Review: Max Richter at Riverside Theatre
Max Richter at Riverside Theatre
Sunday, February 23, 2025
An old-fashioned protest album from Max Richter?
On his first ever world tour, Richter delved deep into what he described as “reconciling polarities.” A contemporary classical composer who fuses traditional instruments with electronics and field recordings may sound like a chin-scratcher’s wet dream, but in concert the result was moving and often inspired.
If bridging divides is his modus operandi, it’s little mystery that in 2003, when Richter conceived his landmark album The Blue Notebooks, the invasion of Iraq was front and centre of his thinking.
Playing the album in full, he relayed his thinking at the time. A meditation on violence and the profound futility of war, the album features readings from Franz Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks and Czesław Miłosz’s Hymn of the Pearl and Unattainable Earth, all read by Tilda Swinton.
Alas, Swinton was not present, but rather than a voiceover, she was replaced in person by Eryn Jean Norvill reading the texts, adding a very live and intimate side to the largely minimal piano, synth and strings arrangements.
With no conductor, he was also joined by the ACME Ensemble (aka the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), with two violins, one viola and two cellos. While Richter himself moved between grand piano, organ, and live manipulation of synths, the other players brought the sumptuous arrangements to life with moving sadness and occasionally even epic intensity.
There are certainly similarities between neo-classical and post-rock in their deconstruction of the base genres. But it was the intricate build to a thrilling crescendo that was most memorable about The Blue Notebooks portion of the night.
Whilst favourites such as On the Nature of Daylight and Shadow Journal were undeniably beautiful, it was the peak of The Trees that brought everything together live, as crashing strings, thumping synth bass, and an electrifying light show made for an unforgettable finale.
(I’ll never understand why that one doesn’t have more listens on Spotify.)
Despite no obvious references in the texts, it became hard not to think about armed conflict and the reasons we facilitate or protest it; somehow this polar opposite thinking creates the very meaning of ‘conflict’ on a protest album unlike any other.
Richter had already wowed us earlier in the night playing last year’s album In a Landscape (also in full), which returns to many of the same styles and themes as The Blue Notebooks. Fitting bedfellows, the earlier set not only prepared us for what was to come; it introduced us to the nature of his live performance.
So while the expected orchestral motifs were dreamy and evocative, it was often the Life Study interludes, perhaps existing where the narration did on the previous record, that propelled momentum.
Best of all was a wondrous electronic deviation for Only Silent Words, where the production flexed for the first time that night. Such moments allowed the lighting to pulse animatedly between the string-laden, more classical moments.
A beautiful, unusual, and eye-opening night for both the classical set and non-classical connoisseurs (or fans of Richter’s equally famous soundtrack work), this was the perfect occasion for our orchestral music-loving friends to say, “I told you so!”
Stunning.
HARVEY RAE