Sleep

Sleep has 31 pieces, most of them variations on four or five themes, scored for piano, cello, two violas, two violins, organ, soprano, synthesisers and electronics. Richter consulted David Eagleman about how the brain behaves during sleep, and structured the work as a large set of variations in the spirit of Bach's Goldberg Variations. He calls it an eight-hour lullaby and also a piece of protest music against a super-industrialised, mechanised way of living. The strings are the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and the soprano is Grace Davidson.

A one-hour companion, From Sleep, appeared alongside it. The full work was performed from midnight to 8 am on 27 September 2015 at the Wellcome Collection as the climax of BBC Radio 3's Science and Music weekend, with the audience in beds, setting records for the longest live broadcast of a single piece. Los Angeles staged it outdoors in Grand Park on 27 to 29 July 2018, with 560 beds. Natalie Johns directed a documentary, Max Richter's Sleep, released in April 2020.

Pitchfork's Grayson Haver Currin called it an ever-shifting set of meticulously performed pieces and singled out Aria 2, If You Came This Way and Song / Echo. The album peaked at 44 in the UK, and by 2025 had passed two billion streams. Richter marked its tenth anniversary with Sleep Circle, a 90-minute piece released on 5 September 2025.