Richter, Max

[Serial_Apologist]

Richter is current COTW, abnd since this fact may tempt someone to put him up in our pantheon of such, a forewarning might be sounded inasmuch that his music is another example to add to the list of post-Nyman composers who make musical equivalents of Poundbury architecture: vacuous, stylstic reductionist, decontextualised from the age it must presumably claim to refer to, and as unrecyclable as the plastic ubiquitously used to wrap product.

Unless either you're making musak to fill any uncomfortable silences in Buckingham Palace, restaurants, or you're imagination is stuck in an imagined past, making this sort of thing is only valid once if you think that you actually are allowed, even encouraged in certain quarters, to sell out on principles and make a few readies to serve pop-debased tastes.

[smittims]

Wow! What could I add to that? I think you've said it all. 'Uncreative' is what an old friend of mine called this kind of music. I especially liked 'Poundbury'. There are a lot of those fake Ambridge style housing estates going up in South Cheshire these days.

[Master Jacques]

Depressing stuff with which to start a New Year. It's especially dispiriting to think that a Composer of the Week producer (Amelia Parker for some nebulous semi-commercial offshoot called 'BBC Audio Cardiff') could think that this laughable charlatan was worth wasting a week on.

I devoted time - well, a few seconds - to trying to understand why anybody would think Max Richter's plagiaristic stuff was worth wasting their hard-won money, and could only come up with the immortal line an old (now departed) friend of mine once used about a certain composer, who had better be nameless: "it sounds like music, until you listen to it."

[LMcD]

Can somebody please give me a clue as to what it is I'm missing when listening to such pieces as Richter's 'On the Nature of Daylight' which featured in today's Breakfast show?

[kernelbogey]

Depressing stuff with which to start a New Year. It's especially dispiriting to think that a Composer of the Week producer (Amelia Parker for some nebulous semi-commercial offshoot called 'BBC Audio Cardiff') could think that this laughable charlatan was worth wasting a week on.

I devoted time - well, a few seconds - to trying to understand why anybody would think Max Richter's plagiaristic stuff was worth wasting their hard-won money, and could only come up with the immortal line an old (now departed) friend of mine once used about a certain composer, who had better be nameless: "it sounds like music, until you listen to it."

I attended an Aurora orchestra (I think) concert at which the Vivaldii Four Seasons reimagined was performed. I liked it, and I bought the CD, which I have occasionally played.

Autres gens, autres moeurs, Monsieur.

[Serial_Apologist]

Can somebody please give me a clue as to what it is I'm missing when listening to such pieces as Richter's 'On the Nature of Daylight' which featured in today's Breakfast show?

Your off switch.

[Nick Armstrong]

Your off switch.

… Couldn’t agree more!

[AuntDaisy]

Your off switch.

TTN was twice replaced by Sleep. Gr-r-r- Brother Lawrence.

[Serial_Apologist]

TTN was twice replaced by Sleep. Gr-r-r- Brother Lawrence.

Judging by the other night's apocryphally violent thunderstorm not having woken me, that would have needed to be off the Richter scale to have helped me in my insomnia.

[LMcD]

I attended an Aurora orchestra (I think) concert at which the Vivaldii Four Seasons reimagined was performed. I liked it, and I bought the CD, which I have occasionally played.

Autres gens, autres moeurs, Monsieur.

I would hope that his reimagining of the Four Seasons involved a little more effort and skill than this morning's offering.

[Master Jacques]

I would hope that his reimagining of the Four Seasons involved a little more effort and skill than this morning's offering.

The skill is all Vivaldi's, the royalties all Max's.

[LMcD]

The skill is all Vivaldi's, the royalties all Max's.

I was trying to be kind.

[Master Jacques]

I was trying to be kind.

In Max Richter's case, we have to be cruel to be kind (to anyone tempted to waste time or money on his effluvia!)

[Serial_Apologist]

The skill is all Vivaldi's, the royalties all Max's.

Which could even be called the Max factor!

[oddoneout]

Your off switch.

That comes into play with the Richter 4 Seasons. I did try - listened to it twice - but now, along with his other work it has been filed under the "Don't see it meself - but it makes a lot of people happy" heading, like Karl Jenkins' offerings.