Broadcast on International Holocaust Memorial Day on both BBC 2 (UK) and ZDF (Germany) to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, Alex Baranowski’s emotional soundtrack to The Windemere Children has been released on Sony Classics.
Of writing the soundtrack for The Windermere Children, Baranowski commented: “The process of scoring the film was by far the most emotional journey I’ve ever been on whilst composing anything at all. The story resonated with the experiences of my own Polish grandparents during and after the war: foreigners in a new country with nowhere to which to return; an entire family killed or murdered; making sense of their experiences through music, painting and writing poetry. Being able to go through my own voyage of discovery of my family past whilst helping to tell this quite beautiful story was an absolute privilege”.
The soundtrack was recorded with the London Metropolitan Orchestra at Air Studios and features instruments of the time: “I had inherited my Grandfather’s instruments when he passed away, one of which was an accordion which he bought in Rome in 1943. That same accordion was one of the first instruments I picked up when starting ideas for ‘The Windermere Children’, playing the song ‘Rozhinkes mit Mandlen’ by Abraham Goldfaden that features alongside my music in the film”.