[markrayen]

Hi Thor,

Thank you for the inquiry! I can confirm these are the two commercially available soundtrack releases.

I just had a quick listen to excerpts from DEN HENGTE MANNEN, which I have deeply conflicting feelings about. On the one hand, I feel it represents my best film work from the perspective of craftsmanship and for its “stoic” tendencies that must certainly have been inspired by Prokofiev and Herrmann (but also the brilliant Norwegian Ørjan Matre who’s work I was infused with at the time). On the other hand, there was not much money involved (none at all, to be fair) so the circumstance of getting the score recorded were quite horrendous. It was a miracle we actually pulled it off, something I for the most part attribute to my own youthful naivety towards the dense subject of orchestral recording at the time. I also remember our friend Alan reviewing the score on his website with the striking phrase “it sounds like it was recorded in a tent!” – which might as well have been true.

After the film’s release, my thought was that it was better to accept the offer from a small local record company to release the soundtrack with its gaping flaws than not release anything at all, and I remain skeptical about whether or not that was wise (I’ve heard from a couple of musicians who heard the score and didn’t care for it, which I suspect they may have if the recording was adequately done).

The lessons were however learned for ANNE & ALET, where it was actually Knut (with a new fantastic score you mentioned above!) who pointed me in the direction of the string section of the F.A.M.E’s recording orchestra in Skopje. This time there was money, and I took his advice to enlarge the celli and bass sections for a more cinematic sound prone to the film medium, and crafted a homogenous sound that could be easily rehearsed and would minimize things like intonation issues that might occur. Where the music for DHM was stoic, relatively complex and layered, the A&A score was far more emotional and direct. By necessity of course, but to a certain degree also by choice. The truth is I care much more for the DHM score, but that’s an enthusiasm I share with practically nobody else!

There are a couple other film related things you could check out, if you haven’t already:

BAK FASADEN (2008) was my first feature score. My skills as an orchestrator were literally non-existent, but I worked hard enough at crafting the melodic themes that I recently posted most of the score on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markcandasamy/sets/bak-fasaden-2008

SYMPHO NOIR (2015) was loosely based on the thunderous string-motif from Vivaldi’s Summer concerto. It was an “artsy” project where the music was recorded first, and the film was scripted and filmed to match my composition. A luxury project for a composer, but I had only three weeks to write (ended up taking four and a half though) and the recording session was a brief 3-hour seance with little circumstance to evaluate or make any adjustments, which makes me a little reserved about this one as well: https://www.tvagder.no/nb/video/3725