The title of Max Richter's ninth album is a clear quote from one of John Cage's masterpieces. “In A Landscape” for those who love 20th century classical music, very often opposed and misunderstood, is a sort of iconic monolith, a watershed moment that contains both elements of traditional classical music and elements of minimalist avant-garde music, so much so that it can be defined – depending on your point of view – one of the last compositions of classical music or the first composition of minimalist music.
Max Richter therefore places himself in front of this milestone of the twentieth century with a seventy-five minute long album with nineteen songs. If we look at the compositions, they are actually ten, divided by nine short “Life Studies” which could hardly be interesting even to the most fanatical admirer of modern classical. In the ten compositions to be considered, Max Richter proposes all the stylistic features that made him famous, with an ability to involve the listener, and ultimately with a class that is still unparalleled for all the musicians who are followers of the music scene that he has seen in “The Blue Notebooks” (2004) its progenitor.
It is certainly difficult to find novelty in Richter's music, but songs like “And Some Will Fall”, almost as heartbreaking as one of his most celebrated songs “On The Nature Of Daylight”, or “They Will Shade Us With Their Wings”, eight minutes of strings with a very high emotional impact, confirm Richter as a composer capable of recreating exciting and cinematic atmospheres with enviable ease. The piano triptych of “A Color Field (Holocene)”, “The Poetry Of Earth (Geophony)” and “Andante” recreates his recognizable atmospheres without particularly rising above his usual standards.
Good album for those approaching Richter's music or modern classical in general for the first time. My idea is that Richter's latest masterpiece is still “Voices” (2020), an album that really tried to broaden – albeit with the same grammar – the horizons of modern classicalopening up to the possibility of successfully conveying universal messages of peace.
This is the true landscape in which Richter has immersed us for twenty years now.
21/10/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM