Meet the sleepytime composer
OrchestrasBavarian Radio has a rare interview with the shy and retiring German composer Max Richter, first choice for all classical stations with a ‘relaxing’ stream.
Richter, 58, is from the Pied Piper’s town of Hamelin. Growing up in England, he met a milkman who played him music by John Cage and Philip Glass. Then he went to study in Italy with Luciano Berio, learning that ‘you were basically an idiot if you wrote tonal music’.
He now lives with his family in a forest in Oxfordshire.
Here‘s the interview.
By the time Richter studied with Berio, the latter had already been known internationally for 3–4 decades as an atonal composer, a few works like Folk Songs aside. Why would Richter choose to study with Berio if Richter wanted to pursue his kind of tonal music? I suspect that rather than “you were basically an idiot if you wrote tonal music” reflecting any actual statement by Berio, Richter is trying to make an excuse for his own bad choices.
Define “bad choices”?
(Video) This is not concert music but poppy elevator music as a background to relaxation while your attention is somewhere else. It is very easy to write and destined for people for whom classical music is much too difficult.