Featuring Original Music By Martin Phipps
Dubois Records will release the WAR AND PEACE – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack in cooperation with BBC Music digitally on May 13th. The album features the limited series’ original score by Martin Phipps (WOMAN IN GOLD, EUREKA STREET, THE KEEPING ROOM). In the United States, WAR AND PEACE broadcasted on Lifetime, History and A&E simultaneously under The Weinstein Company.
This is multi-BAFTA and Ivor Novello award winning composer Martin Phipps’ soundtrack to the landmark 2016 BBC/The Weinstein Company television drama, WAR AND PEACE. Regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time, Leo Tolstoy’s timeless story was told over six one-hour episodes directed by Tom Harper, starring Paul Dano (12 YEARS A SLAVE, PRISONERS, THERE WILL BE BLOOD), Lily James (CINDERELLA, DOWNTON ABBEY) and James Norton (HAPPY VALLEY, BELLE, GRANTCHESTER). Martin is one of the UK’s most in-demand composers for film and TV having recently scored The Weinstein Company’s WOMAN IN GOLD with Hans Zimmer, along with countless other BAFTA and Ivor Novello award winning film and TV scores. He is known for his unique combination of traditional and innovative composition techniques, resulting in music that subliminally connects, and which is unbound by time or genre.
“I wanted to do a very Russian choral sound mixed with Rachmaninoff meets Vangelis and see if we could mix those elements together,” Phipps says. “They give a size and a scale to the piece and add a real human voice to highlight these personal stories told in a huge context,” he says in an interview with Billboard Magazine.
About WAR & PEACE:
Russia 1805. Pierre (Paul Dano), Natasha (Lily James) and Andreis (James Norton) youthful ambition, despite their privileged circumstances, is to find meaning in their lives. Kind-hearted but awkward Pierre, the illegitimate son of Russia’s richest man, wants to change the world for the better. The spirited Natasha is searching for true love, while handsome and gallant Andrei, frustrated with the superficiality of society, seeks a higher purpose. At the same time, Napoleon’s army edges ever closer to Russia’s borders. As everything they thought they knew is thrown into question, Pierre, Andrei and Natasha find themselves in a time when Russian lives are about to change forever.
About Martin Phipps:
Coming from a musical background (he is Benjamin Britten’s godson), Martin Phipps read drama at Manchester University. Fortunately for the acting profession, he decided to concentrate his energies on writing music. Since scoring his first TV drama EUREKA STREET in 2002, he has gone on to write music for many of the most interesting series of recent years, winning 2 BAFTAs & 3 Ivor Novello Awards. More recently Martin has moved into film, scoring HARRY BROWN and BRIGHTON ROCK. In 2014 Martin had 2 feature film scores premiering at the Toronto Film Festival; Daniel Barber’s US indie THE KEEPING ROOM, and Morgan Matthew’s A BRILLIANT YOUNG MIND. Last year Martin set up Mearl, a project to facilitate collaborating with other artists & composers, as well as a platform for developing his own material. PEAKY BLINDERS was the first soundtrack written under this name, scored with a band of musicians from Radiohead’s new Laundry Studios in London Fields. Both his recent feature films were also written under this title.
TRACKLIST
1. St. Petersberg
2. The General
3. Society
4. Charge
5. Natasha
6. Vasily
7. Pierre
8. Prey
9. Battle
10. Before Thy Cross
11. Nikolai
12. Marya
13. Blood On White
14. Napoleon
15. Retreat
16. It Is True
17. Andrei
18. The Dance
19. Give Thanks