MUSICAL EVENTS - DE MINIMIS

Max Richter's doleful arpeggios, and Cassandra Miller's piercing lament.

- ALEX ROSS

The film scores of John Williams are beloved by untold millions. Philip Glass’s name is known to a good fraction of the population. Arvo Pärt’s sonic visions entrance audiences around the world. But, if cultural relevance is measured in sheer saturating ubiquity, the composer of our moment is the fifty-seven-year-old British minimalist Max Richter, who, according to his record label, Deutsche Grammophon, has produced the “most streamed classical record of all time.” That album, released in 2015, is titled “Sleep.” It lasts eight and a half hours and is designed to facilitate a full night’s slumber. Richter has also produced an extended compositional remix of “The Four Seasons,” transforming Vivaldi’s kinetic concertos into something spacey and amorphous. His customary mode, as in his soundtrack for the dystopian HBO series “The Leftovers,” is slowly unspooling, painstakingly repetitive melancholia.