Max Richter on Hamnet, Sleep and Playing India for the First Time

Few thing capture the sense of grief quite as much as Max Richter's composition, On The Nature Of Daylight. It's more than twenty years old now, but has been used and reused so many times throughout the years that it has become synonymous with the emotion in Hollywood by now.

The latest example of its tryst with films is Chloe Zhou's Hamnet. It earned Richter an Oscar nomination for the Best Original Score this year, and has found for itself a cult following amongst younger listeners in the age of the internet.

But Richter's music is so much more than that. His albums have consistently been named amongst the best of the century, and his efforts to blend contemporary piano with electronic music have made him one of the pioneering figures in contemporary music.

Esquire India sat down with him for a quick tête-à-tête at his first performance in India at the NMACC, where he talked about the three pieces he would hand a newcomer, the writers who sit beside his scores, and the Sleep performance on the Great Wall of China that will stay with him forever.

You have toured the world since 2024, and this is your first performance in India. Why now, and what made NMACC the place?

It’s something that I’ve always wanted, to perform in India- but somehow the stars have never aligned before in terms of timing, opportunity, repertoire and all of these different things that have to come together for a concert to happen. But I'm very happy that we have the opportunity to come now. I’m really happy we finally had the opportunity to showcase my music here.

On the Nature of Daylight is one of your most famous compositions. In India, it became very popular after Hamnet's release. If you had three compositions through which you could introduce your work to your newer fans, what would they be?

Well, I suppose On the Nature of Daylight would be one of them. I would also choose something from Sleep. I would choose maybe Dream 3 from Sleep. And then I guess I would maybe also choose Recomposed, so Spring 1 from Recomposed, because those pieces are all really quite different.

Some of your albums feature poetry readings in the background; for example, there’s Tilda Swinton reading Kafka in The Blue Notebook, Robert Wyatt reading Murakami for Songs from Before. Do you read a lot, and which writers or poets do you return to?

I read all the time, really. It's my other great passion, apart from music and composition. I'm reading all the time, and a lot of the work I do over the years and still do is connected to literature and story and narrative. So that's a huge part of my life.

As for a writer I connect to, I suppose I should mention Anne Carson, she's just won the Nobel Prize. She's somebody whose work I've followed for years, and I'm so happy for her.

Speaking of Sleep, It’s a very experimental and scientific album, explores the relationship between music and the sleeping brain. Do science and neuropsychology fascinate you? How does it inspire your creative process?

Yes. I think science and creativity are really two ways of approaching the same truths. But we're approaching them via a different lens. I'm very interested in science, especially the philosophy of science and how science relates, for example, to consciousness and our sense of time. And how neuroscience specifically has started to really understand how consciousness gives rise to the self. All of these kinds of questions really, really fascinate me.

I think one of the things about creative work is it comes out of a sense of wishing to explore the world in every dimension. And that includes who we are and how we connect to the rest of reality. So I think it is a kind of experimental process, really, doing creative work.

The Blue Notebooks was a meditation on your childhood. What was writing it like for you?

The Blue Notebooks comes out of two impulses. One is a sort of reflection on my own personal history, my own childhood, which was not a happy childhood.

And then also to do with what I was seeing going on in the culture during that time. So it's a reflection on the effects of violence and war. And I think also it proposes a kind of an alternate reality to this violence. A reality of what you might say, where things make sense.

I often think that perhaps for creative artists, because the world doesn't really make sense to us, we make alternate realities where it kind of does in some way. So there's that element of it, I think, in that piece.

Would you say you're a very rational, practical sort of a person?

I wouldn't say I'm very rational or practical. No, I would say I've always lived in a kind of, probably like many artists, you know, we live in a world of speculation, dreams, possibility and instinct.

Of course you have to learn your craft and technique and all of these things, but creative work is really driven by feeling. And I think that's the most important part.

You have spoken at length about your electronic music inspirations. Do you have any classical musicians who inspire you with the same intensity?

Yeah, I mean, within classical music, obviously, obviously, but for me, obviously, it all starts with Bach, really. Bach is a composer whose work I play basically every day, and I have done for 40 years or something. And [I play him] just on the piano a little bit. And then obviously a lot of other composers: [Henry] Purcell, whose work I love. [Franz] Schubert is an obsession, [Gustav] Mahler, [Igor] Stravinsky. Yeah, so many.

Continuing on inspiration, what is your favourite film score of all time?

Wow, that's really difficult. I think a lot of the Ennio Morricone scores are really amazing. I'm not sure I could pick a favourite. I would say something by Ennio Morricone. Maybe Once Upon a Time in America? That's an amazing score.

You've had a long and very prosperous career. I mean, there are so many highlights, of course, but what would you say is the one highlight that you look back on as being the dearest to you? 

Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate and very privileged that people listen to my music. And I don't take that for granted at all. It's a great privilege.

For me, I think I have one moment where music has really landed in a special way. This happened to me during a performance of Sleep at the Great Wall of China.

We played this piece, and as is the case in China normally, there's very, very heavy security around the concert. There were armed soldiers around the concert with guns. After two hours, I got a break in the performance to drink a coffee, while the others were playing.

I just went backstage very quietly to take a break. And as I was going backstage, I saw all the soldiers with their guns just lying on the floor, sleeping. And it was so special.

I think they felt that it was, as we use the phrase, a safe space. They were not concerned. Everyone was sleeping; there were no problems, and it was quite magical to see what music can do to people who are always supposed to be on high alert and how it can calm them.

If you could give a message to your Indian fans, what would it be?

Well, first of all, I have been looking forward to coming to play in India so much, and also hearing Indian music. I'm very grateful to those who listen to my music, and for the audience who attended the concert. I'm pretty sure they were very excited.