Richter’s music helps you feel without telling you what to feel. Certainly this compilation isn’t as revelatory as one of his full-length works, but it’s rich with music that will reward repeat listening, deep into the night or on the daily commute. One of the common criticisms of movie music is that it’s too episodic to really add up to anything. A single piano note dies into silence and it takes you with it.
So, does light effect sound - Courtney (age 18) Hartselle Al. The same applies to laying in a dark room and listening to music. I've noticed where I live a train sounds louder at night than during the day. Richter has an unequalled gift for making one slow pulse of woodwind gesture towards abstracts like ‘love’ or ‘fear’. Reading different things online hasn't helped much either. The solo cello on Wadjda’s Journey is exquisite – a representation of a human voice rising above an electronically altered Middle Eastern underscore. Apart from 2014’s WWI movie, Testament Of Youth, Richter works with low-key, non-mainstream projects, and his appreciation for traumatic memory ( Sarah’s Key) or an oppressed girl’s dream of freedom ( Wadjda) is astonishing. His mastery of orchestration, individual instruments and repetition is mesmeric and, as in The Haunted Ocean 5, often heartbreaking.
Opening with music from the animated war-based movie Waltz With Bashir, this album packs many of Richter’s best tropes – the endless lines for strings, the quite terrifying electronic beats and dark brass – into a relatively short space.
