“[I’ve] had a few near-misses to try and make it, but the timing’s never worked out. It’s nice to be able to get these shows organised.”
The show he’s bringing to Australia is entitled Vivaldi Recomposed, which involves him and his backing orchestra re-working and re-imagining one of the most famous classical pieces of all time, Vivaldi’s remarkable The Four Seasons, a piece that Richter considers hugely significant.
“It’s probably one of the first pieces of orchestral music most of us ever get to know,” he says. “That happened to me as a child, I fell in love with this beautiful material, it’s got wonderful melodies, it’s beautifully structured, it’s full of drama and stories and pictures.”
Over the years, with the piece or at least parts of the piece being used in advertising and other less worthy settings, he feels some of its wonder was being lost, and he wanted to bring it back to its original beauty.
“Having fallen in love with this material, I just started to become aware of it, growing up and studying music, that I wasn’t really hearing it in the way that I felt it deserved to be heard,” he recalls. “I knew intellectually that it was beautiful music, but I just couldn’t love it anymore, and it started to bug me,” Richter explains. “This whole project is me trying to re-connect with this landscape which Vivaldi’s made, and to take a new trip through it, to try and fall in love with it again, basically. That’s the plan, anyway.”
Richter’s new take on the centuries-old classic means in 2014, he’s able to up the ante a little on the delivery of the piece.
“We have a wonderful ensemble, which is the Wordless Orchestra from New York, as well as Yuki Namata playing fiddle, and they’re my favourite band on this piece. I played it with them in New York one time and they just blew the roof off the venue. I just think they’re absolutely brilliant.
“I always think with Vivaldi, you hear the original, and you can hear him trying to get more power out of the band in the way he’s writing it, and I’ve actually sort of taken that instinct on from him, and gone, ‘Ok, so I’m just going to turn it up’, and these are the guys to do it.”
Coming off a triumphant show at the Royal Albert Hall in London in early October, Richter’s looking forward to bringing this show to another of the world’s most prestigious music venues; the Sydney Opera House.
“It’s like a dream, right? You dream about that stuff.”
Beyond the Australian tour and moving into 2015, Richter has a number of exciting projects on the go, including something for the British ballet scene, more film and TV work, and his sixth solo album.
“I’m writing a new ballet,” he reveals. “It’s kind of a big project that’s for the Royal Ballet in London. And then we’re going to get onto the second series of [HBO’s] The Leftovers. And meanwhile I’m just putting to bed a new record of my own. My solo records are just kind of like a private space, a diary entry, where I do my thing.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
