The face of Kirill Richter is on posters across London, announcing a concert at the Coliseum. It is not the kind of face you expect to see promoting a new orchestral work. It feels too modern, too much of this moment. Richter is a composer whose work exists in the spaces between worlds – between classical and pop, digital and analog, the ancient and the immediate.
To follow Richter’s career is to see a portrait of a 21st-century artist. He is a man for whom a background in design, a passion for historical reenactments, and a love for Harry Potter are not contradictions, but the very building blocks of a new and thrilling symphonic music.
The London Connection
Richter’s relationship with London is not just another stop on a tour schedule; it is a return to a source. He studied here, at the British Higher School of Art and Design, and it was that education that gave him the guiding principle for his work: the practice of “deep research.”
For Richter, a truly new creation must draw its energy from outside its own medium. “I think it’s silly to write music inspired by music,” he says. “You should be inspired by people, history, literature.” A trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum is not just tourism; it’s a way of plugging back into the source that helped shape his creative vision.
The Anatomy of Inspiration
When Richter speaks of his influences, he moves with a fluid ease across centuries and genres. One moment, he is discussing his recent ballet, The Seven Ages, based on a Shakespearean monologue, and the deep dive he took into everything from the legend of the fountain of youth to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
In the next, he’ll talk about the video game The Last of Us with the same serious admiration, praising its cinematic power and brilliant score. He speaks with a boyish enthusiasm about flying a broomstick in Hogwarts Legacy, calling himself a “strange Gryffindor who somehow knew ‘Avada Kedavra.'”
That reference to J.K. Rowling’s universe becomes a telling metaphor for his own creative process and his closest collaborators. He casts his trio in the roles of the famous friends: violinist Alena Zinovieva is the brilliant Hermione, cellist Avgust Krepak is Ron, who possesses the “bravest and strongest energy,” and he, with a note of self-deprecating humor, is left to be Harry. It reveals more than any formal biography could: this is not just a musical ensemble, but a circle of friends where the magic comes from the interplay of different energies.
The Alchemy of Sound
So how is Richter’s music actually born? The process has little to do with the romantic image of a composer scribbling furiously by candlelight. Today, he hardly uses paper. “I use a tablet; it saves a lot of time,” he says pragmatically. The main method is improvisation – hours, sometimes days, spent at the piano, which are recorded and then meticulously sifted through. “It’s a tedious process that few can endure.”
Even in this digital workflow, he makes space for analog rituals. He creates mood boards, pinning handwritten notes about melodies and orchestration to his instrument, much like a designer gathering swatches and sketches before beginning a project. He sees the piano not as a sacred object, but as a tool, a wand. Pianists, in his sharp analogy, are “more like sailors” who play on whatever instrument is available in each new port. This allows him to shift his role: in the studio he is a composer, but on stage, he is a performer, sending waves of energy into the “ocean” of the concert hall.
His music has taken on a life of its own, heard at the World Cup and the Olympics. Yet he remains grounded. He photographs the posters with his face on them for his mother, reasoning that in our era, you sometimes have to “sell abstract art with your own face.” It’s a fitting summary for a composer who has learned to draw power from every corner of our culture, proving that the most interesting art today is being made in the spaces where the old worlds collide with the new.
