Max Richter: In a Landscape (CD Review)

by Karl Nehring

They Will Shade Us With Their Wings; Life Study I; A Colour Field (Holocene); Life Study II; And Some Will Fall; Life Study III; The Poetry of Earth (Geophony); Life Study IV; Only Silent Words; Life Study V; Late and Soon;Life Study VI; Andante; Life Study VII; A time mirror (Biophony); Life Study VIII; Love Song (after JE); Life Study IX; Movement, Before All Flowers. Max Richter, electronics, piano, Hammond organ, electronic percussion; Eloisa-Fleur Thorn & Max Baillie, violins; Connie Pharoah, viola; Max Ruisi & Zara Hudson-Kazdaj, cellos; Martin Robertson & Paul Richards, bass clarinets; David Fuest, contrabass clarinet; Martin Williams & Graeme Blevins, tenor saxophones; Gemma Moore, baritone saxophone. Decca 587 5717 

 

In a Landscape is the ninth solo studio album by the German-born British composer and keyboard performer Max Richter (b. 1966). Our first review of a work by Richter appeared more than a decade ago, when Classical Candor’s founder John Puccio posted his review of Richter’s bold “recomposition” of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (you can read John's review here). In 2022, Richter released another version of his Seasons recomposition, this time around one of the main differences being we have (other than Richter) musicians playing on gut strings and period instruments: the sort that Vivaldi would have heard and played in his own time. Also, this time around, Richter plays a vintage Moog analog synthesizer rather than the modern digital synth he had employed on the 2014 release (you can read our review here). Then a year later, we reviewed yet another recording of Richter’s Recomposed Four Seasons, this time performed not by Richter himself, but by the Los Angeles-based chamber ensemble Delirium Musicum. You can read our review of this delightful release, which also includes Philip Glass’s American Four Seasons, here.

 

Of course, there’s more to Max Richter’s music than his reimagining of Vivaldi’s greatest hit. One of his most highly publicized musical endeavors was Sleep, an 8-hour “lullaby for a frenetic world” to which listeners at the few liv performances were encouraged to bring cots, sleeping bags, blankets, etc. it is available as a 4-CD set, on an app, plus there is an abbreviated version, From Sleep, which is available on a soothing yet musically satisfying 1-hour CD (our review is available here). But Richter has not only been interested in making music to lull his listeners into states of quiet passivity; quite the opposite, in fact, as revealed by his releases Voices (reviewed here) and Voices 2 (to be found in this set of reviews) with their focus on human rights, plus his later Exiles, with its title composition inspired by a refugee crisis in Syria that involved many thousands of people fleeing for their lives under desperate circumstances (you can find that review here).

The music on In a Landscape is peaceful, introspective, but not somnolent. Richter says of the album that it is about “reconciling polarities, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.” It’s his first solo album recorded at Studio Richter Mahr, the minimalist, eco-conscious creative retreat designed and operated by Richter and his wife, visual artist Yulia Mahr. “The whole building is like an instrument,” he says. “There's an element of exploring the capabilities of the building, how all the spaces sound, all the textures, and trying to discover the fingerprint it has.”

 

He kept the creative process decidedly minimal, writing the notation by hand and restricting the arrangements to just a few instruments: string quintet, grand piano, Hammond organ and MiniMoog, plus tape delays, vocoders, and reverbs. As you can see from the header above, the program comprises 20 tracks: ten musical pieces, which range in duration from 8:33 to 2:16, alternating with nine “Life Studies,” brief ambient field recordings that add an aura of intimacy to the proceedings. Richter’s music is relatively simple in structure, but rich in emotional resonance, capable of engaging both the head and heart of the listener. What’s more, the recorded sound is rich and full. My only quibble is the lack of meaningful liner notes. Other than that, In a Landscape is a meditative masterpiece.