Blue Notebooks, The - Max Richter > Reviews > The Blue Notebooks

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Outstanding
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Elegant, modern, traditional yet unique
Disadvantages:	Not enough people will ever listen to it

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Max Richter's The Blue Notebooks meant nothing to me until suggested that I might enjoy it. Fair enough, says I and so I went to take a look at reviews. I found little but what I did find intrigued me. I also found you couldn't buy it.

Well, there goes that idea.

Anyhow. Suddenly finding myself in Rough Trade in Covent Garden (nope, it's not a brothel), browsing amongst the Philip Glass and the Brian Eno I discover The Blue Notebooks. I run to the counter (well, running is impossible in RT) and pay my money. Once home I put the CD into the stereo and await the results. I've built Max Richter up in my mind for some reason and suddenly there's dread. This will be a DISAPPOINTMNT as it really can't match up to my expectations.

Oh, foolish, foolish man that I am.

The Blue Notebooks surpassed my expectations completely.

Of Max Richter I know little except being a pianist of German descent but working in the UK. He worked with The Future Sound of London on Dead Cities and The Iseness, which makes sense when you listen to TBN, because Richter describes the music as Post-Classical, which it both is and isn't.

You see, TBN is both very unusual and very orthodox. Richter admits that post-production is important to his music and here it is very apparent but not always. We begin simply, with a voice and the sound of a typewriter. The words are from Kafka (his The Blue Notebooks, would you believe?). The voice belongs to Tilda Swinton and she brings us into the music, minimalist piano that is a little similar to Philip Glass' Solo Piano. Slow, beautiful and certainly haunting but also very traditional - there's something warm and close about the music, this first track: The Blue Notebooks.

And then we're suddenly drawn by wistful cello into On The Nature of Daylight. Each stroke of the bow seems long and tender as a tear and is both quite hypnotic and quite beautiful. The music flows with simplicity but is never simple or lachrymose. It is delicate yet with an underlying tension, exemplified by the violin as it cuts careful swathes across us.

Then Horizon Variations first hints at the production. Richter's piano is carefully, almost imperceptibly manipulated as it plays alone, a short but beautiful segue into:

Typewriters and Tilda Swinton, her voice the bridge between pieces and Shadow Journal (and Swinton is speaking as if from a journal), where we realise the carefully placed electronics. An ululating, electronic throb plays beneath lone strings, delicate and precise, matched beautifully to one another as the electronics never intrude into music but complement it; they merge into one effortlessly and it is this effortless, often minimalist drawing together of the traditional and the discreetly modern that marks out the album as exquisite and unique. As the ululation turns to raw, unrefined, low-level throbbing bass, matched by melancholic strings there is nothing out of place, no sense of "'ere, what's this funny noise." One without the other is unthinkable, because Richter as he progresses through the music is not trying to create something hybrid but something entirely new, something entirely his own and he uses his manipulation and electronics to further the sense of closeness. Sudden encapsulation seems to occur as I listen, the bass trapping me into place whilst the more traditional strings slip into my mind. I feel physically and mentally. As you can imagine, good hi-fi equipment helps - and I mean really helps, when listening to Richter.

Never outstaying his welcome or allowing himself to get pinned down Richter delves into an almost gothic organ, with voices almost ala Philip Glass (think his soundtrack to Candyman) yet not Glass-like. The mood is not broken. Iconography enters, bringing with it images of churches and modernity. Almost atavistic rather than traditional yet the perfect segue from Shadow Journal because it seems to further Richter's exploration of music, of sound and instrumentation. From strings we have merged into electronics and into ancient organ and voice, voice without words, which in turn slip into Vladimir's Blues and by now what has become, like Swinton's readings, the bridge of Richter's solo piano.

Swinton welcomes us again as Arboretum begins, familiar, pinning the work together yet melting into further sonic exploration. The music shifts and we are treated to heavily manipulated instrumentation, yet this is slow, careful and classical in construction and always we are grounded by Richter's elegant and melancholic strings. As a listener we are drawn further and further in, intrigued with each on coming track and suddenly uncertain of what is ahead of us, though in this case it is Swinton and Richter's piano again, in the distant, Old Song, the music as if from a distance, in some old house seen through a child's eyes or else played on a 78 record, yet not scratchy. It feels elegantly anachronistic.

Which is in what many ways Organum is as it picks up the same churchlike organ from Iconography except the organ is treated, given a little reverb and made to sound a little more hollow. Again the manipulation is an absolutely imperative part of the music. The hollow, slightly distant (think the image of the old house from Old Song) and slow notes of the manipulated organ and the closer, more immediate but no less precise notes that play before them, cutting slowly across one another as if the cello and violin of On the Nature of Daylight. Nothing breaks us out of our trance, of the closeness of the music. Never claustrophobic, it simply will not allow us freedom, enveloping us completely.

The Trees greets us with the motif of Swinton's story and what must be her typewriter and then the usual segue of Richter's piano, only it is no segue. Rather he allows the music to build, first seeming as if one of his elegant bridges but instead violin begins to appear, crossing his uncomplicated, delicate piano. But of course Richter is exploring recurrent motifs, as cello appears also, layering music, much of which is cyclical, though not in the manner one would expect of Glass. Richter is more wistful and certainly more delicate than Glass, yet never less robust. Here, as Richter allows The Trees to build the piece comes as close to crescendo as it ever suggests, as it allows itself to deviate from expected courses but still it never quite reaches the pitch you at once expect and I for one think that a good thing. Richter spends the whole piece building tension through waves of music, traditional, experimental, atavistic, electronic but he never once allows the tension to subside, the closeness, the depth of feeling to dissipate and here is no less the case though as a listener you can feel the end approach.

But what does Richter do? He allows himself to ease down, though not to fizzle out and instead of some clashing, violent crescendo gives way to Written on the Sky: elegant piano once more elegant and emotive, whilst once again never crudely manipulative.

So what is TBN? It is certainly classical music but it also holds a place unusual and I can't help but think that music is richer for works such as this and artists such as Richter. But it is also as robust and as it is eclectic or experimental and I think with the possibility of pleasing more listeners than one would expect. Not that it offers a little of everything to different people but because it refuses to allow itself to be pinned down.

As far as I'm concerned Richter's The Blue Notebooks is exactly the direction music should go as it is unafraid to explore the possibilities of sonic experimentation whilst refusing to simply give way to a cacophony. The Blue Notebooks is an elegant and beautiful work of art, and I for one can ask no more from it.

Those interested can pick up a copy (at last!) from Amazon for £11.99.

Website: http://www.maxrichter.com/