I’ve used electronics in several movements, subtle, almost inaudible things to do withthe bass, but I wanted certain moments to connect to the whole electronic universe that is so much part of our musical language today.” Other resonances are no less unexpected: Richter describes part of the first movement of his Summer as “heavy music for the orchestra. It functions as a sort of prelude, setting up an electronic, ambient space for the first Spring movement to step into.

He opens with what he describes as “a dubby cloud which I’ve called Spring 0. I wanted to get inside the score at the level of the notes and in essence re-write it, re-composing it in a literal way.”Richter calculates that, in the process, he has discarded around three-quarters of Vivaldi’s original. At first Richter followed the example of other works in the “Recomposed” series, which re-mix existing recordings, but, he says, “I wanted to open up the score on a note-by-note level, and working with an existing recording was like digging a mineshaft through an incredibly rich seam, discovering diamonds and not being able to pull them out. This is no mere arrangement instead Richter has absorbed Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons into his own musical bloodstream.

Some works are so familiar that it is almost impossible to hear them afresh, but that is what Max Richter has achieved with Vivaldi “Recomposed”.

Summer 3 max richter