In these troubled times sleep has been elusive for many of us. Yulia Mahr and Max Richter’s collaborative work, ‘Sleep’,follows the epic eight-hour 
performances of Richter’s
composition of the same name,
a restorative lullaby
for our times…In these tough, unprecedented times, we need lullabies. Night-time rest can be restorative for those of us lucky enough to get it. Some of us need help to fall into our circadian rhythms, though, or we find our minds taken over by peculiar dreams.

All of these thoughts have been in the heads of composer Max Richter and creative director/film maker Yulia Mahr for years, long before the pandemic. Richter first wrote sketches for an eight-hour composition about sleep when he was 28, after all (he’s now 54), until it slowly and surely turned into a living thing.

Mahr made short films about Richter’s Sleep before it was released as an album in early September 2015; it then premiered as a performance later that month, at London’s Wellcome Collection, before touring around the world. This year marks its latest incarnation. Now a long-form documentary directed by Natalie Johns, largely filmed in 2018, Sleep explores the performances of this work, and the preparations behind them. It also burrows into the motivations of Richter and Mahr, partners in art as well as life for nearly 30 years.
We speak on Zoom, days before the premiere of the film in cinemas and online. Richter and Mahr sit in a room in their Oxfordshire house, dressed entirely in black, two unexpectedly shy souls who are kind and generous with their answers. Topsy-turvy books and a vintage tape machine sit behind them. Lockdown has been tough: they have three children and their live work has dried up. But in the middle of all the madness, Sleep has taken on a different dimension in their lives.

‘One of the catalysts for Sleep was our sense that the world was really busy and you need a place to rest from that,’ Richter begins. ‘And now, of course…’ He smiles shyly. ‘We have this enforced pause. But we’re all just as frazzled as we were, only in a different way, so I think Sleep can still speak to our moment, just not in the way that we expected it to.’

‘Hearing some of the things we say in the film now is bittersweet,’ Mahr says, joining in. ‘Like when Max talks about a frantic life being good for corporations, but not good for individuals. Then he says, “Couldn’t we just all start over?”’ She grimaces. ‘Oh no, what did we wish for? Maybe not like this! But a space has opened up for re-evaluation, hasn’t it? Our project was kind of talking to the same space before this happened. Perhaps it’s become more relevant now.’
Sleep began to be sketched out in 1994, when Richter struck on the idea of making a piece that was eight-and-a
half-hours long, reflecting the passage of our unknowable night-time hours: ‘As an idea, it wouldn’t let me go. It just kept kicking around in my brain.’ He spoke to neuroscientist David Eagleman in detail, finding out what happens in our brains during sleep, thinking about what it does when we’re unconscious, and what the ear can hear. The work that came out of his explorations comprises 31 compositions, based around variations of four or five themes, incorporating violins, violas, a soprano vocalist, piano and electronics. The electronics are particularly important to Richter, as they can produce sounds operating at very low hertz, that can’t be played by conventional instruments. ‘You can hear these sounds all over your body,’ he explains. ‘They literally move you.’

For most, sleep is a place of absolute refuge and calm. So is music to many people, including Richter, who has always found sanctuary in sound. When he was a small child, he recalls ‘a vivid sensation of music representing an alternative reality where things made sense.’ Film occupied the same place for Mahr, who arrived in the UK from Hungary aged eight. Unable to speak English, moving images were her comfort. Sleep being an audiovisual creature reflects both their perspectives in this way and the idea of how we seek relief and solace in art.

The couple met in 1991, when Mahr was a theatre director. She gave Richter his first job. Her role is often written out of her husband’s story, including in interviews, but not this one: ‘It feels like pushing a mountain to get recognition for a woman in a partnership and especially, it seems to me, if you’re married,’ she says, despairingly. Sleep puts the couple centrestage at last, willing us not to ignore their
essential togetherness.

Both have very different relationships with sleep. Mahr’s isn’t great: ‘It’s really hard for me to sleep, ever since I had kids. You get into that rhythm of being up all night.’ Richter has the opposite problem. ‘It’s the thing I do best. I’m a virtuoso sleeper – I’ll be asleep in 30 seconds, and I will not wake up til the morning. I feel really bad about it for Yulia! Although part of Sleep is trying to provide some kind of an environmental object that will potentially give that experience to other people.’

In his music, Richter wanted to get across the magical nature of sleep. ‘It’s this undiscovered place which we all go to but we can’t really know it.’ We discuss how many composers have been fascinated in the night time as a subject before, from Mozart (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) to modern composers like Eric Whiteacre (whose own work, Sleep, was sung on the first night of this year’s Proms). Richter also mentions the lullaby qualities of Indian ragas and how Bach’s Goldberg Variations was an influence on him expanding and developing similar patterns and rhythms in his work, which in itself reflects the movements of sleep.

The film documents how Sleep was taken to live performance, focusing specifically on a show in LA. We see venues being set up with beds and meet and watch the attendees: a young female couple, a man alone,  families cuddling up together. As Richter says himself in the film, these people become the story, as we watch them sitting up in the middle of night, drifting away quietly, or lying deeply in slumber.


The film also shows us Richter and Mahr experiencing the concerts from very different perspectives. Richter is on stage throughout, in charge of musicians who often have to play long, sustained passages (they all get breaks, but Richter doesn’t; he’s ‘a total zombie’ for a week afterwards). Mahr mainly experiences them through the editing process of the films they make during the shows. ‘We’re very careful to be very respectful, but at the same time, it’s quite intimate,’ she says. ‘I end up feeling I know the audience really well. They feel like friends.’ She especially likes the gigs that allow children, like one staged in China. ‘There’s a really special atmosphere when kids are there.’

Being at a performance of Sleep can often feel transformative, the couple add. They’ve received many letters from people who were at the concerts, saying why they were there, and how they carried the music with them for days. Many also share intimate secrets about their wellbeing and their families, as if the music has opened up a deep personal connection between composer and listener. ‘That’s extraordinary isn’t it?’ says Mahr.

Her favourite bit of the film is hearing how the audience refers to her husband. ‘Obviously we don’t know the audience, but they refer to Max by his first name, not as Max Richter – that’s what you’d get at a classical concert. There’s this familiarity there.’ The couple are also glad that the film goes into detail about how being a creative person can affect your life: Mahr even talks about getting ill at one point through malnourishment and how juggling family commitments always makes you assess what’s important in life.
‘We wanted to show that a project isn’t just about ownership and intellectual property,’ says Richter. ‘It’s not about making a product. Art’s about a fluid, organic conversation going on over decades; our collaborative process is the outcome of 30 years of them!’‘I keep thinking about
that Nina Simone
quote where she says,
“An artist’s job is to
reflect the times”. More
and more I think that
makes sense’This process has made their work together even more human. This summer, Studio Richter-Mahr released Voices, which features different readings of the UN Declaration of Human Rights over a ‘negative orchestra’: low frequencies being played by strings, and a wordless choir offering hope beyond language.

Mahr made films to accompany Richter’s music; the idea was for the work to explore the chaotic times we’re going through and how political certainties of recent decades are being eroded – but through a text that still offers hope, Richter explains.
‘I keep thinking about that Nina Simone quote, where she says, “An artist’s job is to reflect the times.” And more and more, I think that makes sense. These are our times, and they’re very dark times, but it isn’t hopeless. There is the Declaration, after all, and the Declaration isn’t perfect, but there’s some great things in there to realise how we can all do better.’ 

The Declaration has deep personal relevance for Mahr, who came to the UK from the Eastern Bloc in the Socialist
1970s. Thinking of where the signposts are to deal with our current situation, the act of having a creative response to this question through Voices, felt like the right move to her. ‘Making something humane, warm, lively and creative about possibilities, and about what we haven’t done yet, felt right,’ she says. Her partner in art and life nods in agreement and it’s hard not to join in.

Together, Richter and Mahr show us that art can be both a sanctuary and a salve, but also a realm where big ideas can bring people together in powerful ways. This is not only obvious in the many iterations of Sleep, but in their continuing working relationship and their hopes for what comes thereafter. ‘We must remind ourselves there is a future,’ Mahr concludes – and she’s right. Let’s close our eyes and think big, try to take on this moment together, and take it where it needs to be. maxrichtermusic.com; ‘Sleep’ is released on DVD October 14
WORDS JUDE ROGERS | PHOTOGRAPHS SØLVE SUNDSBØ