This, on the surface, might seem like an odd record in my collection, but in the same way Max Richter isn't your average classical composer, nor is his re-imagination of Vivaldi's Four Seasons your average classical album. Needless to say, I know very little about classical music - my parents grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and therefore, so did I (my wife on the other hand has been around classical music since the day she was born, and is routinely embarrassed by my lack of knowledge) - but I know of Vivaldi and his Four Seasons; I think that is one of the basic bits of knowledge that everyone gets for free.
I was introduced to Max Richter's work by Infra, an album I have a huge amount of time for. I bought a copy after seeing him play it live at Cadogan Hall in London in 2010 and loved it. I bought a few more albums as and when I found them, discovering a new genre along the way ("neo-classical", my local record shop likes to call it). I heard he was releasing an album of a "re-imagination" of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (a world apart from Dirty Projectors' re-imagination of Black Flag's Damaged, in case anyone was curious if the comparison made sense). In 2012 he played said album in the Barbican and I got tickets to go with Matt (who partly got me into Infra) and Rich, who loves anything in the Barbican. We had pretty decent tickets on the first row of the balcony (the night before we'd watched Efterklang from the front row, as Rich was a massive fan and bought eight tickets straight away - I also saw Max Richter play a brief set in the Apple Store immediately before that show, which was great).
I'd made a note to listen to a more traditional performance of Four Seasons ahead of time, but obviously forgot. Like the noob I was (and am), I recognised bits of Summer and Winter - the ones everyone knows (if you're curious about which bit you know, you definitely know Winter I). That evening in the Barbican, with Daniel Hope frantically playing the violin, it sounded incredible, as it does on the record. I still haven't listened to a traditional recording for Four Seasons, so this is the version I know and love. I couldn't possibly comment on the "Recomposed" nature of it - even if I had listened to other recordings, I wouldn't have the technical ability to say what was different (I'm usually bluffing when I talk about parts of punk songs, let alone anything that doesn't go verse-chorus-verse). It's safe to say that anything electronic wasn't there on the original.
Two years later, I found this copy in Truck Store, not long after we moved to Oxford. I was very pleased to add it to my collection, but also that Truck stocked such music. I've since bought a good number of Max Richter's countless releases there. The pressing is lovely - 180 gram vinyl which sounds brilliantly both quietly and turned up loud; the sleeve is die cut so the four coloured bands of the picture sleeves change as you pull them out (like seasons...). I'm not sure why it took me two years to buy a copy, but it's likely that I just never found it anyway before that point.
The second disc is all additional material, which on paper might not appeal to most classical fans, but demonstrates Max's modern take on the genre - Side C is "electronic soundscapes" - the electronic moments from the album in a concise format - and Side D is remixes, which mark the biggest departure in style - the Robot Koch remix of Summer 3 features a sample of someone saying "yeah" a few times and the Fear of Tigers remix of Autumn 3 suddenly breaks from a fairly tame remix into something more akin to a dance song sampling a few bars of violin. Not my thing exactly, but it's nice to hear what people can do when they're remixing something so traditional.
Also in the pictures is the program distributed around the Barbican that night, which I kept in with another of his records until I got round to buying this. I was lucky enough to see him play it again in Blenheim Palace, which is just around the corner from where I live. The seats we had that night weren't so good, but it was a lovely way to spend a summer evening.
Format: 12"
Tracks: 22
Cost: £23 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 07/06/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
