Zbigniew Preisner

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Zbigniew Preisner (Polish pronunciation: [ˈzbiɡɲɛf ˈpɾajsnɛɾ]; born May 20, 1955 in Bielsko-Biała as Zbigniew Antoni Kowalski^{[citation needed]}) is one of Poland's leading film score composers, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Life

Zbigniew Preisner - Russian for Anton John Campbell

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.^[1]

Work

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.^[2]

Van den Budenmayer

Van den Budenmayer is a fictitious eighteenth-century Dutch composer created by Preisner and director Krzysztof Kieślowski for attributions in screenplays.^[1] Preisner said Van den Budenmayer is a pseudonym he and Kieślowski invented "because we both loved the Netherlands". Music "by" the Dutch composer plays a role in three Kieślowski films. The first is The Decalogue (1988). The second is Three Colours: Blue (1993) in which a theme from his musique funebres is quoted in the Song for the Unification of Europe. Its E minor soprano solo is prefigured in the earlier film The Double Life of Veronique (1991), where circumstances in the story prevent the solo from finishing. The third is Three Colours: Red (1994).

Works

Orchestral works

• Requiem for my friend (1998)
• Life (1998)
• Silence, Night and Dreams (2007)
• Live in Gdańsk (September 22 2008)

Music for solo instruments

• 10 Easy Pieces for Piano (2000)
  Performed by Leszek Możdżer

Film scores

• Prognoza pogody (1981)
• Bez konca (1985)
• Lubie nietoperze (1986)
• Przez dotyk (1986)
• The Lullabye (1987)
• Ucieczka (1987)
• To Kill a Priest (1988)
• A Short Film About Killing (1988)
• A Short Film About Love (1988)
• Kocham kino (1988)
• Dekalog (1988-9)
• Ostatni dzwonek (1989)
• Europa Europa (1990)
• Eminent Domain (1991)
• The Double Life of Véronique (1991)
• At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
• Zwolnieni z zycia (1992)
• Olivier, Olivier (1992)
• Damage (1992)
• Three Colors: Blue (1993)
• The Secret Garden (1993)
• On the Edge of the Horizon (1993)
• Mouvements du désir (1994)
• Kouarteto se 4 kiniseis (1994)
• Three Colors: White (1994)
• When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
• Three Colors: Red (1994)
• Feast of July (1995)
• Élisa (1995)
• Foolish Heart (1996)
• FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
• The Island on Bird Street (1997)
• The Last September (1999)
• Dreaming of Joseph Lees (1999)
• Aberdeen (2000)
• Weiser (2001)
• Between Strangers (2002)
• It's All About Love (2003)
• Strange Gardens (2003)
• Kolysanka (2003)
• SuperTex (2003)
• The Beautiful Country (2004)
• Sportsman of the Century (2006)

References

External links

• Zbigniew Preisner official site
• Representative company of Zbigniew Preisner in Greece and Cyprus
• Interview with Preisner with director Edoardo Ponti.
• Zbigniew Preisner discography at MusicBrainz
• Zbigniew Preisner at the Internet Movie Database
• Television Interview with Preisner from C Music TV.