CD-Charts Position 1
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The Blue Notebooks

by: Max Richter

Release Date February 23, 2004
Like Memoryhouse, Max Richter's sadly deleted first CD, this album is suffused with a forlorn melancholia. The quotes from Franz Kafka (beautifully read by Tilda Swinton), compound the feeling that this is a nostalgic homage to the lost world of East European cultures that were shattered by Stalinist purges and Nazi pogroms. The standout track, 'The Shadow Journal', is impossibly beautiful, distilling the album's sense of loss into an achingly sad refrain for violin and, suprisingly, a jay!
Small but perfectly formed.

CD-Charts Position 2
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24 Postcards in Full Colour

by: Max Richter

Release Date August 25, 2008
As someone who has loved all Max Richter's recordings, from 'Memoryhouse' onwards, I know how beautiful and resonant his work can be. This is no exception, though many pieces leave you regretting their lack of brevity. My quibble, however, shallow as it may seem, is that the running time gets shorter with each album, '24' being half the length of 'Memoryhouse'. Size isn't everything but maybe some of the pieces could have been more expansive. Lovely, nonetheless.

CD-Charts Position 3
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Songs from Before

by: Max Richter

Release Date October 23, 2006
Like most reviewers,I agree that this is no 'Blue Notebooks'. It does not share the same, almost intangible melancholia. Moreover, I find Robert Wyatt an uninvolving narrator, who does not share Tilda Swinton's feel for the language (in this case Japanese author Murakami). However, the same ensemble as 'Notebooks' again succeed in creating a resonant soundscape of alienation and yearning, esp. on the beautiful 'Flowers for Yulia'.
Yes, it's short. But like haiku, it is a distillation of elements, the critical deployment of only essential materials, that makes it work.

CD-Charts Position 4
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Bach: Sacred Masterpieces

from: DG Collectors

Release Date September 11, 2000
Karl Richter, about whom much has been said, is on top form here. His B-minor mass is the best I've heard, as is the St.John. Wonderful stuff!

CD-Charts Position 5
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Classical Gold

from: Deutsche Grammophon

Release Date April 28, 2003
I used to turn my nose up at Classical music and haven't listened to it since my school music lessons.

That is until I drove back the other week one evening after a Fell race up the Wrekin in Shropshire.

I tuned into Classic FM and found that I really enjoyed one of their Live Concerts. I knew that my wife had been talking of sitting in her conservatory and relaxing to this sort of music and here I was driving home watching the sun set and listening to very nice sounds.

Well that weekend I bourght this box set from Smith's and I haven't had it off the CD or my Computer since.

Maybe I'm getting old now as I approach 50 but there are so many familiar tunes in this collection and they are all wonderfully recorded and produced.
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CD-Charts Position 6
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24 Postcards in Full Colour [VINYL]

by: Max Richter

Release Date December 08, 2008
As someone who has loved all Max Richter's recordings, from 'Memoryhouse' onwards, I know how beautiful and resonant his work can be. This is no exception, though many pieces leave you regretting their lack of brevity. My quibble, however, shallow as it may seem, is that the running time gets shorter with each album, '24' being half the length of 'Memoryhouse'. Size isn't everything but maybe some of the pieces could have been more expansive. Lovely, nonetheless.

CD-Charts Position 7
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Musik....Sprache der Welt

from: Deutsche Grammophon

Release Date August 09, 2004
As someone who has loved all Max Richter's recordings, from 'Memoryhouse' onwards, I know how beautiful and resonant his work can be. This is no exception, though many pieces leave you regretting their lack of brevity. My quibble, however, shallow as it may seem, is that the running time gets shorter with each album, '24' being half the length of 'Memoryhouse'. Size isn't everything but maybe some of the pieces could have been more expansive. Lovely, nonetheless.

CD-Charts Position 8
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Memoryhouse

from: Late Junction

Release Date May 27, 2002
I want this album! I read on Max's site they were going to re-release this in August 2008...but I can't find it anywhere! Please stock it again!

CD-Charts Position 9
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Teresa Stich-Randall: Previously Unreleased Recordings, 1953-1959

from: Orfeo

Release Date January 29, 2008
This was well reviewed, though not without reservations, on BBC3's CD Review and in 'The Guardian' newspaper. The reservations mainly concerned the orchestral accompaniments, which are workaday, and some unevenness in the singer's performance in this very varied programme - Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss. These are archive radio recordings from Vienna from the time in the 1950s when Teresa Stich-Randall was a front-rank artiste at the Opera there. Toscanini, who had the highest opinion of her as a young singer (he called her 'the voice of the century') had advised her to go to Europe and she was there for most of her career ; indeed, that was where she was buried. The CD was issued soon after her death last year at the age of 80. Strictly speaking, it might ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 10
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EMI Centenary Edition (1897-1997)

from: EMI Classics

Release Date March 01, 1997
This was well reviewed, though not without reservations, on BBC3's CD Review and in 'The Guardian' newspaper. The reservations mainly concerned the orchestral accompaniments, which are workaday, and some unevenness in the singer's performance in this very varied programme - Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss. These are archive radio recordings from Vienna from the time in the 1950s when Teresa Stich-Randall was a front-rank artiste at the Opera there. Toscanini, who had the highest opinion of her as a young singer (he called her 'the voice of the century') had advised her to go to Europe and she was there for most of her career ; indeed, that was where she was buried. The CD was issued soon after her death last year at the age of 80. Strictly speaking, it might ... Read More: