Max Richter

Sydney — Thursday 30 May 2024

One of the world’s most influential and acclaimed composers, post-minimalist master Max Richter, will return to the Sydney Opera House in February 2025 to perform his most recent release In A Landscape alongside his protest album The Blue Notebooks with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME).

A natural counterweight to the urgent political tenor of his previous projects, In A Landscape marks out a psychic space in which to meditate on the present while recognising a lifetime of artistic influence, from Bach and Purcell to the poetry of Keats, Wordsworth and Anne Carson. Named one of the best classical works of the century by The Guardian, The Blue Notebooks was composed in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Richter has described it as “a meditation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict." The performance will feature ACME musicians: cellist and artistic director Clarice Jensen, violinists Ben Russell and Laura Lutzke, viola player Kyle Miller and cellist Claire Bryant alongside the neo-classical master.

Sydney Opera House Head of Contemporary Music, Ben Marshall says: "Max Richter is an artist who means the absolute world to me. His Australian debut here in 2014 was a triumph, and nothing could prepare us for the 8-hour overnight numinous wonder of Sleep in Vivid LIVE two years later. Having presented the sublime, sold-out Ambient Orchestra as part of Vivid LIVE last year, we did not know how long we’d have to wait for his return and are beyond thrilled welcome the maestro back next summer. Max’s immense talent, openness and humanism imbues all he does, and this program promises to be another transcendent performance.”

Richter is the world’s most streamed classical artist, a groundbreaking innovator of form, and a tireless human rights advocate. His work includes his acclaimed reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and the immersive, eight-hour concert work Sleep, which he has performed in collaboration with the ACME. Richter’s music has also soundtracked acclaimed television series and films by Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve, and many more, and scored leading ballets and stage productions around the world.