Search - Max Richter :: Infra

LET'S DANCE

Kerry Leimer | Makawao, Hawaii United States | 07/25/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Herr Richter has produced some uncanny and lovely music by incorporating a highly credible and intelligent combination of signal processing and electronics within chamber ensemble settings. His early work, adding spoken-word monologues read in one case by actress Tilda Swinton and in another Robert Wyatt, displayed a less certain, almost circumscribed world beguiled and often subsumed by persistent found-sound intrusions and a phonographic melancholy. These earlier works relied mostly on a suspended sense of time created by atmospheric elements set into the timbre of the violins, violas and cellos. Instruments which in turn added seemingly fragmented phrases -- lines that inferred missing or incomplete parts -- invoking a sustained sense of absence and loss that remain unique to Richter's work.



Perhaps, with "Infra", the constraints of writing for ballet dictated more about the structure than I am qualified to judge. But then, set next to another recent work for dance -- Gavin Bryar's "Biped" -- "Infra" feels left a bit wanting. The music here is more reliant on melody than is typical for this composer and Richter's handling of melody proves not as strong as that of a Gavin Bryars, or a Johann Johannsson or a Hildur Gudnadottir, or an Olafur Arnalds. And at moments the melodic components become so predictable as to make the music seem nearly generic. Time and again "Infra" reaches a pinnacle of sorts in its pace, its voicing and immaculate production. Unfortunately this high degree of finish simultaneously undercuts the work, leaving this listener with a sensibility and feel that is mostly too familiar, too reassuring. Of course, compared with a vast number of releases, "Infra" excels -- don't refrain from buying the music because of one person's overly-specific opinion that within its particular niche "Infra" is at best a 3.5 release, and that mostly from points for its continuing pursuit of such a refined and still promising aesthetic."