Max Richter: with American Contemporary Music Ensemble

Max Richter is one of the most influential and acclaimed composers of all time. His fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo albums and countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans around the world and blazed a trail for a generation of musicians.

His ninth solo album – the first to be written and recorded at his serene new studio in rural Oxfordshire – is a fleeting self-portrait of a musician in constant motion. In A Landscape is a record about “reconciling polarities,” as Richter puts it, bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living.

From its darkly enveloping prelude (‘They Will Shade Us With Their Wings’) to the sombre elaboration of 17th century English composer John Eccles (‘Love Song’), the album deepens Richter’s lifelong search for both “emotional directness and beautifully made things”. Luminous piano whorls (‘A Colour Field’) and pensive electronic clouds (‘Only Silent Words’) bring opposing energies together with the lightest touch: “The music feels very simple, but nothing is there by chance; all the notes are where I carefully placed them.”