Max Richter
British composer (born 1966)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Richter CBE (/ˈrɪxtər/; German: [ˈʁɪçtɐ]; born 22 March 1966) is a British composer and pianist. He works within postminimalist and contemporary classical styles.[1][2][3][4] Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.[5][6]
Max Richter | |
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Richter in 2026 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 22 March 1966 |
| Origin | London, England |
| Education | University of Edinburgh; Royal Academy of Music |
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| Years active | 1994–present |
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| Website | maxrichtermusic |
Richter arranges, performs, and composes music for stage, opera, ballet, and screen. He has collaborated with other musicians, as well as with performance, installation, and media artists. He has recorded eight solo albums, and his music is widely used in cinema.[7][8] As of December 2019, Richter has passed one billion streams and one million album sales.[9]
Richter has been called a "major figure of contemporary music" and his work has been described as "transcending genres" by the former controller of BBC Radio 3, Alan Davey.[10][11] In 2026, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the soundtrack of Hamnet.[12]
Early life and career
Richter was born in Hamelin, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He grew up in Bedford, England, United Kingdom, and his education was at Bedford Modern School and Mander College of Further Education.[13]
He had piano lessons and music classes, and at 12 or 13, heard a BBC documentary using the opening to Kraftwerk's Autobahn, inspiring him to research how to build synthesizers, and led on to listening to artists like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Vangelis. At around the same time, the local milkman introduced him to minimalist music by the likes of Terry Riley, Philip Glass and John Cage.[14][10]
Richter studied composition and piano at the University of Edinburgh and at the Royal Academy of Music, though he had some reservations about the syllabus being focused on a Polish School modernist canon to the detriment of other minimalist works. This led him to study with Luciano Berio in Florence which struck him as "opening a door" to "music which was more various".[15][16][10]
Richter became involved in performing minimal and post-minimal music, and co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble Piano Circus.[17][10] He stayed with the group for ten years, commissioning and performing works by minimalist musicians such as Arvo Pärt, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe, and Steve Reich. The ensemble was signed to Decca/Argo, producing five albums.
In 1996, Richter collaborated with Future Sound of London on the album Dead Cities, first as a pianist, but ultimately working on several tracks and co-writing the track "Max". He worked with the band for two years, also contributing to the albums The Isness and The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness. In 2000, Richter worked with Mercury Prize winner Roni Size on the Reprazent album In the Møde. He produced Vashti Bunyan's 2005 album Lookaftering[18] and Kelli Ali's 2008 album Rocking Horse.[19][20][13]
Solo work
Richter's solo albums include:
Memoryhouse (2002)
During a trip to Lantau island in 1994, Richter saw a gate to an old Zen monastery bearing the inscription "Time does not exist. What is memory?", sparking his interest in memory.[10] Reviewed by Andy Gill as "a landmark work of contemporary classical music",[21] Richter's solo debut, Memoryhouse, an experimental album of "documentary music" recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, explores real and imaginary stories and histories.[22] Several of the tracks, such as "Sarajevo", "November", "Arbenita", and "Last Days", deal with the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict, while others are of childhood memories (e.g. "Laika's Journey"). The music combines ambient sounds, voices (including that of John Cage), and poetry readings from the work of Marina Tsvetaeva. BBC Music called the album "a masterpiece in neoclassical composition".[23] Memoryhouse was first played live by Richter at the Barbican Centre on 24 January 2014 to coincide with a vinyl re-release of the album.[24]
Pitchfork gave the re-release an 8.7 rating, commenting on its extensive influence:
In 2002, Richter's ability to weave subtle electronics against the grand BBC Philharmonic Orchestra helped suggest new possibilities and locate fresh audiences that composers such as Nico Muhly and Michał Jacaszek have since pursued. As you listen to new work by Julianna Barwick or Jóhann Jóhannsson, thank Richter; just as Sigur Rós did with its widescreen rock, Richter showed that crossover wasn't necessarily an artistic curse.[25]
The Blue Notebooks (2004)
Named by The Guardian as one of the best classical works of the century,[26] The Blue Notebooks, released in 2004, featured the actress Tilda Swinton reading from Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks and the work of Czesław Miłosz. Richter has said that The Blue Notebooks is a protest album about the Iraq War, as well as a meditation on his own troubled childhood.[27] Pitchfork described the album as "Not only one of the finest record of the last six months, but one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in recent memory."[28] To mark the 10th anniversary of its release, Richter created a track-by-track commentary for Drowned in Sound, in which he described the album as a series of interconnected dreams and an exploration of the chasm between lived experience and imagination.[29] The second track, "On the Nature of Daylight", is used in both the opening and closing sequences of the sci-fi film Arrival[30] and on the soundtracks of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. It is also used in episode 3, "Long, Long Time", of the HBO series The Last of Us.
On the eve of its 2018 reissue, marking the 15th anniversary of its release, Fact named the album "one of the most iconic pieces of classical and protest music of the 21st century."[31] The re-release included a new cover design and several new tracks that were originally composed for the project. Richter also released another single, "Cypher", an 8-minute classical-electronic track based upon the theme of "On the Nature of Daylight".
Songs from Before (2006)
In 2006, Richter released his third solo album, Songs from Before, which features Robert Wyatt reading texts by Haruki Murakami inbetween strings, electronic sounds and "dream struck piano".[32] It expanded on the minimalist soundscapes of his earlier work. Writing in The Guardian, critic John L Waters awarded it four stars, and described it as "rewarding repeated listening" with its strong melodies complementing its atmospherics.[33] Pitchfork described is as "his most cohesive album to date", commenting on his use of rubato conjuring "an overwhelming emotional tizzy, bouts of rhythmic unpredictably guiding the familiar patterns of Richter's beloved minor triads".[34]
24 Postcards in Full Colour (2008)
Richter released his fourth solo album 24 Postcards in Full Colour, a collection of 24 classically composed miniatures for ringtones, in 2008.[35] The pieces are a series of variations on the basic material, scored for strings, piano, and electronics.
Discussing the album with NPR Classical in 2017,[36] Richter said: "People were downloading ringtones at the time and I felt this was a missed opportunity for composers—that there was a space opening up, maybe a billion little loudspeakers walking around the planet, but nobody was really thinking of this as a space for creative music. So I set out to make these tiny little fragments and then, of course, in the poetic sense, the idea of these little sounds carrying objects traversing the planet—I started to think of these as a connection, as a sort of postcard into somebody's life, into their space."
Infra (2010)
Richter's 2010 album Infra takes as its central theme the 2005 terrorist bombings in London,[37] and is an extension of his 25-minute score for a ballet of the same name choreographed by Wayne McGregor and staged at the Royal Opera House.[38] Infra comprises music written for piano, electronics, and string quintet, plus the full performance score and material that developed from the construction of the album.[39] Pitchfork called the album "achingly gorgeous"[40] and The Independent characterised it as "a journey in 13 episodes, emerging from a blur of static and finding its way in a repeated phrase that grows in loveliness".[41]
Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (2012)
Richter's 'recomposed' version of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, was premiered in the UK at the Barbican Centre on 31 October 2012 by the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by André de Ridder with violinist Daniel Hope.[42] The work is an example of "musical borrowing" as coined by musicologist J. Peter Burkholder, taking something new from a from an existing piece of music and using it in a new piece. [43] It was put on the syllabus of the French baccalaureate exams in 2019 and 2020, with an accompanying monograph, with the foreword by the national schools inspector stating that musical education "cannot restrict itself to the past".[10]
Richter said he had discarded 75% of Vivaldi's original material,[44] but the parts he kept are phased and looped, emphasising his grounding in postmodern and minimalist music,[45] and leading one critic to quip parenthetically, "(Perhaps you could call Richter a baroque decomposer?)."[46] The album topped the iTunes classical chart in the UK, Germany, and the US.[47] The US launch concert in New York at Le Poisson Rouge was recorded by NPR and streamed.[48]
Sleep and From Sleep (2015)
In 2015, Richter released his most ambitious project to date, a collaboration with visual artist and creative partner Yulia Mahr[49] titled Sleep, an 8.5-hour listening experience targeted to fit a full night's rest. The album contains 31 compositions, most of them 20–30 minutes in duration, all based on variations of 4-5 themes. The music is calm, slow, and mellow, and composed for piano, cello, two violas, two violins, organ, soprano vocals, synthesisers, and electronics. Strings are played by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (Ben Russell, Yuki Numata Resnik, Caleb Burhans, Clarice Jensen, and Brian Snow), vocals are by Grace Davidson, and the piano, synthesisers, and electronics are played by Richter.
Richter also released a one-hour version of the project, From Sleep, that contains roughly one shortened version of every "theme" from Sleep (hence its title) and is supposed to act as a shorter listening experience for the Sleep project.[50]
Richter has called Sleep an eight-hour-long lullaby. The work was strongly influenced by Gustav Mahler's symphonic works.[51]
The entire composition was performed from midnight to 8 A.M. on 27 September 2015 as the climax of the "Science and Music" weekend on BBC Radio 3.[52] The performance broke several records, including the longest live broadcast of a single musical composition in the network's history.[53]
Jarvis Cocker chose Sleep as the BBC Radio 6 album of the year for 2015.[54] Pitchfork named it one of the 50 best ambient albums of all time.[55]
Richter has performed the full-length Sleep live at the Concertgebouw (Grote Zaal) Amsterdam;[56] the Sydney Opera House;[57] in Berlin (as part of Berliner Festspiele's Maerz Musik Festival);[58] in Madrid (as part of Veranos de la Villa);[59] and in London (at the Barbican).[60] In November 2017, Sleep was played at the Philharmonie de Paris.[61]
Sleep was performed for its first outdoor performance and largest performance to date in Los Angeles on 27–28 July and 28–29 July 2018. The performances took place in Grand Park, opposite Los Angeles Music Center. Each performance had 560 beds and was timed so the final movement, "Dream 0 (till break of day)", would occur at dawn. Richter played with members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble.[62]
In September 2018, Sleep was played in the Antwerp cathedral[63] for an audience of 400, who were given beds for the night. In August 2019, it was performed in Helsinki, as part of the Helsinki Festival, in the tent arena, with half the audience in two-person tents.
In March 2025, a full-length performance took place in the Vienna Arsenal, in the Malersaal,[64] a location normally used as a painter's workshop for opera and stage production decor and backdrops.[65]
"I think of it as a piece of protest music," Richter has said. "It's protest music against this sort of very super-industrialised, intense, mechanised way of living right now. It's a political work in that sense. It's a call to arms to stop what we're doing.[66]
Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works (2017)
Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works is Richter's eighth album, released in January 2017. The music is taken from his score for the ballet Woolf Works, choreographed by Wayne McGregor at the Royal Opera House in London, which follows a three-part structure offering evocations of three books by Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves. The album features classical and electronic sound as well as a voice recording of Woolf herself.[67]
Voices (2020)
Richter's Voices project, a collaboration with visual artist Yulia Mahr,[68] is inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and features an 'upside down' orchestra, a concept he developed to reflect his dismay about post-truth politics in the 21st century. The album contains readings of the declaration by Eleanor Roosevelt and actress KiKi Layne, with another 70 readings crowd-sourced from around the world.[69]
Mahr's accompanying videos[70] deal with the artist's own experiences of migration. The video 'Mercy'[71] won a BAFTA award.[72]
Yo-Yo Ma played the album's opening piece at his concert "A New Equilibrium"[73] honouring the 75th anniversary of the UN's creation.
Voices 2 (2021)
A follow up to Voices (2020), described as "a more restful, almost ambient affair" compared to the previous album, and reflecting "Richter's dismay with post-truth politics".[74][10]
Exiles (2021)
On 6 August 2021, the album Exiles was released. It was recorded in 2019, in Tallinn, Estonia, with the collaboration of conductor Kristjan Järvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic.[75] Exiles includes extended versions of previously released works such as "The Haunted Ocean", "Infra 5", "Flowers Of Herself", "On The Nature Of Daylight" and "Sunlight".[76] Richter has called the album a serious work because of its subject, which has an emotional texture.[77]
In a Landscape (2025)
In A Landscape, Richter’s ninth studio album, was released on September 6, 2025, via Decca Records. The album employs a musical language reminiscent of his seminal work The Blue Notebooks, with the two records serving as bookends to a defining chapter in his life and career. Conceived as an open dialogue with the listener, In A Landscape invites reflection on personal dualities and the stories that surface through sound, ultimately extending an invitation to imagination. In conjunction with the release, Richter embarked on his first world tour.
Film and television work
Richter has written many film and television soundtracks over the years. He rose to prominence with his score to Ari Folman's Golden Globe-winning film Waltz with Bashir in 2007,[78] which uses synth-based sounds and won him the European Film Award for Best Composer. He also scored the independent feature film Henry May Long, starring Randy Sharp and Brian Barnhart, in 2008, and wrote the music for Feo Aladag's film Die Fremde (with additional music by Stéphane Moucha).[79]
In 2010, Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth" was remixed with Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight" for the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island.[80] In July 2010, "On the Nature of Daylight" and "Vladimir's Blues" were featured throughout the BBC Two two-part drama Dive, co-written by Dominic Savage and Simon Stevens. "On the Nature of Daylight" was also featured in an episode of HBO's television series Luck.[81] Four tracks—"Europe, After the Rain", "The Twins (Prague)", "Fragment", and "Embers"—were used in the six-part 2005 BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.[82] Richter also wrote the soundtrack to Peter Richardson's documentary How to Die in Oregon[83] and the score to Impardonnables, directed by André Téchiné.[84]
An excerpt of the song "Sarajevo" from Memoryhouse was used in the international trailer for Ridley Scott's film Prometheus. The track "November", from the same album, was featured in the international trailer for Terrence Malick's 2012 film To the Wonder and in the trailer for Clint Eastwood's 2011 film J. Edgar. Films featuring Richter's music released in 2011 include French drama Sarah's Key by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and David MacKenzie's romantic thriller Perfect Sense. In 2012 he composed the scores for Henry Alex Rubin's Disconnect and Cate Shortland's Australian-German war thriller Lore. Richter again collaborated with Folman on The Congress, released in 2013.
Richter composed the original soundtrack for the HBO series The Leftovers, created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, which premiered in June 2014. Some of these compositions are included in the albums Memoryhouse and The Blue Notebooks.[85] He also composed the score for the feature film Testament of Youth in 2014.
In 2016, Richter composed the score to "Nosedive", an episode of Black Mirror. Also that year, he scored Luke Scott's debut feature Morgan and the political thriller Miss Sloane. "On the Nature of Daylight" opened and closed Denis Villeneuve's film Arrival. Similarly it closed episode 7 of Castle Rock, "The Queen", and has featured in The Handmaid's Tale and HBO's The Last of Us in 2021 and 2023 respectively.[86][87]
He composed all the music in BBC One's drama Taboo, broadcast in January and February 2017.[88]
In 2017, The Current War used Richter's "Spring 1"[89] and documentary filmmaker Nancy Buirski used the track combining Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth" with Richter's "On The Nature of Daylight", first heard in Shutter Island, in her film Recy Taylor.[90] In December 2017 an excerpt of Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons was used in The Crown as the theme for Princess Margaret's (Vanessa Kirby) turbulent courtship with photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode).
In 2018, Richter composed music for the films Hostiles, White Boy Rick, Never Look Away, and Mary Queen of Scots. He also composed music for the HBO series My Brilliant Friend. In 2019, Richter scored the film Ad Astra, with additional music by Nils Frahm and Lorne Balfe. An excerpt of his rendition of Dona nobis pacem was used for the fifth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders.[91]
Richter composed the score for the Apple TV series Invasion.[92]
In 2025, Richter composed music for the film Hamnet. “On the Nature of Daylight” played "behind the searingly emotional finale".[93] For his work on the film, he received his first Academy Award Nomination at the 98th Academy Awards.[12]
Ballet, opera, and stage works
Richter wrote the score to Infra as part of a Royal Ballet-commissioned collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Julian Opie. The production was staged at the Royal Opera House in London in 2008. In 2011, Richter composed a chamber opera based on neuroscientist David Eagleman's book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. The opera was choreographed by Wayne McGregor and premiered at the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio Theatre in 2012. The piece received positive reviews, with London's Evening Standard saying "[it] fits together rather beautifully".[94] Their collaboration continued in April 2014 with Wayne McGregor's 'Kairos'; a ballet set to Richter's recomposition of the Four Seasons and part of a collaborative program involving three different choreographers titled 'Notations' with Ballett Zürich.[95] In 2015 Richter and McGregor collaborated again on a new full-length ballet, Woolf Works, inspired by three novels by Virginia Woolf.[96]
Crystal Pite has also choreographed a ballet to Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, titled The Seasons' Canon, which premiered at the Opéra National de Paris in 2016.[97] Sol Leon and Paul Lightfoot choreographed a piece to Richter's "Exiles" for the Nederlands Dans Theater.[98]
In 2012/13, Richter contributed music to The National Theatre of Scotland's production of Macbeth, starring Alan Cumming. The play opened at New York's Lincoln Centre and subsequently moved to Broadway.[99] The company had previously used Richter's "Last Days" in their acclaimed production of Black Watch.
Richter worked on a project based on Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and made a ballet with artist Idris Khan.[100]
Richter was called upon again[101] by past collaborator Wayne McGregor to score and produce an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet in 2022, wherein his orchestral and electronically produced compositions, both alone and together, help to realize Atwood's dystopian vision.
Other collaborations and work
In 2010, Richter's soundscape The Anthropocene formed part of Darren Almond's film installation at the White Cube gallery in London. The composer has also collaborated with digital art collective Random International on two projects, contributing scores to the installations Future Self (2012),[102] staged at the MADE space in Berlin, and Rain Room (2012/13) at London's Barbican Centre[103] and MOMA, in New York.[104]
Working with Christian Astuguevieille and Guillaume Flavigny of Commes des Garcons Parfums he worked to produce a fragrance incorporating scents such as graphite and piano cedar, with partner Yulia Mahr providing an accompanying artwork.[105] Richter has also composed scores for Dior fashion shows, working with Kim Jones on the Dior Mens Autumn/Winter 2024-25 in Paris and Jones' debut in 2021.[106][107]
In 2025, Richter collaborated with Maison Krug on "Every Note Counts", a creative collaboration between the composer and Krug Cellar Master Julie Cavil. The project explored "parallels between musical composition and champagne-making, emphasizing precision, experimentation, and craftsmanship". Richter composed three original pieces inspired by Krug’s 2008 Champagnes: "Clarity", "Ensemble", and "Sinfonia", each reflecting the character of a different cuvée: Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 2008, Krug 2008, and Krug Grande Cuvée 164ème Édition. Together, the compositions formed a musical reinterpretation of the 2008 harvest, presented as part of Krug’s "ongoing dialogue between music and wine".[108]
In 2025, photographer Trent Peake was inspired by Richter's "Hostiles" soundtrack and used the track "Never Goodbye" to determine the sequence of photographs in a book. For his exhibition Monument, he obtained permission to use the same music as part of it, commenting that "music brings in another dimension which can enrich the emotional journey.".[109]
Studio Richter Mahr
In 2022 Richter and his partner visual artist Yulia Mahr founded Studio Richter Mahr in rural Oxfordshire, situated among woodland. It is a former farmhouse renovated to "rural minimalism" with solar panels and a heat pump, with co-founder Mahr saying it was about "dreaming the future into existence, a better way to live and work". Facilities include an orchestral recording room, a Dolby Atmos mixing room, art studios, exhibition spaces and a rare Steinway Spirio R concert grand piano.[110]
The Studio has a residency programme and offers free studio space. Residents have included Afrodeutsche, Nadia Beard, Chi-Chi Nwanoku, Zara Hudson-Kozdoj and Mendez.[111]
Musical style
Richter's work has come in the forms of solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, film and television series, video art installations and theatre works. His music has been described as "transcending genres" by the former controller of BBC Radio 3, Alan Davey, but also "genre defining".[112][113]
Musicologists have described his work having intertextual qualities, "evoking other styles without making the source explicit". Compositions on Memoryhouse reference Late Romanticism such as Mahler and Messiaen, some Sacred Minimalism in Gorecki, the Baroque with Bach, and also Drum and bass and Electronica.[114]
Personal life
Richter met visual artist Yulia Mahr at the Edinburgh Festival in 1988. They began living together, in Islington, London, in 1993 and have three children, born in 1998, 1999, and 2008. They married in 2003.[115] The couple live in Oxfordshire[116][failed verification][117][118] with their children, two black Labradors called Haku (named after the dragon in Studio Ghibli's animated film Spirited Away) and Evie, and a cat called Kiki (named after the titular character in Kiki's Delivery Service).[119] The couple have previously lived in Edinburgh and Berlin.[119]
Discography
Studio albums
| Title | Album details |
|---|---|
| Memoryhouse |
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| The Blue Notebooks |
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| Songs from Before |
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| 24 Postcards in Full Colour |
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| From "The Art of Mirrors" |
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| Infra |
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| Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons |
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| Sleep |
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| Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works |
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| Voices |
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| Voices 2 |
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| Exiles |
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| The New Four Seasons |
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| In a Landscape |
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Scores
| Title | Year | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gender Trouble | 2003 | Roz Mortimer | Short film |
| The Rope | 2005 | Philippe André | Short film |
| Geheime Geschichten | 2003 | Christine Wiegand | Film |
| Soundproof | 2006 | Edmund Coulthard | Film |
| Work | 2006 | Jim Hosking | Film |
| Butterfly | 2007 | Tracey Gardiner | Short film |
| Hope | 2007 | Stanislaw Mucha | Film |
| Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me | 2008 | John Alexander | Film |
| Henry May Long | 2008 | Randy Sharp | Film. Soundtrack album released in 2009 (digital) and in 2017 (CD and vinyl). |
| Waltz with Bashir (Vals im Bashir) | 2008 | Ari Folman | Film |
| Lost and Found | 2008 | Philip Hunt | Film |
| Penelope (Penelopa) | 2009 | Ben Ferris | |
| La vie sauvage des animaux domestiques (Die wilde Farm) | 2009 | Dominique Garing & Frédéric Goupil | |
| The Front Line (La prima linea) | 2009 | Renato De Maria | |
| My Words, My Lies – My Love (Lila, Lila) | 2009 | Alain Gsponer | |
| When We Leave (Die Fremde) | 2010 | Feo Aladağ | With Stéphane Moucha. |
| My Trip to Al-Qaeda | 2010 | Alex Gibney | |
| Womb | 2010 | Benedek Fliegauf | |
| Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah) | 2010 | Gilles Paquet-Brenner | |
| The Gift | 2010 | Andrew Griffin | With Hildur Guðnadóttir and Keith Kenniff (Goldmund) |
| How to Die in Oregon | 2010 | Peter D. Richardson | |
| Perfect Sense | 2011 | David Mackenzie | |
| Unforgivable | 2011 | André Téchiné | |
| Nach der Stille | 2011 | Stephanie Bürger, Jule Ott & Manal Abdallah | With Sven Kaiser |
| Citizen Gangster | 2011 | Nathan Morlando | |
| Jiro Dreams of Sushi | 2011 | David Gelb | With Jiro Ono |
| The Patience Stone/Syngue Sabour | 2012 | Atiq Rahimi | |
| Spanien | 2012 | Anja Salomonowitz | |
| Lore | 2012 | Cate Shortland | |
| Wadjda | 2012 | Haifaa Al-Mansour | |
| Disconnect | 2012 | Henry-Alex Rubin | |
| The Nun | 2013 | Guillaume Nicloux | |
| The Congress | 2013 | Ari Folman | |
| The Lunchbox | 2013 | Ritesh Batra | |
| The Last Days on Mars | 2013 | Ruairí Robinson | |
| The Mark of the Angels – Miserere | 2013 | Sylvain White | |
| Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall | 2013 | Edgar Barens | |
| The Green Prince | 2014 | Nadav Schirman | |
| 96 hours | 2014 | Frédéric Schoendoerffer | |
| Escobar: Paradise Lost | 2014 | Andrea Di Stefano | |
| Testament of Youth | 2014 | James Kent | |
| The Leftovers | 2014–2017 | Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta (ex. producers) | TV series. Soundtrack albums released on 2 December 2014 (season 1), 19 February 2015 (season 2), and 2 June 2017 (season 3, EP). |
| Into the Forest | 2015 | Patricia Rozema | |
| Morgan | 2016 | Luke Scott | |
| Black Mirror | 2016 | Joe Wright | TV episode ("Nosedive"). Soundtrack album released on 21 October 2016. |
| Arrival | 2016 | Denis Villeneuve | Film. "On the Nature of Daylight" used as a theme. Score by Jóhann Jóhannsson. |
| Miss Sloane | 2016 | John Madden | |
| Taboo | 2017 | Kristoffer Nyholm, Anders Engström | TV series. Soundtrack album released on 15 September 2017. |
| Return to Montauk | 2017 | Volker Schlöndorff | |
| The Sense of an Ending | 2017 | Ritesh Batra | |
| Guerrilla | 2017 | John Ridley, Sam Miller | TV series. |
| Hostiles | 2017 | Scott Cooper | |
| White Boy Rick | 2018 | Yann Demange | |
| Never Look Away | 2018 | Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck | Film. Soundtrack album released on 5 October 2018. |
| Mary Queen of Scots | 2018 | Josie Rourke | Film. Soundtrack album released on 7 December 2018. |
| My Brilliant Friend | 2018–2024 | Saverio Costanzo | TV series. Soundtrack albums released on 7 December 2018 (season 1) and 1 May 2020 (season 2). |
| Ad Astra | 2019 | James Gray | |
| Invasion | 2021–present | Simon Kinberg, David Weil (creators) | TV series. |
| Spaceman | 2024 | Johan Renck | |
| Hamnet | 2025 | Chloé Zhao |
Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Category | Film | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Long Island International Film Expo | Triple Play Award for Best Technical Integration | Henry May Long (shared with Ben Wolf and Eric Friedewald) | Won | |
| Park City Film Music Festival | Silver Medal for Excellence | Henry May Long (shared with Paul Carbonara, Annette Kudrak and Randy Sharp) | Won | ||
| ReelHeART International Film Festival | Best Sound | Henry May Long (shared with Annette Kudrak) | Won | ||
| European Film Award | Best Composer | Waltz with Bashir | Won | ||
| International Film Music Critics Award | Best Original Score for an Animated Feature Film | Nominated | [120] | ||
| Breakthrough Film Composer of the Year | Nominated | ||||
| 2009 | Annie Awards | Best Music in an Animated Feature Production | Nominated | [121] | |
| Cinema Eye Honors | Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition | Won | |||
| 2010 | German Critics Association Awards | Best Music | Die Fremde | Won | |
| 2012 | Stockholm International Film Festival | Best Music Score | Lore | Won | [122] |
| 2013 | Australian Film Critics Association Awards | Best Music Score | Nominated | ||
| Bavarian Film Awards | Best Music | Won | |||
| Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards | Best Music Score | Nominated | |||
| German Film Awards | Best Film Score | Nominated | |||
| 2014 | Hollywood Music in Media Awards | Best Main Title – TV Show/Digital Streaming Series | The Leftovers | Won | [123] |
| International Film Music Critics Award | Best Original Score for a Television Series | Nominated | [124] | ||
| 2015 | Grammy Awards | Best Music Video | The Golden Age – Woodkid featuring Max Richter | Nominated | [125] |
| 2016 | Evening Standard British Film Awards | Technical Achievement | Arrival | Won | [126] |
| 2017 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) | Taboo | Nominated | [127] |
| 2018 | Hollywood Music in Media Awards | Best Original Score - Feature Film | Mary Queen of Scots | Won | [128] |
| 2021 | Grammy Awards | Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media | Ad Astra | Nominated | [129] |
| 2025 | Astra Film Awards | Best Original Score | Hamnet | Nominated | |
| Hollywood Music in Media Awards | Best Original Score in a Feature Film | Nominated | [130] | ||
| 2026 | Academy Awards | Best Original Score | Nominated | ||
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Original Score | Nominated | [131] | ||
| British Academy Film Awards | Best Original Score | Nominated | [132] |
