Infra
The latest from the electro-acoustic composer with a flair for slow, aching beauty was originally commissioned for a multimedia performance piece.
For a self-described “post-classical” composer who’s taken cues from such heady source material as Kafka’s Blue Octavo Notebooks and Haruki Murakami, many of Max Richter’s best compositions are appealingly middlebrow pieces for piano or string quartet—dramatic enough to drive home a scene in Shutter Island, but more…
Max Richter embarks on many scoring projects -- most prominently, his music for the award-winning Israeli film Waltz with Bashir -- and it’s easy to hear why: albums such as The Blue Notebooks and Memoryhouse feel like, as the cliché about instrumental music goes, soundtracks for films that haven’t been made yet (though a piece from The Blue Notebooks was even used in the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island).
Instrumental pieces are often good, rarely great. The abstract musical vocabulary, conveying feelings without lyrical assistance, requires a delicate touch and ambitious execution.
Max Richter - Infra review: Richter chooses to leave his cell phone at home