Bande originale de 'Anna Karenina'

In fact, there is an Indian musical connect in "Anna Karenina" too. I have written a small lullaby in Bengali that will be sung by Tannishtha!" Anoushka says, refusing to divulge as yet how a Bengali lullaby fits into a Tolstoy adaptation.

Octobre 2012

If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it
As reported by the Financial Times, the company is looking at its Vertu brand of luxury handsets as a worthy candidate for its yard sale. The Vertu phones, which can cost more than $314,000, are made with precious metals, come with exclusive ringtones (compositions by Dario Marianelli performed by the London Symphony Orchestra), and convey onto their owners a special concierge service to book flights, hotels, and the like.

Christy Edwall talks with Dario Marianelli about the art of composition

Marianelli is currently deeply into composition of the score for Anna Karenina, and I wondered if his composition found any distinct roots in Russian music. Marianelli said that he found Russian folk music important, ‘Especially the kind of folk music that started the five (Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin). Especially Balakirev. At some point he went off in the 1860s and went collecting folk music. He had this clear idea that he wanted a national Russian music based on folk tunes. And they’re very interesting, they have certain preferred intervals and idiomatic tone of phrases. I tried to listen as much as I could to them, more than the music of Mussorsky or Rimsky-Korsakov or even Tchaikovsky. I was more interested in what inspired them to come up with the Russian music that they invented, because Russian national classical music is a bit of an invention.’

Marianelli divulged the fact that there’s a lot of liberty in Wright’s version of Anna Karenina because of a central conceit of an opera theatre. ‘Most of the story happens within the theatre almost as if it were an opera itself,’ said Marianelli, ‘The whole story is almost like it were an opera or puppet show. So the music goes in very strange places sometimes.’

First ANNA KARENINA trailer was recently released featuring impressive music most likely incorporating parts of the actual score by Dario Marianelli.

The album features the film’s original music written by Academy Award-winning composer Dario Marianelli (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice).The soundtrack is set to be released in the UK on September 10, 2012 by Decca Classics and a release date in the US is expected in November.

Here’s the album track list:
1. Overture
2. Clerks
3. She Is Of The Heavens
4. Anna Marches Into A Waltz
5. Beyond The Stage
6. Kitty’s Debut
7. Dance With Me
8. The Girl And The Birch
9. Unavoidable
10. Can-Can
11. I Don’t Want You to Go
12. Time For Bed
13. Too Late
14. Someone Is Watching
15. Lost In A Maze
16. Leaving Home, Coming Home
17. Masha’s Song
18. A Birthday Present
19. At The Opera
20. I Know How To Make You Sleep
21. Anna’s Last Train
22. I Understood Something
23. Curtain
24. Seriously

The soundtrack is set to be released in the UK on September 10, 2012 by Decca Classics and a release date in the US is expected in November.

Saturday, 28 September (2012):
This week, Howard celebrates the film composer Dario Marianelli, with selections from his soundtracks for Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Atonement. Plus – plenty of music for Marianelli’s score for the new Keira Knightley movie Anna Karenina.

There are several themes in the score of Anna Karenina:sometimes appearing alone, often intersecting, their paths running alongside for a while. Those paths are shared by the
characters in the story as they walk towards or away from convention, pretence, happiness, guilt, love, fun, and even truth.

In a very important sense, the musical motifs do not represent the characters themselves I prefer to think of them as spirits, perhaps demons, unseen, signposting the way, or simply bearing witness to the events.

Most of the action, in our version of Tolstoys novel, takes place in an abandoned theatre, upon or around a stage a symbol of the make-believe life of the Russian aristocracy at the end of the 19th century. Having convention and pretence confined within the boundaries of an old theatre, hints of course to another life,
one that must exist somewhere outside the confines of that stage. The music of Anna Karenina is perched between those two worlds.

For the curious: track 8: Beroza (Birch) is a very old Russian folk song: of its many versions, the one I used talks of a young woman deceiving an older husband. for track 19 At the Opera I used Tolstoy s own words from Anna Karenina, Part II, Chapter XI

Dario Marianelli - 13th August 2012

Joe Wright's fragmented, hyper-stylized adaptation of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" presented plenty of challenges to all who worked on it. But for Dario Marianelli, who has scored all but one of Wright's five features, the unusual structure meant unexpected opportunities. "It was a bit of a liberation when he came up with that idea," Marianelli says. "There was a lot of freedom to explore and do crazy things, not to be constrained by the boundaries of the genre, and experiment a bit."

The composer subverted the expected in various ways, including peppering his score with the accordion. "I imagined bands that would play in a French theater and contrasted it with the sophisticated waltzes and mazurkas of the aristocracy," Marianelli says. "And I made up my own versions -- like a Balkan band, with lots of brass from Serbia or some such place. It was all made up and scrambled. You don't expect to hear a cancan in 'Anna Karenina.' And even if some of my pieces ended up on the cutting-room floor, they are there in spirit. I was constantly getting away from a predictable sound or even a historically accurate sound."

One of the biggest surprises was the presence of heavy brass. "We had sessions with three trombones, two trumpets and a bunch of tubas," Marianelli says. "One of the things Joe said early on was that on the way to the tears are going to be some laughs. He wanted us not to be afraid to be grotesque or go over-the-top, to just try it and see if it worked."

Wright's cut-loose approach proved just what the composer needed. "I have to write music that surprises myself," he says. "Otherwise it's boring. And Joe definitely doesn't hide music. When there's music, you hear it. It's doing something. So what a wonderful chance this was for me."