{"id":2091972,"date":"2025-10-15T03:11:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T03:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2091972"},"modified":"2025-10-15T03:11:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T03:11:32","slug":"max-richters-latest-project-capturing-the-music-of-champagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/max-richters-latest-project-capturing-the-music-of-champagne\/","title":{"rendered":"Max\u00a0Richter\u2019s latest project \u2014 capturing the music of champagne"},"content":{"rendered":"

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S<\/span>ome say that the original reason for the tradition of clinking glasses is that wine incorporates all the senses except sound. We look and we smell, there\u2019s taste when the liquid touches our tongue and touch with the feel of the glass against the fingers. But sound, the logic goes, is not part of the experience. Champagne is the exception. The pop of the cork, the busy hiss of the bubbles announce an important truth: fine champagne is easy on the ears as well as on the palate.<\/p>\n

The champagne house Krug has long known this, and has translated its love of music, together with its belief that it can pair with its champagne just as well as food can, into various collaborative projects. To mark the exceptional 2008 vintage, Krug\u2019s cellar master Julie Cavil has worked with the composer, pianist and producer Max Richter to create a dialogue that is, in every sense, fruitful. <\/span>Every Note Counts<\/i> is a triple celebration of the 2008 harvest. There is a solo piece to express the single grape variety of Krug Clos d\u2019Ambonnay 2008. A chamber piece, to recreate the lime-zest purity of Krug 2008. And Richter has composed a symphony to celebrate the Grande Cuv\u00e9e 164\u00e8me edition, the house\u2019s fullest expression, which was assembled from 127 wines across 11 vintages. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Creating these three expressions of Krug, all so enticingly easy to drink, required a great deal of hard work. \u201cMax is very serious, he is obsessed with detail,\u201d Cavil says. \u201cBut when you listen to his music, it\u2019s effortless.\u201d She was enchanted by his talent for experimentation in works like Sleep<\/i>, a mellow composition that lasts over eight hours, and is intended to be listened to by people who are \u2026 asleep. \u201cHis music is classical with a twist,\u201d she says, and that is how she sees the 2008 vintage. On the one hand, it was a quintessential cool-climate vintage, and the wines are as elegant, pure and restrained as you\u2019d expect \u2014 the twist being that, given climate change, there will probably be vanishingly few vintages like that in future. <\/p>\n

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Max Richter and Julie Cavil<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI think that Krug does have a kind of a classicism, if I look at it through the lens of music,\u201d Richter says. Music, after all, is a historical form. \u201cWe learn from the music of the past, we remake it by pushing at the boundaries of that pre-existing language, enlarging it and repurposing it for our own time.\u201d He was struck by the same spirit of discovery at Krug.<\/p>\n

There is the human element too. \u201cYou have very dedicated, passionate people making the fullest use of their craft and curatorial vision,\u201d Richter says. \u201cAnd I thought that was really beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

To prepare for the project, Cavil visited Richter in his Oxfordshire studio, and he went to the Krug house in Rheims and toured its magnificent new facilities in Ambonnay, a village famous for its pinot noir. \u201cWe went to see the old cellars, which hold incredible bottles from decades or centuries ago, and then the new winery, located right in the vineyard, which is so special. It\u2019s an immersion in a different universe.\u201d It reminded Richter a little of his studio. \u201cNormally as a composer you write your music and then go elsewhere to record it. But we\u2019ve built this studio in the woods where I can do absolutely everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cavil too was surprised by the similarities, in two entirely different places designed for such supposedly dissimilar areas of creativity. \u201cWhat amazed me in Max\u2019s studios were the views \u2014 it\u2019s very connected with nature.\u201d Just like at the Krug tasting room, which looks out onto the Ambonnay vines, there\u2019s a direct connection between land and vision and flavour. \u201cMax told me that when he tasted Krug, he saw that landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Krug x Max Richter\u2019s three expressions to celebrate the 2008 harvest<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

They both learnt a lot. \u201cI don\u2019t speak the language of music,\u201d Cavil says. \u201cI don\u2019t have that vocabulary. And Max doesn\u2019t know exactly what is behind every note or flavour we encounter in the tasting room. But it was obvious to me that each plot has its own sound, and we worked a lot on pinning that down. If it\u2019s a chardonnay from the C\u00f4te des Blancs, it could be a clarinet, while perhaps the same variety from Marmery would be a bassoon.\u201d This way of thinking with music helped her to realise that when she is tasting the different component wines that go into the Grande Cuv\u00e9e, working out which should be included and in what proportion, she is essentially composing a symphony. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow, when I think about Krug, I have a view in my mind, as well as a taste,\u201d Cavil says. \u201cI can see the colour and the texture, and I can also hear the sound.\u201d And for Richter, while the experience of drinking is fundamental to Krug, \u201cit isn\u2019t just about that\u201d. His third child was born in 2008, an event that was toasted, as all his children\u2019s births have been, with a glass of Krug. \u201cYou open a bottle of Krug at a special moment for a special time or person, and it\u2019s associated with joy. That luminosity, that brightness, was very important in the music. That dictated the orchestration and the way I used the instruments throughout the composition, so that the music feels bright. I tried to reflect that feeling of the light hitting the glass. And there\u2019s also the sparkle: you try to find that.\u201d <\/p>\n

Champagne, after all, has always made music, and now here are three pieces of music that make new sense of champagne. <\/p>\n

Krug\u2019s three 2008 expressions are available from Oct 15. Max Richter\u2019s musical pieces, along with a documentary about the Krug x Max Richter collaboration, will be revealed in February 2026<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thetimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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