The acclaimed composer Max Richter has released his new album, In a Landscape. The record is available via Decca Records and is led by the soft pastoral single “Movement, Before All Flowers.” Richter will appear at Rough Trade East in London next Wednesday for an intimate in-store live performance and signing.
Later this year, Richter will embark on a tour in support of In a Landscape, his first-ever world tour. The shows will bring him to the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, Canada, and Australia throughout 2024 and 2025 and include shows at London’s legendary Royal Festival Hall and the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
In a Landscape is Richter’s first solo album recorded at Studio Richter Mahr, the minimalist, sustainable creative retreat designed and operated by Richter and his wife, visual artist Yulia Mahr. The album marks an evolution in Richter’s decades-long musical journey, as he further explores themes of optimism and human emotion accompanied by electronic and organic sounds.
“In a Landscape is a protest record, but it’s more concerned with trying to get beyond polarities and beyond oppositions because the world is very polarized now,” Richter says of the album. “Everything is very extreme and I think there is a tendency for people not to be able to talk to one another. What I’m trying to do with this material is to reconcile opposites. We have to do that.”
In a Landscape recognizes a lifetime of artistic influence, from Bach and Purcell to the poetry of Keats, Wordsworth and Anne Carson. Track titles recall books Richter read at the time of writing the album while the cover image pictures the composer’s personal copies of a few treasured paperbacks.
Interspersed amongst the studio compositions are nine “Life Studies” assembled from field recordings. These slice of life sounds recall the “landscape” of the album’s title and evoke the found sounds that distinguished Richter’s seminal album, The Blue Notebooks, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
The Blue Notebooks’ centerpiece, “On the Nature of Daylight,” has appeared on many film and television soundtracks, including HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last Of Us. Richter performed the album in full at last year’s Glastonbury Festival where he was joined by actor Tilda Swinton, who recited the spoken word piece she contributed to the original recording.
In November, Richter will continue his longtime collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor with an original score for McGregor’s Maddaddam, a ballet based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel.
Listen to Max Richter’s In a Landcape now.