ORIGINAL MUSIC BY AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER HOWARD SHORE
AND LANG LANG’S PERFORMANCE OF WAGNER’S “SIEGFRIED IDYLL”
Howard Shore wrote the music for this dark and dramatic tale set in Zurich and Vienna on the eve of the First World War. A major part of the soundtrack is Howard Shore’s arrangement of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll performed by one of the most exciting pianists of our time, Lang Lang.
A Dangerous Method is the story of the relationship between two of the great pioneers of modern psychology, Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), and of Jung’s relationship with his brilliant and beautiful young patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Jung successfully treats Sabina, who with his encouragement becomes a psychiatrist herself, and through correspondence about her case Jung gains the friendship of Freud. When Jung breaks off his love affair with Sabina, she becomes Freud’s patient, and differences on moral and intellectual issues open a gap between the two men.
Shore’s arrangement of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll features on this soundtrack. Wagner composed the Idyll as a birthday present for his wife Cosima after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It is a highly personal piece of music: its first performance, by a small ensemble in Wagner’s home on Christmas Day 1870, woke Cosima on that morning from her sleep. Later Wagner incorporated music from the Idyll into his opera Siegfried, the third of the four parts of The Ring.
The interpreter of the Siegfried Idyll on this soundtrack, the pianist Lang Lang, is one of Sony Music’s most renowned artists. His meteoric career has taken him around the world for performances in front of huge audiences and even into the White House. His dazzling technique is matched by serious thought about the pieces he plays.