When I wrote Recomposed, I wanted to record it with instruments as close as possible to the ones Vivaldi would have heard. However, it wasn’t quite the record I had originally envisaged. I think people enjoy having a new perspective on a familiar object, old and new at the same time, but I never expect or assume that people will listen to my music: when people connect to a piece I have made, it is incredibly heartening. It has been used in fashion shows, and all kinds of artists have made a connection with it. It has featured on the soundtrack of all kinds of TV and cinema projects, including The Crown and Bridgerton. Recomposed topped the iTunes classical chart in the UK, Germany and the US, and to date has amassed more than 450m streams. When creative work leaves your desk, it takes on a life of its own. Watch the video for Spring 1 from The New Four Seasons

The result, 2012’s Recomposed, succeeded in letting me encounter The Four Seasons afresh and laying the ghost of many hours of enforced listening to tinny 30-second loops of Spring while on hold waiting to speak to my bank. That’s very much the way post-minimal music and electronic dance music operates, and I found plenty of touch points that enabled me to dive into his material in a natural, sculptural and architectural way. Vivaldi’s work is very pattern-based, and he generates his effects by juxtaposing contrasting kinds of material. The best way to do that, I decided, would be to take a voyage through Vivaldi’s landscape and to make new discoveries there.Īs I looked into the score I saw there was a natural meeting point between his baroque language and my own. I needed to resolve the love/hate relationship I had with the work – call it an exorcism – and reclaim Vivaldi’s original as a musical object rather than a sonic irritant. Netflix’s Bridgerton, one of the many shows and events that Richter’s Recomposed has soundtracked.

Max richter the four seasons recomposed