Recomposed

MUSIC

7 Feb

Max Richter is clearly a brave man, as with his album ‘Recomposed’ he has done something that is fraught with pitfalls for any artist in any medium; he has dared to rework a much loved classic, specifically, Vivaldi's ‘The Four Seasons’.

Richter has said that as a child, he loved The Four Seasons, but as he grew older, that passion faded. Recomposed is in essence an act of love towards this fantastic masterpiece, a way to reconnect with the piece and to fall in love with it again.

It is important to stress that Recomposed does not erase the original Vivaldi - in Richter’s words it is a ‘conversation with the source material, another way to engage with it’. Which I think is a very interesting concept.

During the writing process Richter had some difficult decisions to make regarding how much of the source material to reuse and how much to discard and replace with new music. He notes that in ‘Autumn’ he has kept a large amount of Vivaldi’s original notes and done a production rework. While other parts of the score make use of only a very small amount of the original source material and are almost entirely new music. The third method he has used is most noticeable in ‘Spring’ where Richter has taken what he describes as the dazzling motif from the opening bars and created a loop with it. He comments that he did this because he has always thought that it was a shame it was such a short motif and wanted to make greater use of it in his recomposition.

I know there are those who strongly dislike the idea of ‘messing’ or ‘remixing’ a classic and I agree that in some instances it really doesn’t turn out well. However, personally I think Recomposed is a masterpiece that stands on its own two feet very well and that it a wonderful interpretation of the original idea; to write music that evokes and depicts the four seasons. I think it is every bit as good as the original, it is just of another time and it is very respectful to the source material that inspired it.

I am also a huge fan of Daniel Hope’s solo violin playing on the album, he brings so much colour and life to the Richter’s music.

What do you think? I’d be really interested to know your thoughts on this recomposition and the whole idea of doing projects like this in general. Let us know in the comments below.