Main: Max
Richter and Yulia
Mahr at their
Oxfordshire
home. Clockwise
from left: Mahr
in her studio; a
reception room
at the property;
produce from
the gardens is
used for
communal meals;
Richter playing
his Steinway
grand; the
house’s exteriorThe Sunday Times May 29, 2022 15
two sets of builders was a
particular, er, high point,”
Mahr says.
Lined with oak and
featuring a picture window
and roof lights, the studio feels
as though it is reaching out
into the woodland beyond.
“Max and I have spent a
lifetime in recording studios,”
Mahr says. “They’re always
black boxes; strip-lit and tech-
heavy. We wanted this place to
be a refuge for people. It came
down to: what does freedom
feel like? What gives you the
mental space to create?”
An air exchange system
ensures that the air is
replenished every 14 minutes.
The entire space is enveloped
in 3ft-thick sound insulation.
All the technical wizardry,
including Richter’s beloved
analogue recording systems
and vintage synthesizers, are
hidden away behind floor-to-
ceiling doors.
There is room for a full
orchestra, but when Richter
sits down alone every day at his
Steinway Concert Grand Piano
it still feels intimate. “Outside
there are often people
pottering about, or the dogs,
or our three kids,” Mahr says.
It has taken a long time to
get here. Things only started
to turn around for Richter
after a move to Berlin in 2008,
where he recorded Four
Seasons Recomposed. Yet ten
years later he still had a studio
“the size of a 7ft cube”, partly
because they poured a lot of
their income into the work.
The couple’s collaborations:
Sleep (2015) — an “eight-hour
lullaby” — and Voices (2020),
based on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights,
were largely self-funded.
Richter’s back catalogue
has reached two billion global
streams, but they are still
pinching themselves. “We’ve
been here two years now and
I still have a sense of
unreality,” he says. The
building has changed the way
they work: “I compose more
in less time. The first time I
pressed ‘record’ and music
flowed out of the speakers, the
room sounded just as it had in
my dreams.”
Mahr’s studio, with its huge
window at one end, feels like a
gallery in the middle of a
wood, which in a way it is. This
is the first time she has had her
own space and her joy is
unfiltered. “I think it’s my
favourite room of all,” she says.
In a clearing two shepherd’s
huts are soon to be joined by a
yurt where artists can stay
over, socialise and jam. Might
alpacas be part of the
landscape again one day?
“We are thinking about it,”
Mahr says, laughing.The New Four Seasons — Vivaldi
Recomposed is out on June 10
(Deutsche Grammophon)POORER