Mari Samuelsen on playing Max Richter's radical Vivaldi remix: 'It goes straight to my DNA'

The Oslo-based violinist might not have premiered Richter’s Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons. But she’s one of the piece’s most frequent performers now, and it remains one of the most cherished works in her repertoire. “It goes straight to my DNA,” she smiles. “It’s music I really love – in many ways, it forms part of my whole reason for being a musician.”

She’s also a regular collaborator with Richter himself, so her performances with the SCO will no doubt have the authoritative stamp of authenticity. Those two concerts are the new season’s first outings in the SCO’s boundary-pushing New Dimensions strand of concerts, exploring more recent repertoire. Look out for New York quartet hotshots Brooklyn Rider giving the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s concerto for string quartet and orchestra All Appeared New in January, and legendary Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger peering deep into contemporary responses to Beethoven in March.

But let’s get back to Richter, and let’s step back a bit. He’s now a revered composer with an immediately distinctive style – often slow-moving, bass-heavy, and sourcing deep emotional power through the techniques of minimalism – and he’s written extraordinarily widely, for concert halls and ballet stages, as well as for catwalk fashion shows and art installations, and of course for a huge number of movie soundtracks (Hamnet, Mary Queen of Scots and Ad Astra among them).

But in 2012, when Richter unveiled Recomposed, it was a daring venture – to literally rewrite one of the classical canon’s most enduringly popular and best-loved creations. “Max said he thought Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was almost too well known,” explains Samuelsen. “You’d hear it in lifts, or in hotel lobbies, or on hold music while you’re waiting on the phone.” Richter’s radical recasting – which sometimes stays respectfully close to the original, but sometimes throws it into a club or a cinematic minimalist soundscape or even a chirruping aviary – was immediately praised for its freshness, its inventiveness and its uncanny emotional depth. “It still touches me, no matter how many times I play it,” admits Samuelsen.

And she’s played it, she explains, many times. “I’m a big fan of Max’s music, and I first started listening to it properly about 15 or 16 years ago. I managed to meet him shortly afterwards, in Berlin where he was living at the time, and he was doing a performance of Recomposed at the Paris Philharmonie, and asked me to be the soloist. It was such a cool experience that we both thought: let’s keep going. Since then, I’d say we work together on a regular basis.”

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You could indeed argue that Samuelsen has become Richter’s violinist of choice across several of his projects, including Three Worlds, Voices, Memoryhouse and many others. She’s also performed Recomposed several times with Richter himself directing. “Well, he’s basically there leading from his piano, so there’s not really a conductor as such. But when it comes to interpretation, he’s never said anything to me. Maybe I’ve been lucky and just found the way of playing the piece that he likes.”

According to Samuelsen, however, Richter prefers the piece to be directed from the violin – which is what she’ll be doing in her two performances with the SCO. “I play so much of what the rest of the orchestra plays in the piece – my part suddenly comes out and does solo things, but then it joins back in again with the rest.” Which, she explains, establishes quite a different, closer and more intimate relationship with the orchestra than that of a more conventional concerto soloist. “There’s a different temperature to it, definitely. And in any case, it’s almost like I want to join the SCO family. That’s what it’s all about – hopefully we’re going to understand each other and get to know each other, and create some magic on stage for the people who are there to listen.”

She comes with prior awareness, she explains, of the SCO’s characteristic clarity, agility and vividness, as well as the breadth of repertoire the orchestra takes on. “And I’ve been to Scotland before, but it’ll be the first time I’m playing in Edinburgh – I’m looking forward to getting to know the country a bit more.”

Scottish audiences will be hearing Samuelsen very much immersed in Richter’s musical world. But she’s a fascinating figure, with a very broad and adventurous passion for music – as demonstrated by her three discs for Deutsche Grammophon, which encompass everything from Hildegard of Bingen, Bach and Brahms to Philip Glass, Hannah Peel and Hildur Guðnadóttir, and also by her collaborations with DJs Jeff Mills and Dubfire.

Even just a few decades back, eyebrows might have been raised (and pearls might have been clutched) at the thought of a classical violinist dipping their toes into other, apparently less lofty musical genres. Have we moved on? “I hope so,” laughs Samuelsen. “I hope we’re done with labelling. I mean, where are we going if we insist on putting everything in a box? To me, music is music. One night you might go to the opera, the next to a club, the next to a jazz bar. It’s not taking anything away from a good old symphony concert. You can do a bit of everything. It’s not going to destroy anything for anyone.”

Mari Samuelsen performs Max Richter’s Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 22 October City Halls, Glasgow, 23 October. Scotsman readers can claim a 20 per cent discount off full price tickets when using the promo code ‘TSMSCO20’ . The offer is available via box offices at all the orchestra’s partner venues. This feature was produced in association with the SCO.

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