richter recomposed by max richter vivaldi

(You can read my thoughts on Sleep hereand here.)Īnd so it is with The New Four Seasons. You need only experience his eight hour Sleep opus, to realise that this is a composer with a need to stretch himself and follow his imagination.

So why revisit such a successful experiment? Well, the gift (and the curse) of the artist is the restless need to continually experiment and create, and Richter is an inspiring example of a musician seeking to push the boundaries of music.

The synths are so delicately woven around and underneath the strings that even on headphones you’re not quite sure whether the music is being created by the old or the new, but the end result feels like a natural symbiosis, and the listener simply settles in to enjoy the music in its purest form. Richter also reshaped the textures of the stringed instruments to allow space to add in synthesisers and bring new layers to the music, bridging the traditions of classical music and the ambient sounds of modern electronica. That’s essentially what composer Max Richter did in 2012, forensically opening up the original score, note by note, and then subtly altering melodies or patterns to the point where the listener is challenged to work out precisely what has changed, even though they know they’re hearing something new.

However, what if you took a celebrated suite of music – Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – broke it down to its essence and then recomposed it, shaping it into something that sounds familiar yet new and original? That seems to be the name of the game in the music business these days, resulting in diminishing returns in most cases. How to deconstruct a celebrated suite of music, reconstruct it into something completely new, and then revisit it ten years later, using variations of the original instruments to create something that’s just as unique and individual, but also offering a listening experience that improves on the original.

Richter recomposed by max richter vivaldi