It is well known that certain classical music has a relaxing effect and, especially during a concert, anyone can find themselves nodding off. Starting from this premise, but also from the observation that we live in a hyperkinetic society, the 49-year-old British composer Max Richter has written an eight-hour piece entitled "Sleep", composed expressly for sleeping — to aid slumber, or simply to find a moment of relaxation on the busiest of days.

Richter, highly regarded for his film scores — among them "Waltz with Bashir" by Ari Folman, for which he won a European Film Award in 2007 — and for having composed the music for television series such as "The Leftovers", will give the world premiere of "Sleep" in Berlin. He describes it as a "lullaby for a frenetic world". The performance of the piece is conceived to run from midnight until eight in the morning, for an audience lying on comfortable beds set up in the hall rather than arranged in the customary seats. The work, which features parts for piano, strings, voices and electronics, is set to become the longest piece ever composed in the history of classical music.

During the composition of "Sleep", Richter consulted the American neuroscientist David Eagleman to learn more about how the human brain functions during sleep. As far back as 2012, the German-born composer had transformed Eagleman's bestseller "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives" into a chamber opera. "It's really an experiment to try to understand how we experience music in different states of consciousness," explains Richter. "Sleep is one of the most important things. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, and it has been one of my favourite activities since I was a child." "It's not new in music," he concludes, "if we look at John Cage, Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, but we're coming back to it again as a reaction to our accelerated lives. We all need the Pause button." Despite this, "Sleep" will also be released by the Deutsche Grammophon label in an abridged one-hour version, for more attentive — or sleepless — listening.