Spring in San Francisco Preview II
- Leah Froyd
- Feb 16
- 3 min read
Hello and welcome to our preview series to get you ready for our upcoming concert cycle, Spring in San Francisco. This week we will discuss the contemporary composer Max Richter. Check back in the coming weeks to learn more about the other composers we will feature on the concert like Astor Piazzolla and our own José Daniel Vargas.
Max Richter is a contemporary composer and pianist from the UK. Born in 1966 in Bedford, England, he studied composition at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Music. He co-founded the ensemble Piano Circus, which performs works by minimalist composers like Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, and Julia Wolfe. In his compositions, Richter weaves together sentimentality and social activism. Speaking about his Iraq War-inspired piece Daylight, Richter reflected, "I'm very interested in the idea of a piece of music being a place to think." His 2020 work "Voices," created in collaboration with his wife Yulia Mahr, features 70 recordings of social rights activists from around the world. Yo-Yo Ma performed a movement from this work, A New Equilibrium, at the UN's 75th anniversary celebration.
To give you a taste of his style, let’s examine a few short excerpts from Richter’s albums:
Lines on a Page (One Hundred Violins) ⎹ Memoryhouse 2002
Musically, Richter traces the lines of the minimalist movement by utilizing techniques like looping melodies and sculpting reverb-heavy textures as backdrops. His first album, Memoryhouse is exemplary in showcasing his proclivities towards mixing ambient sounds with acoustic instruments. Although Lines on a Page (One Hundred Violins) is a an interlude within the full album, Richter employs many of the techniques used on his longer tracks— listen for the way Richter “sets the stage” with the sound of rain but quickly disperses it to make way for a shroud of violins echoing each other while a bass line persists underneath. Although each element is minimal, the sum of the parts creates a moody and unique ambience.
When the Northern Lights, Jasper and Louise ⎹ Postcards in Full Colour 2008
Evidently, most of his œuvre is reflective of the human condition: Richter looks back at past events and cultural phenomena. For example, Postcards in Full Colour (2008) is a collection of 24 “ringtones”. In a discussion with NPR classical, Richter commented, “People were downloading ringtones at the time and I felt this was a missed opportunity for composers—that there was a space opening up, maybe a billion little loudspeakers walking around the planet, but nobody was really thinking of this as a space for creative music. So I set out to make these tiny little fragments and then, of course, in the poetic sense, the idea of these little sounds carrying objects traversing the planet—I started to think of these as a connection, as a sort of postcard into somebody's life, into their space.”
Preview of Infra Ballet 2010
Our final and most recent example of Richter’s contemplative, intimate style is found in Infra (2010), a reaction to the 2005 terrorist bombings in London. Even though it is a larger production, Richter’s music and Wayne McGregor’s choreography give us a sense of closeness and fragility despite the chaos of the modern world in a series of pas de deux. To me, Richter provides a musical answer to the ideas laid before him by Phillip Glass. Richter leans into the minimalist movement and adds his own electronic soundscape to pull us further into the 21st century.
Our program will feature Spring from "Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi — The Four Seasons." This masterwork ranks among Richter's most frequently performed pieces. Its mass appeal stems from how it seamlessly blends his contemporary palette with excerpts from Vivaldi's familiar La Primavera, which we previewed last week. While originally composed for string orchestra, violin, and electronics, we will present a salon-friendly arrangement for violin and piano next month.
Spring in San Francisco
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