The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Presents Max Richter's RECOMPOSED - VIVALDI, 5/6-19

Inspired equally by Bach, punk rock and ambient electronica, Max Richter's sonic world blends a formal classical training (at the Royal Academy of Music) with modern technology.

His international cult hit RECOMPOSED 'remixes' the greatest hit in classical music Vivaldi's Four Seasons for a modern audience.

But what does it sound like played on the instruments of Vivaldi's time + Moog?

VIVALDI UNWIRED
SYDNEY 6 to 15 May
MELBOURNE 17 & 18 May
BRISBANE 11 & 19 May

Brandenburg mixes the Baroque gut string sound with Moog and laptop for world premiere of Max Richter's RECOMPOSED - VIVALDI on period instruments

"It's a remix, using all those sculptural processes that remixers can bring to audio material in a computer - time stretching, looping, cutting and pasting, recontextualising. But I did all those things on paper, so moving the actual notes around, using that material in a kind of sculptural way. And a lot of that is played by the acoustic instruments... yes, it is electronic music but it is also acoustic music," says Max Richter. Click here for great background interview

Recomposed has met critical acclaim and topped the iTunes classical chart in the UK, Germany and the USA. Richter is known for his monumental solo albums, as well as collaborating on operas, ballets, art installations and theatre, television and film scores, including blockbusters Shutter Island and Prometheus.

Paul Dyer, the Brandenburg's Artistic Director, said Recomposed was an extraordinary creation that showed enormous respect for the original. "Max Richter has perfectly illustrated how great music is constantly revealing itself and can flourish under radically different interpretations," Paul said.

But why do it?

"Recomposed to me was an experiment and it came out of an emotional response to the Vivaldi original," says Max.

"I fell in love with the Vivaldi original when I was a child and was enchanted by this beautiful music, but then over the years I heard it in a lot of contexts that didn't make sense to me - you know, ringtones, elevators, shopping centres - and I fell out of love. And for me that was a loss because I could understand, still, intellectually as a musician that this was great material.

"Its like if you make the same drive through a beautiful landscape every day to your office you don't see the landscape after a while and this was my problem. So I've taken a detour through this landscape, trying to take a new way through it - to try to rediscover it."

Paul Dyer will swap his harpsichord (a plucked keyboard instrument, widely used before the invention of the piano) for a Mac laptop and Moog synthesiser for the performances.

When he programmed the concert, Paul had one violinist in mind: "Vivaldi's Four Seasons not only needs a super dynamic violin soloist but also a performer who can own the stage. Recomposed needs a player with that extra edge, someone that can bridge the ancient and modern, who can turn things upside-down and change the way we hear the music. For me, that had to be Brendan Joyce."

VIVALDI UNWIRED, THE MUSIC:
RICHTER Recomposed - Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
plus Brandenburg Conceto No. 3 by JS BACH, a double violin concerto by VIVALDI and a CPE BACH concerto arranged for soprano saxophone by Christina Leonard.

Brendan Joyce baroque violin
Ben Dollman baroque violin
Christina Leonard soprano saxophone
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Paul Dyer AO artistic director/Moog