Composer-pianist Max Richter: ‘Creativity is activism’

The German-British composer explains why his new album, Exiles, addresses the refugee crisis – and is played by an orchestra who break all the rules

When Max Richter sat down to compose a new ballet score in 2015 he knew what he wanted to say. In April of that year, an overcrowded vessel sank off the coast of Libya, en route to Italy, killing at least 800 trapped migrants – including children aged between 10 and 12. From his (then) home town of Berlin, the crisis was impossible to ignore. The German chancellor Angela Merkel uttered the words Wir schaffen das (we can do this), but as the number of refugees applying for asylum rose, attacks on their homes did, too.

Richter’s response was instinctive: a 33-minute work titled Exiles, composed for Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s Singulière Odyssée at the Nederlands Dans Theater, inspired by what Richter calls “the big question at that time”. Five years after it premiered in 2016, this reflective piece now forms the heart and soul of Richter’s new album, Exiles, recorded in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2019, and set to be released on 6 August. It is a retrospective collection comprised of newly orchestrated tracks taken from his back catalogue. Yet Richter tells me, on a video call from his home in Oxfordshire, that it remains relevant despite our quick-turn news cycle: “This crisis is still with us in different forms.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3yl6zC7