Composer and pianist Max Richter’s album Sleep Circle is the newly recorded and abridged version of Richter’s 2015 project Sleep. Sleep Circle is informed by the experience of his concert performances of the original album.
Today, Sleep has become one of the most streamed classical compositions, heard nightly by millions of people around the world. Over the years, Richter has not only performed the entire 8-hour long Sleep cycle for audiences lying in beds, ready to drift off into slumber, but he also began performing an abridged, 90-minutes long version in selected venues. Inspired by these concert experiences, this new abridged version Sleep Circle focuses on the movements within the composition that are more in the foreground, which makes…
Tag Archive: Deutsche Grammophon
Howard Shore may not be a household name like John Williams, but even casual filmgoers could give any number of junctures at which the Lord of the Rings films would not be what they are without his contributions. Those films are not neglected in this release by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, recorded live at its facilities over a trio of concerts in 2023. The Lord of the Rings films, including The Hobbit, take up most of the first of the album’s three CDs, and one gets the sense that the films are fairly represented even if those wanting to luxuriate in their scores have other options. The main purpose here is to show the diversity of Shore’s scores, emphasized by his own statements that only in film music, once they find a director whose goals accord…
Arvo Pärt is the world’s most often heard classical composer; he trades that position numerically with John Williams, but does not, as Williams does, exist on the border between classical and another genre. His 90th birthday in 2025 has stimulated the release of some interesting albums, and this one made classical best-seller lists in the late summer of that year. One might not associate the percussive piano with the delicate shades of Pärt’s minimalist ensemble music, but pianist Georijs Osokins here (or the good marketing folks at Deutsche Grammophon) asserts that he wants to explore “the hidden relations between different pieces in Pärt’s piano output.” Thus, along with Pärt’s actual compositions for piano, from the early part of his career, he plays transcriptions…
The Indonesian composer Eunike Tanzil has an interesting story. She was inspired to pursue film music when her father gave her an album of music by John Williams, who has made it to Medan in North Sumatra. Partly trained in the U.S., she has written music for The Addams Family 2 and the fantasy series Abominable and the Invisible City. One can hear her film music background on her debut album, The First of Everything. The album is said by Tanzil to be a “journey of self-exploration,” reflecting key moments in her life thus far. It opens with an orchestral-tuning-like ‘Opening’ that inventively morphs into fuller pieces, and the other 11 tracks are evocations of scenes or aspects of her experiences. Only one, a dark and direct orchestral ‘Requiem’ marking the death…
British composer and multi-instrumentalist Roger Eno’s releases his 3rd album for DG Without Wind, Without Air. The project follows on from the success of The Turning Year (2022) and the skies, they shift like chords (2023). The latter was described by Spectrum Culture with the words: “a remarkable release that unsettles with haunting lines and simultaneously makes one tingle with warmth at a display of beauty”.
The new album includes both solo piano pieces and tracks orchestrated for various combinations of clarinet, guitar, bass, strings, synths, percussion and electronics. There are guest vocal appearances from soprano Grace Davidson and Roger’s daughters Cecily and Lotti Eno, with Roger himself singing on The Moon And The Sea.
Texas-based duo Balmorhea (Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller) present their latest Deutsche Grammophon album – the original soundtrack they composed and recorded for The Trap, written and directed by actress Lena Headey (Game of Thrones). Based on Headey’s BAFTA-nominated short of the same name, and starring Michelle Fairley and James Nelson-Joyce, The Trap was premiered at the Austin Film Festival in October 2023.
The Trap is a psychological drama about a woman whose solitary life is disturbed by her meeting with a troubled young man. Balmorhea’s evocative score enhances the film’s sense of isolation, mystery and unease. “The music is very honest and intimate; gravitating mostly around piano and vibraphone with atmospheric guitars…
Joe Hisaishi Conducts… documents a concert given at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall on 31 July 2024. There Hisaishi performed his own ‘The End of the World’ suite in a version as well as his friend and colleague Steve Reich’s ‘The Desert Music’.
Inspired by a visit to New York City in 2007, Hisaishi composed ‘The End of the World’ as a three-movement suite that explores the chaos resulting from the collapse of global order in the aftermath of 9/11. By 2015, Hisaishi had transformed the suite into a five-movement work. Reich’s ‘Desert Music’ was inspired by three American deserts with historical and personal significance.
For the concert, Hisaishi was joined by Future Orchestra Classics, an orchestra of young…
With their joint albums LUMINAL and LATERAL, music legend Brian Eno and conceptual artist Beatie Wolfe are releasing two projects that are as independent as they are interconnected.
The alternative/vocal album LUMINAL features vocals and lyrics by Wolfe and was produced by Eno. Both describe the music, which is unusual for both artists, as “electric-country-dream-music.” LATERAL, on the other hand, is described as “ambient-landscape-dream-music” and “like the familiar, but better.” Eno himself is considered to have coined the term “ambient music” in the 1970s.
The artists are members of EarthPercent, a non-profit organization that advocates for and supports climate protection within the music industry. The project’s black and limited-edition…