artist: Max Richter country of origin: Germany/UK style(s): Neo-classical, cinematic, ambient, neo-romantic, electronic essential releases: Memoryhouse (2002, Fatcat Records) The Blue Notebooks (2004, Fatcat Records) Songs From Before (2006, Fatcat Records) 24 Postcards In Full Colour (2008, Fatcat Records)

"Cinematic" is a word that comes to mind effortlessly on hearing Max Richter's extraordinary music, even though most of it was never written for the medium of film. If you've ever watched a movie and found yourself spellbound by a seemingly-perfect passage of plaintive piano or sad chamber music and you want to hear more, you'll love Richter's work. He makes entire albums of such music, whereas most actual soundtrack albums are compromised by nonsensical cues, dramatic flourishes or meandering drones that make little sense when divorced from the visuals.

Richter's mind movies can evoke all kinds of images with music alone: from cold, gray wet days to pristine sunrises, from stark and empty subways to cozy drawing rooms. Of the narrative flow that seems to run through his albums, he told Boomkat.com: "I think of music as a sub-set of the storytelling tradition. So I'm interested in music that has some sort of narrative quality - that is about something - the sounds in themselves can do this or in conjunction with other elements."

Emotionally there's a melancholy that permeates much of his work, yet depressing and morbid are not words that do his music any justice. These four albums are masterpieces of reflective mood, full of space and rich in images. Some tracks are bridged with spoken word passages including readings of texts from writers like Kafka and Murakami. On the surface you might call it modern classical; there's certainly no denying echoes of Arvo Part, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman's film scores in some of Richter's work. But closer inspection reveals music that's too intimate and nakedly human to sit comfortably under the classical banner.

No, Richter's music is more a curious post-classical hybrid of traditional and modern. His main instrument is the piano, sometimes accompanied by solo or group strings and also with touches of organ, synthesisers and environmental sampling. His poetic compositions lull you into a quiet reverie, yet they can be surprisingly intense and incredibly moving. On his debut album Memoryhouse, for example, he cleverly returns 5 or 6 times during the course of the album to the same haunting melodic phrase; each time in a different arrangement with but with the same sad, heart-wrenching beauty.

Of the four albums above, any of the first three would make good introductions. His fourth album 24 Postcards In Full Colour is much more fragmented and sample-laden than previous releases, with some tracks not even making it to the 60 second mark. Not the best Richter album to start with, then, but nonetheless a vivid and engaging travelogue.

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