Review Summary: Voices features a noble concept that unfortunately weighs down Richter's often stirring minimalist classical in execution.
Max Richter has frequently used his minimalist classical music to explore themes that are inversely maximalist. He created a soundtrack for a third of your life in his eight-hour opus
Sleep, and dared to re-interpret one of the most beloved Baroque pieces of all time, Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons. And since his 2002 debut
Memoryhouse, there’s been a humanistic political current in his work as well: that album touched on the Balkan Wars, while 2010’s
Infra was a somber response the 2005 terrorist attacks in London. Richter’s slow-moving strings and morose compositions can instantly summon feelings of loss, empathy, and regret, but a good concept could really take his work into more deeply appreciable realms. Some ten years in the making,
Voices is centred on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is recited in multiple languages over the span of the album, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt herself on “All Human Beings”. Its release in the summer of 2020—where demonstrations for basic human rights have exploded globally, the fires stoked by an anomalous global pandemic—feels like a perfectly appropriate time for such a document.
There’s a lump-in-throat quality to hearing people from all over the world, in many different languages, reciting the Declaration. It’s a hopeful message for tolerance that rebukes hatred and bigotry, and thus is an inherently attractive concept. However, its clumsy application ultimately hurts
Voices. It’s a no-brainer to open with Roosevelt, who oversaw the drafting of the Declaration, making it easy to overlook the fact that her upbeat grandmotherly tone plays against the celestial choir; harder to appreciate is actress Kiki Layne, who reads the Declaration in a slow, story-time inflection that sits awkwardly over the melancholic music all throughout the record. The other voices, globe-spanning fans that submitted their own readings, are imbued with a muted and staticy quality, which fits much better—but about ten minutes into
Voices, this concept feels exhausted, partly because hearing people read a Declaration doesn’t lend itself to vastly different intonations, which is desperately needed to sustain interest over 50 minutes. In other words, it’s all very monotonous.
Luckily, Richter includes “Voiceless” mixes, which is likely going to be what you return to.
Voices scales back to
Sleep level ambiance, barely registering above a murmur for its entire duration. Richter has been in and out of this mode for almost two decades, and thus displays his mastery on utilizing familiar minimalist classical motifs—swirling loops of strings, stoic and deep chords, tension and release. Most affecting are “Chorale”, which continuously builds slow and immense strings under Grace Davidson’s empyrean soprano, and the exquisitely devastating piano-and-cello dance of closing track “Mercy”. The tranquil, descending “Little Requiems” is another highlight, instantly recalling about two hours of
Sleep, as does “Murmuration” with its rolling clouds of synthesizer pads, strings and ghostly voices. Richter’s compositions and arrangements are relatively conservative here, especially in contrast to his previous major solo work, 2017’s
Three Worlds: Music from Wolfe Works. While a good portion of that album leaned into the same pensive chamber music seen here, it saw Richter starting to incorporate electronic and synthesizer work again, resulting in one of his most varied and heady albums. The majority of
Voices is beautiful and gripping, but it could stand to have more of that exploratory spirit.
Like he did on
Sleep, Richter is speaking to every person on Earth, and the global scale and humanistic angle of
Voices feel especially poignant in the summer of 2020. It has a noble concept that, unfortunately, becomes cloying in practice; the pathos and dignity shown in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are handily represented in his arresting minimalist classical compositions, thus making the “Voiceless Mix” the more preferable version. But even if he was a bit over-zealous with the titular voices,
Voices stands as yet another gorgeous and moving release from Richter.
3.5
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