18 original piano works which takes us through the award-winning composer's eclectic output, embracing his work with the London Philharmonic (Memoryhouse), The Blue Notebooks, Royal Ballet-commissioned Infra and some of his film scores (Departure from The Leftovers, Miss Sloane). The album is recorded using an avant-garde conception instrument thus creating a completely new sound.

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.

The pop-minimalist music of Max Richter has been gaining followers beyond his native Germany and his residence of Britain thanks to some highly successful soundtracks and energetic promotion by the Deutsche Grammophon label, which recorded Exiles in 2019 and released it in 2021. Here, he is interpreted by the Baltic Sea Philharmonic and its conductor, Kristjan Järvi. Richter selected the group himself, and it was a good choice. The Baltic musicians have plenty of experience with the glassy, precise textures of minimalism, and they deliver accomplished readings. Exiles comprises 18 short sections with a simple pulse, slightly modifying – in classic minimalist fashion – a pattern laid out at the beginning.