EUROPA CENTRALE

It is the early months of the Second World War. An exiled communist couple is on a train to Ljubljana. Driven by their fragile ideals, they are on a mission that might kill them. Their fellow travelers might not be their allies. One false step and their fate is sealed. The atmosphere is dense with fear. Outside, the war is raging. Does humanism have a chance of survival? Will they be able to make it?

Zbigniew Preisner decided to use a choir, a string quintet and electronic instruments for a quasi-opera that provides the atmosphere for individual scenes and also captures the mood of the film as a whole to draw out its meaning for the time we live in. While the choir is mostly wordless, the composer in specific instances gave them a few carefully chosen phrases such as “pianto” (“cry”) and “pianto antico” (“ancient cry”) as well as “silenzio” (“silence”). The haunting finale uses words by Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

While the circumstances of the heroes in the period film are not in itself a laughing matter, the landscapes in which they and we move is marked by a grim absurdity, as Preisner elaborates: “The best musical form to convey this is opera, though stripped down, because both wartime and our present time were, and are, marked by austerity. That’s why a string quintet plays in place of a full orchestra, with modern electronic elements supporting it. The only element that retains its grandeur is the choir, which sings just a few words—because in the beginning, there was the word.”

Zbigniew Preisner’s “Europa Centrale” is one of his most inspired works, a delicate, intricate and poignant comment on the fragility of our existence as individuals and societies.

The 59th CD-release of Caldera Records features a detailed booklet text by Stephan Eicke and elegant artwork by Luis Miguel Rojas. The CD was mastered by Leszek Kaminski and produced by Stephan Eicke and Zbigniew Preisner.