Max Richter joins us to discuss his ambitious, yet intimate project, “Sleep,” for string quintet, voices, and computer. Not only is it about sleep, but in its full version, it is an eight hour work meant to be listened to during the course of the night, and when performed, an audience comes to sleep through the work.

The German-born English-based composer has worked with film and TV, dance projects, orchestral and electronic music, but this project is intended to be performed to and for a sleeping audience, overnight. Sleep plays a hugely important part of Richter’s creative life, and this work is meant to be a deliberately political statement, critiquing the “hamster wheel” that we’re in. For him, it's a form of active resistance to have the time, space, and leisure for sleep.

Musically, the work is an extreme long-form variations on a theme, with a lot of long-held low frequencies. Higher frequencies are eliminated entirely (to get really exact, nothing in the music is above 1,000 Hz), in an attempt to replicate the security of a child in the womb throughout the piece.

PROGRAM #4110 "Sleep" With Max Richter (First aired 5/3/2018)

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: excerpt [1:30]
RECORDING: Sleep (eight hour version)
SOURCE: Deutsche Grammophon 0289 479 6978 5
INFO: Download and streaming only deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: Path 19 (yet frailest) [3:59]
RECORDING: From Sleep (the one-hour release)
SOURCE:  Deutsche Grammophon DG 479 5257
INFO: deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: Path 5 (delta) [5:36]
RECORDING: From Sleep (the one-hour release)
SOURCE:  Deutsche Grammophon DG 479 5257
INFO: deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: Dream 13 (minus even) [7:27]
RECORDING: From Sleep (the one-hour release)
SOURCE:  Deutsche Grammophon DG 479 5257
INFO: deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: Dream 8 (late and soon) [6:10]
RECORDING: From Sleep (the one-hour release)
SOURCE:  Deutsche Grammophon DG 479 5257
INFO: deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: Dream 3 (in the midst of my life) [6:04]
RECORDING: From Sleep (the one-hour release)
SOURCE:  Deutsche Grammophon DG 479 5257
INFO: deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Max Richter
WORK: excerpt [3:48]
RECORDING: Sleep (eight hour version)
SOURCE: Deutsche Grammophon 0289 479 6978 5
INFO: Download and streaming only deutschegrammophon.com

ARTIST: Lesley Flanigan
WORK: Sleepy [1:21]
RECORDING: Amplifications
SOURCE/INFO: lesleyflanigan.bandcamp.com