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.

MAX RICHTER Infra

Scored for piano, electronics, and string quartet, ‘Infra’ is an expansion of a 25-minute piece Richter wrote for a collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor and visual artist Julian Opie. 

The original ballet was a response to the London bombings on 7/7. It is classic Richter and it will crush you. “’Infra’ works as an enveloping and moving work even absent any knowledge of its beginnings. Others may glean different feelings from it than I do, but that is part of the point. Even if it conjures nothing of the night for you, it is some of Richter's very best work. And if you've ever cared about his music, it will make you feel something.”

MAX RICHTER Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works, as the name suggests, draws from Richter's score for Wolf Works, a critically acclaimed three-act Royal Ballet production from Wayne McGregor inspired by the works of the influential English writer Virginia Woolf. Described as featuring "a vast palette of sounds—from solo instrumental and orchestral episodes, to electronic textures and music for wordless soprano," the score makes use of themes from three of Woolf's novels, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves. It also employs a rare 1937 BBC recording of Woolf reading an essay called "Craftsmanship," reportedly the only surviving recording of Woolf's voice, along with the farewell note she left her husband before committing suicide in 1941, which is read by Gillian Anderson.

MAX RICHTER Infra

Originally conceived as a Royal Ballet-commissioned collaboration between composer Max Richter, choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Julian Opie, Max Richter’s gorgeous score to ‘infra’ is deservedly given life of its own in this album-length release from FatCat’s instrumental/orchestral imprint 130701 Records.

The initial setting for ‘infra’ was as a ballet - written in autumn 2008 and premiered in November of the same year at The Royal Opera House in London – although here Richter’s score is given the full scope of a standalone new album. Expanded and extended from the original piece, ‘infra’ comprises music written for piano, electronics and string quintet, including the full performance score as well as material that has subsequently developed from the construction of the album – more a continued reference to the ballet than as a “studio album” in the strictest sense. The composition resonates with Max’s characteristic musical voice – majestic, involved textures; fluent and sweeping melodies; an enigmatic and inherently intellectual understanding of harmonic complexities that compels and mesmerizes.

Richter’s work on the ballet came initially from McGregor’s invitiation, a request for 25 minutes of music for his piece, inspired by T.S. Elliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ and named after the Latin term for ‘below’. This eventually became more collaborative as the project developed – Wayne would ask for Max to extend or alter certain passages of music in accordance with his own amendments to his choreography and concept, whilst logging the whole process for a BBC documentary (broadcast, along with the ballet in full, on BBC2 in November 2008). The dance performance was backed with digital images created by Julian Opie – observational scenes of street life, haunting and curiously balletic despite being of the everyday – and Max’s score is an appropriately close reference to the traveling theme:

“I started thinking about making a piece on the theme of journeys. Like a road movie. Or a traveler’s notebook. Or like the second unit in a film - when the scene has been played, and the image cuts away to the landscape going by. This started me thinking about Schubert's devastating and haunting "Winterreise" (Winter Journey), so I used some melodic material from Schubert as a found object in parts of my new piece.“