Thursday 22 July 2010

Zbigniew Preisner


When I was 11 years old I watched again, after 6 years, the movie "The secret garden". Of course I loved the movie but I liked much more the soundtrack. It took me a long time to figure out which were the names of the songs and the composer. But finally I got to know this man and his amazing work.
If you don't know him or his work, you should take a glimpse at it! you won't regret it if you want to expand your musical taste and knowledge about movie soundtracks.

Zbigniew Preisner studied history and philosophy in Kraków. Never having received formal music lessons, he taught himself about music by listening and transcribing parts from records. His compositional style represents a distinctively spare form of tonal neo-Romanticism. Paganini and Jean Sibelius are acknowledged influences.
Preisner is best known for the music composed for the films directed by fellow Pole Krzysztof Kieślowski. His Song for the Unification of Europe, based on the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13, is attributed to a character in Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue and plays a dominating role in the story. His music for Three Colors: Red includes a setting of Polish and French versions of a poem by Wisława Szymborska, a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet.
After working with Kieślowski on Three Colors: Blue, Preisner was hired by the producer Francis Ford Coppola to write the score for The Secret Garden, directed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Although Preisner is most closely associated with Kieślowski, he has collaborated with several other directors, winning a César in 1996 for his work on Jean Becker's Élisa. He has won a number of other awards, including another César in 1994 for Three Colors: Red, and the Silver Bear from the 1997 Berlin Film Festival 1997 for The Island on Bird Street.
In 1998, Requiem for My Friend, Preisner's first large scale work not written for film, premiered. It was originally intended as a narrative work to be written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz and directed by Kieślowski, but it became a memorial to Kieślowski after the director's death. He composed the theme music for the People's Century, a monumental twenty-six part documentary made jointly in 1994 by the BBC television network in United Kingdom and the PBS television network in the United States. He has also worked with director Thomas Vinterberg on the 2003 film It's All About Love and provided orchestration for David Gilmour's 2006 album On An Island. Silence, Night and Dreams is Zbigniew Preisner’s new recording project, a large-scale work for orchestra, choir and soloists, based on texts from the Book of Job. The premier recording, was released in 2007 with the lead singer of Madredeus, Teresa Salgueiro and boy soprano Thomas Cully from Libera.

Video "First time Outside"
From the movie "The Secret Garden"




Video "Lovers"
From the movie
"Aberdeen"



Video "Fairytale"
From the movie
"Fairytale: A true story"



I'll post more of his work. This is just a glimpse at Zbigniew Preisner :)

To find out more wait until another post or enter his website: http://www.preisner.com/

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