Label:	New Music
Cat No:	NM1006

Danse Macabre' is Preisner's music for Thomas Vinterberg's play 'The Funeral'.

Helge is dead. His wife Else and their children Christian, Michael and Helene are being reunited for the first time in ten years at their father’s funeral. This get-together is taking place in the very same building, where Christian had (on Helge’s 60th birthday) severely accused his father, claiming that he and his twin sister had been sexually abused by him for years when they were little. Back then, Christian’s brother Michael had beaten up their father in the morning after the birthday party and thrown him out of the house. For the funeral, Christian has arrived with his wife Pia from Paris, while Michael is bringing his new girlfriend Sofie and Henning, a son from his first marriage. Kim, the cook, is catering to the needs of the mourners at the abandoned hotel. But suddenly, mysterious events are happening. There seems to be a curse on the family, putting everyone’s nerves to the test.

In 1997, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg achieved worldwide fame with his Dogma-film Festen (The Party). As of today, the screenplay of Festen has been staged at many theatres. Begräbnis (The Funeral), written by Vinterberg and his co-author Mogens Rukov, continues the tale of the Klingenfeldt-Hansen family, this time not on the movie screen, but on the theatre stage.

“Working with Zbigniew Preisner has always been uplifting. He is one of the most outstanding artists I have ever worked with. Brutally honest, and yet still with great subtlety. Like a bear who in one moment, with mildness and delicacy, scrapes honey out of a beehive, and in the next moment rips the head off someone with its giant claw. That’s why I love to work with him…and partly also why I asked him to work on The Funeral. The play contains small, refined, sarcastic moments and large emotional tragedy at the same time. Zbigniew was the right man for that.

To begin with I wanted Zbigniew to compose for the voices of the actors. I wanted them to hum on stage. But with his own very special, intelligent, conceptual approach, Zbigniew gave me what was better for the play. The voice of the dead father became an instrument. A trumpet. The choir of the family became a beautiful and majestic variation of notes, from the hand of a master. Listen and you will know.

Thomas Vinterberg