©Photo: Richard Ecclestone
©Photo: British composer Noah Max’s output spans opera, orchestral and chamber music. In 2021 his string tri
©Photo: Richard Ecclestone
©Photo: Richard Ecclestone
©Photo: Richard Ecclestone

Noah Max

Composer
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‘All focused intensity and chaotic curls, long pauses and fast-talking, the composer, conductor, artist and poet is a fizzing creative fuse’

The Sunday Times, January 2023

British-Austrian composer Noah Max’s output spans opera, orchestral and chamber music. In 2021 his string trio Sojourn won The Clements Prize and was performed by members of the Piatti Quartet at Conway Hall. His music has been performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room in London, as well as Vienna’s Musikverein, Altalena Festival in Budapest, Uilenburgersjoel Synagogue in Amsterdam and the Paderewski Academy in Poland. 

Max recently spent five years bringing his debut opera A Child In Striped Pyjamas to the stage by special arrangement with Miramax, culminating in a sold-out premiere production at London’s Cockpit Theatre in January 2023. The opera was lauded by critics as ​“emotionally ambitious and vocally eloquent” (The Telegraph) and ​“marvellously scored… A remarkable achievement for a young composer” (The Arts Desk). Max was interviewed about the opera by The Sunday Times and BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, with excerpts from the piece also broadcast on RTÉ Radio. Further revivals of the production are planned for 2023/24 and beyond.

© Richard Ecclestone

Max’s debut album Songs of Loneliness was released on Toccata Classics in 2022; this year he returns to the recording studio with the Tippett Quartet and Sir Michael Morpurgo. He is Composer-in-Residence at Thaxted Festival, where his Quartet No.2 was premiered by the Tippett Quartet in July 2023; the festival has since commissioned Symphony No.1 to be premiered by the London Mozart Players on 21 June 2024. Max’s song cycle Rapture, based on the 2005 poetry collection by Carol Ann Duffy, receives its world premiere at Essex Book Festival/​Wild Arts Summer Opera Festival on 19 June 2024. Other upcoming projects include the world premiere of the cello concerto AXIOM on 26 June 2024 as part of Proms at St. Jude’s, performed by Echo Ensemble and conducted by Max. Echo Ensemble also performs Max’s Phantasy Quintet at Thaxted Festival on 30 June 2024.

With a creative life that embraces music and painting, poetry and cinema, Max enjoys illuminating the relationships between different mediums. As a conductor he has assisted Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo at the BBC Proms and conducted Endymion Ensemble at Wigmore Hall. Max’s artworks have displayed at the National Portrait Gallery. His columns have been printed in The Irish Times, The Strad and The Jewish Chronicle; he has contributed to BBC Music Magazine and has been interviewed for Classical Music, Opera Today and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune.

Sojourn, Piatti Quartet, Winner - Clements © Conway Hall
...to the world without Time... for Leeds finalist Thomas Kelly © Noah Max
String Quartet No. 1 © Noah Max
'Rain' by Noah Max © London Song Festival
Aedh (online premiere) © Noah Max
NOAH MAX Radical Severance © Anna Kondrashina, Echo Ensemble
Four Animal Poems- Noah Max © Echo Ensemble, Maja Horvat, Sarah Frances Jenkins, Wallis Power, Thomas Kelly
Songs of Loneliness
Noah Max - Songs of Loneliness: III
Songs of Loneliness
Noah Max - Constellations

‘A Holocaust drama that’s emotionally ambitious and vocally eloquent… there can be no doubt of the integrity with which the tight-knit company deliver it’

The Telegraph, January 2023

‘Max handles the quartet medium with confidence and individuality. Challenging and complex, the three movements [are] strikingly differentiated in tenor and technique… the Tippett Quartet persuasively conveyed the music’s searing harmonic intensity [and] precise timbral effects’

Seen & Heard International, July 2023

‘Intense, harrowing drama… [which] invites universal grief. The skilled Echo Ensemble create sonorities with much spiky interlacing, resembling barbed wire, but coalescing intermittently into more humane consonances’

London Evening Standard, January 2023

‘Intense and lyrical’

BBC Radio 3 ‘In Tune’

‘A high degree of textural inventiveness… marvellously scored… the vocal lines [are] athletic and colourful. Max himself conducted the performance with clarity and complete commitment. A remarkable achievement for a young composer… he is in the first stages of a notable career.’

The Arts Desk, January 2023

‘Seriousness of purpose is crystal-clear from the outset. [Max’s] control of colour and texture is as impressive as it is wide-ranging’

The Stage, January 2023
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