“I come from a high-modernist classical music training. If you wrote a single tonal chord, people would mock you,” reflected Max Richter. “I deliberately set out to be at plainspoken as possible.” The Blue Notebooks, first released in 2003, was the first major statement of Richter’s popular defiance.

Recorded against the background of the Iraq war, this milestone album was a personal meditation on power and politics. Far from a protest album, however, The Blue Notebooks contains a suite of contemplative performances. Richter’s now-familiar style combines simple (‘plainspoken’) chamber compositions punctuated by electronics and narration by Tilda Swinton. In 2003, it was rightly described as “one of the most...