Max Richter, the composer who brings together Bach and Kraftwerk

“I try to give more space to the listener, using a simpler and more direct language. Which does not mean that mine is simplistic music: I employed a great job to make it seem simple, “said Max Richter once talking about his compositions. Richter, for those who have never talked about it, is considered a real pioneer of the neoclassical movementknown for his style that combines classic, electronic and minimalism. With his productions, the German composer and producer, but British from adoption, has put an aesthetic and philosophical principle in music: less is more. Influenced so much by Bach how much from Brian Eno and Philip Glassthrough emotional and repetitive melodies that create a hypnotic atmosphere Richter has long been consecrated as a prominent figure in the panorama of contemporary music. They speak for him not only works like “The Blue Notebooks“Of 2004 (containing that” On the Nature of Daylight “used in many films, starting from” Arrival “of Denis Villeneuve), “Sleep“Of 2015 (a monumental work even 8 hours long: designed to be listened to during sleep, she explores the relationship between music and state of conscience) and”Voices“Of 2020, but also soundtracks like that of the series”The brilliant friend“And collaborations such as those with the choreographer Wayne McGregor or Marina Abramovic. Sunday 6 July will stop at Ravenna Festival With his tour of his most recent solo album “In a Landscape“, In concert at the Pala De André (the presales are already open, the tickets are available at this link): the appointment is an unmissable opportunity, for the Italian public, to get to know more closely an authentic genius of contemporary music, considered by many as The bridge between cultured music and electronic musicin whose music the great composers of history coexist as well as i Beatles he is Kraftwerk.

It was he, born in a small village of Bassa Saxony, in Germany, but raised in Bedfordshire, north of London, to reveal how the electrocution of the iconic German band scored him: “My first memory of conscious listening was JS Bach. I was transported by the perception that there was a grammar that made it possible ». It all changed when Richter listened for the teenager for the first time, the bass line of “Autobahn“Of the Kraftwerk:”It was like being affected by lightning». Music has been a sort of compulsive obsession since she was a boy: “I started composing before knowing what he really meant – he told the magazine Qobuz – at the age of five or six years, I always had songs in my head that I reconfigured and rearranged, a bit like a child would do with Lego bricks. I did it all the time, but I didn’t understand that he meant composing. It was an unconscious thing, and it took me a long time to realize it ».

It was in Italy That Max Richter managed to completely expand his musical spectrum. Accomplices their studies in Florence with Luciano BerioItalian pioneer of electroacoustic music, interested in concrete, serial and electronic music in the tradition of the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. Berio, who disappeared in 2003, indicated to Richter the way to follow: «What I found so surprising in his work was the way he managed to integrate a very rigorous modernist perspective with a profound involvement in the history of music. There was something very inclusive in his writing. I think there was a strong sense of musical continuity».

Launched by Fatcatlabel of Brighton – born from the record shop specialized in the import of American albums Techno and House – that a name has been made by publishing artists such as Sigur Rós, Múm, Animal Collective and Frigish Rabbittoday Richter affects Decca. Speaking of “In A Landscape”, which will present at the Ravenna Festival, he says: “It is an album on reconciliation between opposing poles, which blends electronic and acoustic. It is a protest album, but it is more interested in trying to go beyond polarity and oppositions because the world is now very polarized. Everything is very extreme and I think there is the tendency of people to not be able to speak. What I am trying to do with this material is reconciling the opposites».