Recomposed by MAX RICHTER – Vivaldi – “The Four Seasons”
01. Spring 0
02. Spring 1
03. Spring3
04. Summer 1
05. Summer 2
06. Summer 3
08. Autumn 1
09. Autumn 2
10. Autumn 3
11. Winter 1
12. Winter 2
13. Winter 3
Time for classical music. I always loved The Four Seasons by VIVALDI. Maybe because they remind me of my childhood, sind this was one of the vinyls my grand-grand-parents used to listen – a lot. They are gone, but the Seasons remained. Now MAX RICHTER recomposed VIVALDI’s The Four Season and to be honest: this is the release I was most looking forward to this year. Yes, MAX RICHTER‘s Recomposed – neither YEASAYER nor the PET SHOP BOYS – not even MUSE. MAX RICHTER‘s version of The Four Seasons was what I was looking forward to most. And now that I finally listen to these amazing tunes, I feel like my grand-grand-parents sit by my side, we drink coffee and have the talk of our lifes about all the things we never had the chance to talk about.
Maybe some works are so familiar that it seems almost impossible to hear them afresh, but that is what MAX RICHTER has achieved with Vivaldi “Recomposed”. This is no mere arrangement; instead MAX RICHTER has absorbed VIVALDI’s The Four Seasons into his own musical bloodstream.
“I wanted to open up the score on a note-by-note level, and working with an existing recording was like digging a mineshaft through an incredibly rich seam, discovering diamonds and not being able to pull them out. That became frustrating. I wanted to get inside the score at the level of the notes and in essence re-write it, re-composing it in a literal way.”
Working with solo violinist Daniel Hope, Richter discarded around 75% of the original source material while the running time was reduced to 44 minutes playing time. Aura (Japan) recorded an a cappella arrangement of Vivaldi’s four seasons, and had also performed Vivaldi’s Spring chorus (from Dorilla in Tempe) on a prior album. The domain 345.tw may be for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain. This will only take a moment. The Blue Notebooks is the second album by British producer and composer Max Richter, released on 26 February 2004 on 130701, an imprint of FatCat Records. On 11 May 2018, a two-disc version of The Blue Notebooks was reissued by Deutsche Grammophon to commemorate its fifteenth anniversary. Composer Max Richter has rewritten Vivaldi s Four Seasons. Daniel Hope, playing the solo part with the Berlin Konzerthaus Chamber Orchestra, has turned it into a miraculously pulsating piece of contemporary music. Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter now on CD. Antonio Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' has long been one of my truly favorite pieces, and I've had several recordings of it over the years on both vinyl and CD. Richter's re-scoring of this masterpiece is truly magnificent, blending just the right amount of 'the old' with the right amount of 'the new'.
.png/220px-Recomposed_by_Max_Richter_-_Vivaldi_-_The_Four_Seasons_(Alternative_Front_Cover).png "Max richter 4 seasons")
MAX RICHTER calculates that, in the process, he has discarded around three-quarters of VIVALDI’s original. He opens with what he describes as “a dubby cloud which I’ve called Spring 0. It functions as a sort of prelude, setting up an electronic, ambient space for the first Spring movement to step into. I’ve used electronics in several movements, subtle, almost inaudible things to do withthe bass, but I wanted certain moments to connect to the whole electronic universe that is so much part of our musical language today.” Other resonances are no less unexpected: MAX RICHTER describes part of the first movement of his Summer as:
“heavy music for the orchestra. It’s relentless pulsed music, which is a quality that contemporary dance music has; and perhaps I was also thinking about John Bonham’s drumming. Then, in the second movement of Autumn I asked the harpsichordist Raphael Alpermann to play in what is a rather old-fashioned way, very regularly, rather like a ticking clock. That was partly because I didn’t want the harpsichord part to be attention-seeking, but also because that style connects to various pop records from the 1970s where the harpsichord or Clavinet was featured, including various Beach Boys albums and the Beatles’ Abbey Road.”
Clearly, MAX RICHTER has brought his own frame of reference to the project. As he says,
“Vivaldi’s music is made of regular patterns, and that connects with post-minimalism, which is one strand in the music that I write. That felt like a natural link, but even so it was surprisingly difficult to navigate my way through it. At every point I had to work out how much is Vivaldi and how much is me. It was difficult but also rewarding because the raw material is so fascinating.”
Max Richter 4 Seasons Live
Just as MAX RICHTER’s Seasons plays tricks with the way we hear VIVALDI’s original, so it also asks questions of the soloist, DANIEL HOPE.
“Violinists have Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons hardwired in their brain. Daniel is likely to play the original I don’t know how many times in a year, and for him to have my parallel text going on in another part of his brain is a challenge. I think he did a wonderful job. He brought to it a deep engagement with the original, but he was fully prepared to cut this new swathe through the text.”
MAX RICHTER not only shows how to put hope and passion into music and to express it through music, he also shows that classical music can work for young people, too. Listen to the album snippets and fall in love:
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MAX RICHTER
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Without a doubt, I can honestly say that the Zurich Chamber Orchestra’s performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed was one of the top five performances I’ve ever been to in my life. Their musicianship was incredible, but it was also clear to everyone in the audience that the performers were enjoying playing the music as much as the audience was listening to it!
I’ve listened to The Four Seasons, which is a set of four violin concerti, many times, but I had never heard it performed live prior to this concert. That said, I noticed all kinds of details about the music in person that I never would have noticed on the recording. I especially enjoyed watching the lute player, since this is not an instrument usually found in modern orchestras. The concerti comprising The Four Seasons were performed in succession prior to intermission.
After the intermission, the stage lights were dimmed, with blue lights and a pattern projected on the back of the stage behind the performers. This set the mood for Max Richter’s recomposition of the piece that preceded the intermission (you may be familiar with Max Richter through his work composing film scores, including Arrival, Mary Queen of Scots, and Ad Astra). In fact, during the introduction of the piece, I learned that Max Richter composed Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons specifically for violin soloist Daniel Hope – music director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the very soloist for the concert! According to Mr. Hope, Max Richter’s problem with the original is not with the music, but with our treatment of it. “We are subjected to it in supermarkets, elevators, or when a caller puts you on hold,” he explains in the program notes. Furthermore, “Mr. Richter’s reworking meant listening again to what is constantly new in a piece we think we are hearing when, really we just blank it out.” To me, this reasoning for recomposing The Four Seasons makes a lot of sense to me (if I may, it struck a chord…). In fact, only a few weeks ago I made a phone call where the hold music was … you guessed it, The Four Seasons. Listening to Max Richter’s adaption, however, forces audiences to hear the centuries-old piece that it is based on with new ears. It expands and contracts recognizable segments of the original work, while simultaneously blending new elements. The composition, which challenges listeners at every turn, is truly a work of art.
Max Richter 4 Seasons
To close an evening of exceptional music, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra played four encores! Even after the encores, however, I wasn’t ready for the concert to end. I would have been happy to stay in my seat and listen to them play beautiful music for several more hours. The first encore was from a Vivaldi double concerto for two violins, but the ensemble completely switched gears for the next two, showcasing their versatility with George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm and Kurt Weill’s September Song. Finally, after countless standing ovations, Mr. Hope returned the stage to play an unaccompanied rendition of Brahms’s Lullaby, to laughter from the audience. At the piece’s conclusion, he walked off the stage, still playing while doing so, and then waving. As the audience filtered out of the auditorium, the performers still onstage exchanged hugs with each other, an expression of the joy that their music brought!