SONY MASTERWORKS RELEASES ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
OF A DANGEROUS METHOD
ORIGINAL MUSIC BY AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER HOWARD SHORE
FEATURES LANG LANG’S PERFORMANCE OF WAGNER’S SIEGFRIED IDYLL
Available on November 21, 2011
Sony Masterworks is proud to announce the release of the original soundtrack picture soundtrack of A Dangerous Method. Howard Shore, a leading composer for movies, wrote the music for this dark and dramatic tale set in Zurich and Vienna on the eve of the First World War. Available on Monday, November 21, the soundtrack also features a recording of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll by one of the most exciting pianists of our time, Lang Lang.
A Dangerous Method is the story of the relationship between two of the great pioneers of modern psychology, Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), and of Jung’s relationship with his brilliant and beautiful young patient Sabina Spielrein, a wonderful role for Keira Knightley. Jung successfully treats Sabina, who with his encouragement becomes a psychiatrist herself, and through correspondence about her case Jung gains the friendship of Freud. When Jung breaks off his love affair with Sabina, she becomes Freud’s patient, and differences on moral and intellectual issues open a gap between the two men.
Director David Cronenberg has chosen Howard Shore to write the score for all but one of his films in the last 30 years. Shore has composed music for more than 80 films in all, also working with directors such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme, with whom he collaborated on Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. His outstanding success was the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for which he received three Academy Awards. Furthermore, he is the winner of two Golden Globe and four Grammy Awards for his film scores. He has also composed a number of concert works and an opera, The Fly, which premiered in Paris in 2008.
Featured on this soundtrack is Shore’s arrangement of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Wagner composed the Idyll as a birthday present for his wife Cosima after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It is a highly personal piece of music: its first performance, by a small ensemble in Wagner’s home on Christmas Day 1870, woke Cosima on that morning from her sleep. Later Wagner incorporated music from the Idyll into his opera Siegfried, the third of the four parts of The Ring.
Lang Lang, one of the world’s most renowned pianists, performs the 20-minute Siegfried Idyll on this soundtrack. His meteoric career has taken him around the world for performances in front of huge audiences and even into the White House.
A Dangerous Method with its many-layered story of sexual and intellectual exploration and its star cast has the potential for great box-office success. Shore’s music and the superb playing of Lang Lang will delight listeners who have seen the movie and fans of piano music and Wagner alike.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
blog comments powered by Disqus
