Author: Wojciech Kilar

Release Date: 31-07-2008

Details: Amazon.ca Roman Polanski's account of the survival of famed Polish composer-pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman in the Nazi-controlled Warsaw ghetto cannot help but be infused with the director's deepest passions: he himself escaped the Kraków ghetto as a seven-year-old boy. The musician's status as a musical hero to the oppressed Polish Jews of World War II was surpassed only by that of Chopin, the composer who was at the core of Szpilman's repertoire. Thus, this score revolves tightly around Chopin's music, with modern Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak paying passionate homage to both his musical and national forebears, the haunting strains of the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor setting the film's historical and dramatic tone. The underscore by previous Polanski collaborator Wojciech Kilar ( The Ninth Gate, Death and the Maiden) is represented here by the soulful "Moving to the Ghetto," a cue that helps anchor the soundtrack's troubling time and place with understated grace. The collection concludes with a rare, remastered performance of Chopin's Mazurka Op. 17, No. 4 by Szpilman himself, recorded in Warsaw in 1948. --Jerry McCulley

UPC: 696998773929

EAN: 0696998773929

Languages: English

Binding: Audio CD

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood