Interview Max Richter

Abbiamo fatto recapitare qualche domandina a Max Richter, pianista e compositore "ombra" di numerose evoluzioni dell'elettonica contemporanea nonchè delle intersezioni con altre forme d'arte (principalmente le visual arts). Annoverato fra i cosiddetti "modernisti" (anche se Max preferisce autodeterminarsi con l'appellativo "post-classico"), Max capì che era ora di esplorare il fertile territorio creativo della scena elettronica dopo l'ascolto dei primi 30 secondi di Autobahn dei mitici Kraftwerk esordiando con una collaborazioni per Dead Cities dei Future Sound of London (In a State of Permanent Abyss è stata creata partendo da alcune sue registrazioni e la traccia Max nello stesso album porta il suo nome in quanto interamente derivata da alcuni file midi registrati da Mr.Richter). Sue anche le parti orchestrali di In The Mode di Roni Size. Difficile che questo compositore non ci suscitasse curiosità, alimentata ancor più dall'ascolto di The Blue Notebooks, di recente pubblicato du 130701 (Fat Cat) -distribuito in Italia da Wide Records-, che potete già pregustare sul sito ufficiale di Richter, in parte ispirato dai diari di Kafka (titolo dell'edizione italiana "Quaderni in Ottava") e da alcuni poemi di Milosz.

Hi Max. How are you? Fine, thanks. Sitting in my kitchen while the children sleep in their beds, the neighbours walk about in the flat upstairs, the evening light fading, sounds from the street, a glass of wine.

Compliments for your last record. Carob-like tasting... Could you tell something about the gesture, the inspirational sources and the work behind it? Picking up ideas from the texts, I wrote about 75 pieces. In listening back to them some struck me as working together or against one another in some way: I assembled the record from these, instinctively. I wanted to make a record which continues what I started in memoryhouse a kind of narrative music that can work on a lot of different levels depending on what you bring to it. I have ideas of my own regarding what it is actually about, but I think that the music itself is only half the picture the person listening brings the other half to it. So I’m happy to let people find their own way.

You referred to Milosz’ poems. Have you ever read Ziemia Ulro (The Land of Ulro) by the Polish writer? Do you think our earth is similar to that Blake-mediated image? I love Milosz’ writing. I’m not familiar with the work you mention. I haven’t thought about Blake in relation to my work, though I’m very fond of his work and his world view in general.

I tried to imagine what a listener could ask himself by listening your album without understanding English... So I imagined a "dada" person asking itself the reason why a seed doesn’t rapidly evolve in a tree... or alternatively a journalist trying in trasferring his "life recipes" in a sterile chronicle.. any further scene to evoke? As well as being stories, musics are places. What sort of places are these?

This is the first time I’ve worked with texts that are in English, which initially felt rather weird to me. I am used to responding really to the music of the voice rather than the words. On the the last record I set a long poem by Marina Tsvetaeva without understanding a word of it.

a very difficult question... how could you conciliate the waiting for catastrophe and completion? I wonder what you mean by "catastrophe". The recent war? We recorded the day after the big anti-war march last year all rather strange since we had all been on it. My choice of the Milosz text "at dawn" is in a way a comment on the current political scene. He says

"...and the cities on a distant plain stood intact,

before they rose into the air with the dust of sepulchral bliss,

and the people who lived there didn’t know..."

another very difficult question... what is love in your own words? What piece of music do you deem is more fitted to your concept of love? hm... what sorts of love?
Balinese gamelan ritual music?
Tristan and Isolde?
Marvin Gaye?
Tibetan Tantric Buddhist chanting?
Samuel Barber?
Schumann?
Barry White?
The magic flute?
Parliament Funkadelic?

Are you planning a tour in Italy? There is a rumour of some dates in Rome in the Summer.

‘Vision, or imagination,’ sentenced Blake, ‘is a representation of what actually exists, really and unchangeably. Fable, or allegory, is formed by the daughters of Memory’. So, Memoryhouse and the Blue Notebooks. Are these artifacts more similar to a vision or a fable? I would say that they are neither vision nor fable, but rather an attempt to ask questions. I don’t have the answers, nor do I know what the questions are, so I write the music.

Thanks for answering. Did you get bored while answering? Not at all. Thanks.