Max Richter: Exiles Baltic Sea Philharmonic & Kristjan Järvi

• Max Richter (b. 1966):
• 1Richter: Flowers Of Herself08:33
• 2Richter: On The Nature Of Daylight (Orchestra Version)07:19
• 3Richter: The Haunted Ocean (Exiles Version)02:18
• 4Richter: Infra 5 (Orchestra Version)05:34
• 5Richter: Sunlight (Orchestra Version)03:55
• 6Richter: Exiles (Pt. 1)01:53
• 7Richter: Exiles (Pt. 2)01:53
• 8Richter: Exiles (Pt. 3)01:53
• 9Richter: Exiles (Pt. 4)01:53
• 10Richter: Exiles (Pt. 5)01:53
• 11Richter: Exiles (Pt. 6)01:53
• 12Richter: Exiles (Pt. 7)01:53
• 13Richter: Exiles (Pt. 8)01:53
• 14Richter: Exiles (Pt. 9)01:53
• 15Richter: Exiles (Pt. 10)01:53
• 16Richter: Exiles (Pt. 11)01:53
• 17Richter: Exiles (Pt. 12)01:53
• 18Richter: Exiles (Pt. 13)01:53
• 19Richter: Exiles (Pt. 14)01:53
• 20Richter: Exiles (Pt. 15)01:53
• 21Richter: Exiles (Pt. 16)01:53
• 22Richter: Exiles (Pt. 17)01:53
• 23Richter: Exiles (Pt. 18)01:33
• 24Richter: Flowers Of Herself (Short Edit)03:51
• 25Richter: Exiles (Short Edit)03:22
• Total Runtime01:08:26

Info for Max Richter: Exiles

The Baltic Sea Philharmonic will make its label debut for Deutsche Grammophon with the new Max Richter album EXILES. Set for release on 6 August 2021, EXILES features the orchestra and its Music Director and Founding Conductor Kristjan Järvi in new recordings of pieces from previous Max Richter albums, as well as pieces originally composed for ballet scores. The album comprises seven tracks but especially the mainwork ’Exiles’ dealing with the humanitarian disaster of the migrant crisis resonates the country-bonding mission of the Baltic Sea Philharmonic. ’It has this “peacemaking” function, people being able to talk to each other in a creative way. It struck me that it would be nice to have that orchestra play music that matched that theme’, said Max Richter. Besides ‘Exiles’ in two parts the album also contains ‘The Haunted Ocean’ from Waltz with Bashir; ‘Infra 5’ from Infra; ‘Flowers of Herself’ from Woolf Works; ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ from The Blue Notebooks; and ‘Sunlight’ from Songs from Before.

EXILES was recorded in September 2019 at the studio of Estonian Public Broadcasting in Järvi’s home city of Tallinn, Estonia, in the presence of the composer. The album represents the orchestra’s first major collaboration with Max Richter, although his compositions have previously featured on the programmes of Baltic Sea Philharmonic concerts. Richter and Järvi have worked together on various other projects, including with the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, when Järvi was the orchestra’s chief conductor and Richter was artist in residence for its 2016/17 season.

Lights of openness and unity: Max Richter composed the main work on the album, the 33-minute ‘Exiles’, for the Nederlands Dans Theater, and the music had its premiere in 2017 as the score for a dance work called Singulière Odyssée. Like some other Richter works, ‘Exiles’ has a socio-political dimension, in that it is a personal response to the humanitarian disaster of the migrant crisis and the plight of Syrian refugees. In this light, the choice of the Baltic Sea Philharmonic – with its open, borderless and unifying nature – as collaborators for the album was therefore an important one for the composer. ‘They are engaged with music and society, connecting people who live around the Baltic Sea so that obviously includes former Western European countries, former Eastern European countries,’ he said. ‘The orchestra has an explicit social dimension, which really struck me as important.’

For Kristjan Järvi, the openness and fearlessness he has encouraged in the Baltic Sea Philharmonic musicians are essential qualities for playing Max Richter’s emotionally direct works, with their exposed musical lines. ‘This music is so personal that if the lines are not played with personal commitment and dedication, then they don’t work,’ he said. ‘It means on an emotional level it’s scary for the musicians to go out on stage and commit themselves, because then they’re showing the audience exactly who they are. But that’s why I love doing these pieces with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic.’

Orchestra Baltic Sea Philharmonic
Kristjan Järvi, conductor

The Baltic Sea Philharmonic
is a unique Nordic orchestra that brings together musicians from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden. In 2018 the Baltic Sea Philharmonic celebrated its tenth anniversary.

The Baltic Sea Philharmonic takes the orchestral concert experience to a new dimension. Every performance is a voyage of musical discovery, as the musicians perform the entire programme from memory, creating a one-of-a-kind artistic journey. Each concert is a unique spectacle of sound, light, visual art and technology, and under the electrifying baton of Music Director and Founding Conductor Kristjan Järvi every performance has a special energy that’s absolutely infectious. But even more than this, as a community of musicians from ten Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic transcends boundaries and has become a movement for bringing people together. Embodying all that is innovative and progressive about the Nordic region, this visionary ensemble is taking the traditional orchestral model further than ever before. ‘It is a living breathing creature, with boundless energy and enthusiasm for the new – an adventure in itself,’ says Kristjan Järvi.

An orchestra born to unite and innovate: Bringing together musicians from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic started life in 2008 on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom on the initiative of Thomas Hummel, Director of the Usedom Music Festival – and won immediately acclaim for its performances and its powerful message of unity in a historically divided region. The orchestra plays at renowned festivals and in the most prestigious concert halls in Europe and beyond, including the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Dubai Opera. The world’s finest artists from classical stars such as Julia Fischer, Jonas Kaufmann, Kurt Masur and Gidon Kremer to pop bands like Bastille, have all performed with the orchestra. In 2015 the Baltic Sea Philharmonic’s achievements were honoured with the prestigious European Culture Prize by the European Culture Foundation ‘Pro Europe’. As the orchestra’s international reputation grew, so did its educational ambitions, and it expanded the training and professional development opportunities for its musicians. By now, the orchestra is well known for its innovative programmes such as ‘Waterworks’, ‘Nordic Pulse’, ‘Midnight Sun’ and ‘Divine Geometry’ that throw classical music conventions out of the window and enable audiences and the musicians alike to experience new musical dimensions.

The orchestra’s growing discography with Kristjan Järvi includes three acclaimed recordings for Sony Classical. The first of these, The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure, an arrangement for orchestra of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, was released in 2016. In 2020, two albums were released – a recording featuring the orchestra and Swiss violinist David Nebel in Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto and the album Sleeping Beauty, with Järvi conducting in his innovative arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ballet as a dramatic symphony. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic and David Nebel also recorded Järvi’s uplifting piece Aurora for the conductor–composer’s 2020 album Nordic Escapes, which was released on BMG’s Modern Recordings.

Kristjan Järvi
lives and breathes music, using its power to create spaces in which anything is possible. Kristjan Järvi pursues his pioneering ideas as a conductor, producer, composer and arranger. With indomitable spirit he runs his own production company, Sunbeam Productions.

‘Kristjan Järvi has earned a reputation as one of the canniest, and most innovative, programmers on the classical scene’ (Reuters). As a conductor, he is at home on the big international stages, directing great classics from Wagner to Tchaikovsky, as well as Steve Reich and Radiohead.

Kristjan Järvi developed his own unique sound with his New York-based classical-hip-hop-jazz group Absolute Ensemble, Baltic Sea Philharmonic, and Sunbeam´s in-house Band ‘Nordic Pulse’. Kristjan shapes his artistic life and takes expression to the next level with his team at Sunbeam Productions, with whom he creates a new paradigm for multi-sensory performance Xperiences.

At the end of 2020, Kristjan founded a new record label: ‘nEscapes’. Besides online music distribution, it offers its own unique ‘nEscapes Lounges’ to artists as a new listening format.

Kristjan Järvi collaborates internationally with outstanding and creative personalities from the art, music and film scene. For example, he composed music for Tom Tykwer’s prestigious series Babylon Berlin.

As a recording artist, Järvi has more than 60 albums to his credit, from Hollywood soundtracks such as Cloud Atlas, Sense 8 (both productions of the Wachowski sisters, who also made The Matrix), A Hologram for the King (Tom Tykwer), and award-winning albums on Sony Classical and Chandos, to his eponymous series: the Kristjan Järvi Sound Project. Besides his own productions, Kristjan Järvi collaborates internationally with outstanding recording artists like MUM, Bryce Dessner (The National), Hauschka, Robot Koch and Max Richter, and he stars in the ‘Bastille Re-Orchestrated’ documentary on Amazon Prime.

Taking his artistic take on life to the next level with Sunbeam Productions and tours, Järvi continues to pave the way to a whole new sound experience. Founding Sunbeam Productions just a few years ago, the company has created several concert shows since: ‘Waterworks’ (2017/2018), ‘Absolute Club’ featuring Francesco Tristano, ‘Nordic Pulse’ (2018), and ‘Midnight Sun’ (2019). Being a passionate producer, he has also arranged and produced albums in the Sunbeam Studios for Max Richter, Robot Koch and many more.

At the end of 2020, Kristjan founded his own label: ‘nEscapes’, a label that, besides online music distribution, offers its own unique ‘nEscapes Lounges’ as its escapes spaces.

Kristjan is exclusively signed as a composer and producer with BMG Music under its label ‘Modern recordings’. His latest album is called: ‘Nordic Escapes’.

Born in Estonia, Kristjan Järvi emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New York City. Kristjan comes from a family of great conductors. His father Neeme and his elder brother Paavo both conduct the greatest orchestras in the world. In 2015, Kristjan relocated his center of life from the USA back to the capital of Estonia, Tallinn.

Kristjan Järvi has ‘earned a reputation as one of the canniest, and most innovative, programmers on the classical scene.’ [Reuters]

Curating and conducting his original, genre-fusing projects and festivals with an individual approach and style, his concerts have been proclaimed a ‘life-enhancing experience.’ [Herald Scotland]

Booklet for Max Richter: Exiles