New Zealand Listener – March 02, 2018

MARCH 10 2018 LISTENER 49

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THEATRE 50

Two shows about

the lives of Samoan

women are eliciting

laughter and tears

BOOKS 55

A debut novel that

has all the familiar

trappings of Gothic

melodrama

MUSIC 57

Singer Joan Baez

keeps her protest

flag flying on a

new album

FILM 58

Game Night, A

Fantastic Woman,

Kobi and Older

Than Ireland

milkman acquainted him with the music

of the US avant-garde. An artist himself,

the milkman heard Richter practising

Mozart and Beethoven on the piano and

began dropping off recordings of experi-

mental music. “He introduced me to the

post-Cage Americans and the minimal-

ists – incredibly rare records at that time.

I heard Philip Glass and John Cage and

others in this very fortunate way.”

W

hen asked to describe his art,

Richter sometimes uses the term

“post-classical”, but is quick to

point out that this “jokey” term is not

intended to be taken seriously. “I went to

university and conservatoire and post-

grad and all that, but the popular music

cultures around me – electronic music,

dance music – and fine arts and literature

were a big influence.

“My work hovers between straightfor-

ward written-down classical music and

music that is more about handling sound

in a sculptural way, where the studio

becomes part of the instrument. Some are

straightforward classical or instrumental

pieces, whereas others inhabit more of the

electronic thing. There isn’t a single pithy

formulation [for what I do].”

Richter is extraordinarily prolific, with

eight or nine albums to his credit as well

as numerous film and television scores. He

still plays the piano and other keyboards

and usually participates in live perfor-

mances of his music. In Auckland, in

addition to Sleep, he’ll present two more

recent works, Three Worlds: Music from

Woolf Works, drawn from a Royal Ballet

commission for three scores based on

Virginia Woolf’s novels Mrs Dalloway, The

Waves and Orlando, and Recomposed by

Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons.

He loves Vivaldi’s music, but is tired of

the way The Four Seasons has become over-

exposed off the concert stage. He hears

it too often on television, in muzak and

in on-hold telephone music. “It’s tainted

by those associations. Recomposed was an

attempt on my part to rediscover the piece

as a purely musical object by taking a kind

of road trip through the landscape Vivaldi

had composed, to be surprised by it again,

to fall in love with it again.”

Like the popular original, his Recom-

posed is structured as four violin concertos,

but Vivaldi’s harmonies seem smoothed

out in a minimalist language and thinner

texture, enhanced by electronics. How

have audiences and musicians responded

to what one critic calls a “classical remix”?

“Honestly,” Richter says, “I don’t really

think about what people think. If you

do, you could never do anything. You

certainly wouldn’t touch The Four Seasons,

because you’re asking for trouble, aren’t

you? But mostly people have received it

in the spirit in which it was made – an act

of affection and enquiry and a creative

investigation into Vivaldi.” l

The Richter Residency Auckland Arts Festival

Sleep, Max Richter (piano), Grace Davidson

(soprano), American Contemporary Music

Ensemble, March 16; Vivaldi Recomposed/

Three Worlds, Richter, Davidson, Mari

Samuelsen (violin), Auckland Philharmonia

Orchestra, March 18.

Audiences attending Max Richter’s

eight-hour performance of Sleep are

given a camp stretcher when they

arrive. Below: the composer.