Max Richter attracts an unusual audience to what is, essentially, a classical concert. His local support act, Remember Remember, were last seen opening for Acid Mothers Temple, and the hoots that greet each song have rarely been directed at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
A barely visible screen behind the performers runs artistic videos, and the burbling electronic interludes emphasise that this is not a visceral rock’n’roll show. Shorn of the samples and rumbling synthesizers, Richter presents a clean modern classicism that enhances a traditional string quartet and points out how blunt most popular music really is.
Richter uses two cellos, two violins and a viola to stalk out a potent musical terrain. From polite melancholy through to hesitant optimism, the violins manipulate the least number of notes to enchanting effect. Whether answering the found sounds and brief monologues of Richter’s soundscapes or flowing with crystalline elegance, the string quintet enveloped the Arches with a warm and depth that amplified instruments rarely attain. Behind it all, Richter’s piano juggled with the romanticism of Beethoven or a more subdued minimalism, resonant of parlour pieces and a time before electric guitars.
Richter is about far more than nostalgia or recycling classical motifs. As the video projections suggested, his music echoes urban isolation and longing: rhythm is not abandoned, but subsumed, and the power abdicated by acoustic instrumentation is rediscovered in crescendo and abrupt dynamics. The concert does not cohere over the hour, being more a selection of Richter’s various works than a new piece in itself, but the individual beauty of each piece more than compensates.
more Max Richter photos on Flickr, by Brian Krakow