Photo: Henry W. Laurisch / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Max Richter is one of those rare composers who makes you feel like you've been quietly asleep your whole life and his music is what waking up actually sounds like. Born in Hamelin — yes, the Pied Piper town — and classically trained at Edinburgh and the Royal Academy before studying under Luciano Berio in Italy, he's got pedigree stacked on pedigree, yet his work never feels academic or cold. His recomposition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons is genuinely one of the boldest moves in contemporary classical music, and Sleep — an eight-hour piece designed to be listened to while unconscious — is either the most ambitious or most absurd project of the last few decades, and I mean that as the highest compliment. He won a European Film Award in 2008 and later a CBE, but the real metric is that his music shows up everywhere from HBO dramas to art installations and it always lands exactly right. I'm completely sold.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Max Richter
- Name (Japanese)
- マックス・リヒター
- Reading
- まっくす・りひたー
- Born
- March 22, 1966 (age 60)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aries / Horse
- Origin
- Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany
- Occupation
- composer / pianist / film score composer
2. Background
- University
- University of Edinburgh
Awards & achievements
- 2008 European Film Award for Best Composer
- 2013 Echo Klassik – Classical Music without Borders
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Frequently asked questions
When was Max Richter born?
Born March 22, 1966 (age 60).
Where is Max Richter from?
Max Richter is from Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany.
What does Max Richter do?
Max Richter works as composer, pianist, film score composer.
Composer — see all → · Pianist — see all → · More people from Germany →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.