Max Richter is to give the only British performance in 2022 of his acclaimed work ‘Voices’ and his classic piece ‘Infra’, performed by the Max Richter Ensemble. The performance will take place at the COVENTRY Warwick Arts Centre in their large state-of-the-art space Butterworth Hall on Saturday, 12 March.
Richter has scored over 50 films, including Apple TV’s recent Invasion series and the Oscar-winning film ‘Arrival’ directed by Denis Villeneuve. Alongside his landmark 8.5-hour-long album Sleep, a “personal lullaby for a frenetic world…a manifesto for a slower pace of existence”, his other well-known albums include The Blue Notebooks, which was re-released in 2018 and is described as a peaceful protest against political, social and personal brutality.
His Voices album walks in a similar sphere as The Blue Notebook in terms of inspiration. It is described as a response to our tempestuous political climate and the enduring need for compassion. Much of his work seems driven by a will to unite; even his Sleep album tapped into a universal experience that connects us all, something we spend a third of our lives doing. This unification was driven home when he performed the epic piece live in 2015 from midnight to 8 a.m. to an audience provided with beds instead of seats at the reading rooms of the Wellcome Collection, a London-based museum and library. It was simultaneously broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
Voices is built around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He began the album in 2010 following the events of Guantanemo when he wrote a piece titled ‘Mercy’ which ended up at the end of the album.
He says he wrote it as “a way to figure things out for myself about what was going on. I felt like the world had gone wrong in anew and different way and I wanted to try and understand that”. His artistic partner, Yulia Mahr, then began to look at making a bigger piece, a music and film collaboration that looked at those questions that had been coming up.
The opening is one of the most moving pieces I’ve heard, featuring a historic reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt.
His Infra album opens to an equally strange and poignant moment as morse code can be heard playing out with brief snatches of voice on an old wireless set. The sense of desolation and loss weighs heavy in those opening moments. The album was inspired by T.S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, which carried themes of post-war disillusionment and the death of culture. Divided between a series of Infra and Journey pieces, it was his musical response to the London 07/07 terror attacks.
Whether you are new to Richter’s work or not, to watch these two pieces performed live is sure to be a moving and unforgettable experience.
Voices and Infra performed by Max Richter and the MAX RICHTERENSEMBLE
COVENTRY Warwick Arts Centre, Saturday 12 March
ON SALE NOW: booking at serious.org.uk/maxrichter