Max Richter – In a Landscape
Decca Records
Max Richter, the German-born British composer, has never shied away from a concept.
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For The Blue Notebooks, his 2003 breakthrough, Richter mediated on violence as the U.S. geared up to invade Iraq. Meanwhile, on 2015’s Sleep, Richter composed an eight-and-a-half-hour piece patterned after human sleep cycles. He has also reinterpreted Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, scored the show The Leftovers, and written the music for a narrative dance piece based on stories by Virginia Woolf.
For his new record, In a Landscape, Richter expressed interest in “connecting or reconciling polarities.” This is a bold endeavor for the factionalized world we live in, one that puts great faith in music as a salve or panacea. Unlike some of Richter’s bigger-sounding records, the composer limited In a Landscape to just a few elements: a string quintet and his own shadings on piano. Closer and lead single “Movement, Before All Flowers” is Richter at his most measured, a beautiful autumnal study in restraint.
The composer knows how to make the heart swoon with mournful strings—and while nothing here feels as urgent or frenetic as his 2002 debut, Memoryhouse, selections such as “And Some Will Fall” and “Late and Soon” rank among the most beautiful in Richter’s catalog. However, In a Landscape doesn’t always work. Richter staggers a series of nine “Life Studies” throughout the 19 tracks—comprised in part of tape delays, reverb, and vocoder, these short ambient sections break the natural flow of beauty.
Giving examples of polarities that could be reconciled, Richter has pointed to the electronic and acoustic. Still, friction exists. In a Landscape contains some of Richter’s best work—perhaps he’s hoping for us, in learning to love the record’s less successful parts, to reconcile ourselves. – GRADE: B-
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