MAX RICHTER The Blue Notebooks

Max Richter, a British-based, German-born pianist and composer evokes an almost overwhelming atmosphere of nostalgia and something forlorn in this beautifully recorded instrumental album. Nostalgia, because of the instrumentation (piano, strings, organ, harp, speech), the amount of applied reverberation and the subtle use of ambient sound effects; something forlorn, because of the near exclusive use of minor triad chords.

The cinematic atmosphere created at the onset of the album is retained through all 11 tracks. Having trained at the Royal Academy of Music and with Luciano Berio, Richter's approach to producing is that of a classically trained composer, which makes 'The Blue Notebooks' more of a composition with 11 movements than an album with 11 tracks. A typewriter and actress Tilda Swinton reading passages from works by Franz Kafka and Czeslaw Milosz are effectively used almost like a ritornel throughout the album.

Max Richter has announced a new reissue of his masterpiece The Blue Notebooks in honour of the album’s 15th anniversary, via Deutsche Grammophon this June.

Released in 2004, the LP was written and recorded in 2003 in response to the US invasion of Iraq. It has since become one of the most iconic pieces of classical and protest music of the 21st century, appearing in films such as Arrival, Shutter Island and Waltz With Bashir.

The reissue follows Richter’s Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works, an album inspired by Virginia Woolf which he released in 2017.