"As the success of his film scores shows, Zbigniew Preisner knows exactly how to compose effective and immediately impressive music with an acute sense of timing."
Gramophone
TRACKLISTING [1] Perchance
[2] Silence, Night and Dreams
[3] To Speak
[4] To Dream
[5] To Find
[6] To Know
[7] To Die
[8] Be Faithful, Go
[9] To Love
SUNG TEXT Track 1 Understand the season,
Understand your mind.
Let yourself feel contact,
Closeness that we find
Mute as if enchanted,
Days pass by in streams
Leaving nought behind but
Silence, night and dreams.
Preisner’s Manifesto (for this album)
Why are the poor so stricken by despair?
Why do the rich feel ever more alone?
It embraces everything, night and dreams, Silence that arouses anxiety.
Night that envelops sadness and despair.
Dreams of hope for a transformation.
Let us take heed of Job.
Then maybe we¹ll prevail against
The slogans, the labels, illusions and indifference, The cradles that surround us.
Zbigniew Preisner, the composer of award-winning scores to films by Krzystof Kieslowski, Louis Malle, Agnieszka Holland and many others, has completed his latest orchestral project. Silence, Night and Dreams for orchestra, choir and soloists. The score incorporates texts from the Book of Job and the Gospel According to St. Matthew, and has a Preface by the Polish lawyer, screenwriter and politician Krzysztof Piesiewicz. The performers are the Aukso Chamber Orchestra of Tychy, under the baton of Marek Moš, Camerata Silesia, boy soprano Thomas Cully (from Libera) and Teresa Salgueiro, star singer of the Portuguese hit group Madredeus.
Without the constraints of a filmmaker's plot or screenplay, Preisner was able to create Silence, Night and Dreams on a clean canvas. The result is an atmospheric and spiritual piece, filled with soothing strings, gentle electronic effects and a pure and beautiful voice.
Preisner's inspiration was his concern at people today becoming alienated from one another, the result of technological 'advances' that paradoxically dissuade us from interaction and introspection. "Not long ago," he says, "we were reading by the light of oil lamps. Now we divide our attention between the TV, our computer screens and our mobile phones. But the huge technological leap wasn't supported by any philosophical or psychological thought, nor by any great art. People have forgotten their souls - they haven't time or space to devote to them."
Preisner, for whom silence, night and dreams are all important elements of his life and art, sees a parallel in the story of Job, whose words have "stood the test of time."
The orchestration of Silence, Night and Dreams combines elements of classical and "completely contemporary electronic" music. In addition to the orchestra and choir, the score calls for piano, electric cello and bass, vibraphone, Hammond Organ, glass harmonica, recorder, guitar and voice.
For the singer, Preisner chose Teresa Salgueiro: "She has a very pure, fantastic voice, very high, very clinging, very clear - and there is no vibrato." The texts in Silence, Night and Dreams are sung in English and Latin.
Teresa Salgueiro is a largely self-taught vocalist whose musical influences include fado, Brazilian music generally and international pop/rock. In 1986, she was instrumental in the formation of Madredeus, which took off with the surge of interest in world music. Madredeus has performed in many of the world's major concert halls, including the Olympia and Le Theatre de la Ville in Paris, the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Barbican in London and the Bunkamura in Tokyo.
In the early 1990s, Salgueiro became interested in classical music and studied at the Lisbon Conservatory. In 2006 EMI released her first solo album, Obrigado, and, in 2007, Voce e Eu. Of Silence, Night and Dreams, Salgueiro said, "When Zbigniew sent me the preliminary versions of the recordings, I knew that I was going to be working with an unusually intelligent composer who wrote music with me and my voice in mind. I discovered that the spiritual character of his works, which is rare in this day and age, gives me wings."
Zbigniew Preisner's film scores have won him the Silver Bear (Berlin Film Festival), two Césars (French Film Academy) and three consecutive citations as the year's "most outstanding composer of film music" from the Los Angeles Critics Association.
In addition to his extensive film work, Preisner composed the title music for People's Century, a 26-part co-production of BBC TV and WGBH-Boston, that documents the history of the 20th century. As well as the U.K. and the U.S., the series has been aired in over 30 countries. Other Preisner compositions include Requiem for my Friend, a large-scale work dedicated to the memory of Krzysztof Kieslowski, and 10 Easy Pieces for Piano.
