ECM’s recordings of Eleni Karaindrou’s music for films have always been more than “soundtracks”: they stand as independent artworks. So it is with the music written originally for Angelopoulos’s “Dust of Time”. In these intensely melodic compositions created from a delicate balance of instrumental colours, violin, cello and harp are especially important, as Karaindrou notes, “not only because of their own distinctiveness but also because of the inner quality of three participating musicians who live in Greece but were born in Rumania and Albania (Sergiu Nastasa, Renato Ripo, Maria Bildea). The flavour of their own musical tradition (tsiganiko) and of a very special inner feeling, permeates their playing. I had the feeling that the accordion had to pervade certain special moments with its colour; and the oboe should add some emotional touches on the canvas of my music.”
Dust of Time - Music for the film by Theo Angelopoulos
Eleni Karaindrou
- 1Le temps perdu
02:07 - 2Dance Theme Var II
02:40 - 3Notes I
01:19 - 4Seeking Var II
02:23 - 5Waltz by the River
03:33 - 6Unravelling Time I
01:21 - 7Tsiganiko I
01:22 - 8Dance Theme Var I
03:17 - 9Seeking
02:37 - 10Memories from Siberia
03:16 - 11Unravelling Time II
01:21 - 12Notes II
02:33 - 13Tsiganiko II
01:22 - 14Seeking Var I
03:26 - 15Dance Theme
04:30 - 16Le mal du pays
01:16 - 17Nostalgia Song
01:38 - 18Solitude
02:21 - 19Adieu
02:18
Ausdrucksstarke Klänge aus einem Guss bietet die Filmmusik von Eleni Karaindrou für Dust of Time, den neuen Film von Theo Angelopoulos. Die Zusammenarbeit der beiden Künstler steht an Beständigkeit und Intensität großen Paaren von Regisseuren und Komponisten wie Fellini/Rota oder Greenaway/Nyman in nichts nach. Vom Violinsolo über verschiedene Kammerensemble bis zum großen Sinfonieorchester fügen sich 19 kurze Stücke zu einer Einheit, die nicht nur durch ihre Melancholie zusammengehalten wird, sondern auch durch eine Vielzahl von geschickt eingesetzten Querbezügen zwischen den Einzelteilen. Stimmungsvolle Musik, die auch ohne den Film besteht.
Guido Diesing, Jazzthetik
Wie in allen Soundtracks erfüllt Karaindrou hier mit ihrer rituellen Langsamkeit, den einprägsamen, manisch wiederholten Motiven die Forderungen des Regisseurs, eine Einheit mit den Bildern seiner Werke zu schaffen. Aber ihre Klanggestalten besitzen auch ohne die visuellen Eigenschaften eine eigenständige Magie, die in einer nahezu unerschütterlichen Ruhe, Obertonreihen und volksliedhafter griechischer Melodik des reich arrangierten Dust of Time zur Entfaltung kommen.
Joachim Ody, Spex
It would be churlish to deny the attraction of what is Eleni Karaindrou’s most subtle and resourceful film score yet, or the care with which its various components have been placed on this disc so the overall sequence is both cumulative and continuous.
Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone
Sous la direction d’Alexandre Myrat, sa partition pour Dust of Time … accompagne avec tendresse une histoire qui débute en 1953, à la mort de Staline, et se clot en 1989, avec la chute du mur de Berlin. Les vedettes à l’écran ne doivent pas acculter la musique discrètement insistante et repetitive de la musicienne, où le violon et le violoncello, ainsi que l’accordéon et cor anglais solo, impriment une atmosphere de recueillement qui se marie toujours à la perfection avec la lenteur des images du cinéaste.
Franck Mallet, Classica
“There are encounters which in the end are proved to be turning points. There are moments when you hear a piece of music, have a chance conversation with someone or read a text and you get the unexpected feeling of communication at a deeper level, of a common language.
In Eleni Karaindrou, I found a musical language which seemed to come into being at the same time as the images in my films. Sounds that were mine before they were born. This is why the way we collaborate has, or at least I think it has, its special characteristics. It has been a long time since then, since our first meeting, our first work together, but time hasn’t tarnished anything. The aspirations, the intensity, the feeling of expectation are still the same. Every time there is the same critical encounter of music and images that seem to get born simultaneously.”
Theo Angelopoulos on Eleni Karaindrou, in “Horizons Touched” (Granta, 2007)
Greek director Theo Angelopoulos’s movie “Dust of Time” begins in 1953 with Stalin’s death and ends in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between, as so often in Angelopoulos’s films, are lives caught in the crossfire of history. The character A., a film director in his fifties, finds himself becoming a part of the film he is making, as he shapes his chronicle of the tumultuous life and love of his parents. As the tale unfolds, the action swings between Greece, Uzbekistan, Siberia, the US, Canada, Israel and Germany. Underpinning and uniting the plot: the music of Eleni Karaindrou.
Karaindrou, who has written music for Angelopoulos’s films for more than 25 years describes her first reading of the shooting script for “Dust of Time” as “a moving surprise”.
For the first time in an Angelopoulos film there is a scene with an orchestra, a conductor, a pianist and a composer: a rehearsal of the music score for the film-within-the-film of A. “The musical theme that I was supposed to write for this scene, an important reference to my collaboration with Theo Angelopoulos, in essence was meant to be one of the main themes of ‘Dust of Time’, where past and present intertwine.”
This became the “Dance Theme” heard in three versions on the present recording, one with the Hellenic Radio Television Symphony Orchestra and conductor Alexandros Myrat, the formation shown in the scene shot in the Athens Concert Hall. For all variations of the main themes, Karaindrou collaborated with members of the Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra.
The “Seeking” theme (also heard in symphonic and chamber versions) is described by its composer as “one that expresses the turbulent course of the characters through the specific historical period. In the film, themes dear to Theo Angelopoulos recur; exile, frontiers, separation.... To write the music I had to look for the film’s secret codes, I had to bring the essence of things to the surface and shed intense light on the sound colours underlining the timelessness of nostalgia.”
Music has always been an important presence in Angelopoulos’s films. In “Dust of Time” its role is central. The character Spyros, A’s father, is a pianist. “The piano, then, had to be present in my music,” Karaindrou says. “However the colour of the violin, of the cello and of the harp turned out to be dominant, not only because of their own distinctiveness but also because of the inner quality of three participating musicians who live in Greece but were born in Rumania and Albania. (Sergiu Nastasa, Renato Ripo, Maria Bildea). The flavour of their own musical tradition (tsiganiko) and of a very special inner feeling, marked by their having been uprooted from their countries, permeates their playing. I had the feeling that the accordion had to pervade certain special moments with its colour; and the oboe should add some emotional touches on the canvas of my music.”
Making music for cinema is one thing, the art of crafting albums from the material another. Around 100 minutes of music were recorded for the film, Karaindrou says, “but it took the ingenious, drastic intervention of Manfred Eicher’s dramaturgy to create a concentrated sound result of 45 minutes, with colours mixing into an invisible palette of delicate balances.”
After the massed instrumental forces of the live “Elegy of the Uprooting”, effectively an overview of Karaindrou’s music for film and theatre (issued on double CD in 2007, and on DVD in 2008), “Dust of Time” is an album quieter, more reflective charms.
The “Dust of Time”CD is released to coincide with the Berlin Film Festival (February 5-15), where Angelopoulos’s film is being shown.
In Eleni Karaindrou, I found a musical language which seemed to come into being at the same time as the images in my films. Sounds that were mine before they were born. This is why the way we collaborate has, or at least I think it has, its special characteristics. It has been a long time since then, since our first meeting, our first work together, but time hasn’t tarnished anything. The aspirations, the intensity, the feeling of expectation are still the same. Every time there is the same critical encounter of music and images that seem to get born simultaneously.”
Theo Angelopoulos on Eleni Karaindrou, in “Horizons Touched” (Granta, 2007)
Greek director Theo Angelopoulos’s movie “Dust of Time” begins in 1953 with Stalin’s death and ends in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between, as so often in Angelopoulos’s films, are lives caught in the crossfire of history. The character A., a film director in his fifties, finds himself becoming a part of the film he is making, as he shapes his chronicle of the tumultuous life and love of his parents. As the tale unfolds, the action swings between Greece, Uzbekistan, Siberia, the US, Canada, Israel and Germany. Underpinning and uniting the plot: the music of Eleni Karaindrou.
Karaindrou, who has written music for Angelopoulos’s films for more than 25 years describes her first reading of the shooting script for “Dust of Time” as “a moving surprise”.
For the first time in an Angelopoulos film there is a scene with an orchestra, a conductor, a pianist and a composer: a rehearsal of the music score for the film-within-the-film of A. “The musical theme that I was supposed to write for this scene, an important reference to my collaboration with Theo Angelopoulos, in essence was meant to be one of the main themes of ‘Dust of Time’, where past and present intertwine.”
This became the “Dance Theme” heard in three versions on the present recording, one with the Hellenic Radio Television Symphony Orchestra and conductor Alexandros Myrat, the formation shown in the scene shot in the Athens Concert Hall. For all variations of the main themes, Karaindrou collaborated with members of the Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra.
The “Seeking” theme (also heard in symphonic and chamber versions) is described by its composer as “one that expresses the turbulent course of the characters through the specific historical period. In the film, themes dear to Theo Angelopoulos recur; exile, frontiers, separation.... To write the music I had to look for the film’s secret codes, I had to bring the essence of things to the surface and shed intense light on the sound colours underlining the timelessness of nostalgia.”
Music has always been an important presence in Angelopoulos’s films. In “Dust of Time” its role is central. The character Spyros, A’s father, is a pianist. “The piano, then, had to be present in my music,” Karaindrou says. “However the colour of the violin, of the cello and of the harp turned out to be dominant, not only because of their own distinctiveness but also because of the inner quality of three participating musicians who live in Greece but were born in Rumania and Albania. (Sergiu Nastasa, Renato Ripo, Maria Bildea). The flavour of their own musical tradition (tsiganiko) and of a very special inner feeling, marked by their having been uprooted from their countries, permeates their playing. I had the feeling that the accordion had to pervade certain special moments with its colour; and the oboe should add some emotional touches on the canvas of my music.”
Making music for cinema is one thing, the art of crafting albums from the material another. Around 100 minutes of music were recorded for the film, Karaindrou says, “but it took the ingenious, drastic intervention of Manfred Eicher’s dramaturgy to create a concentrated sound result of 45 minutes, with colours mixing into an invisible palette of delicate balances.”
After the massed instrumental forces of the live “Elegy of the Uprooting”, effectively an overview of Karaindrou’s music for film and theatre (issued on double CD in 2007, and on DVD in 2008), “Dust of Time” is an album quieter, more reflective charms.
The “Dust of Time”CD is released to coincide with the Berlin Film Festival (February 5-15), where Angelopoulos’s film is being shown.
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