Tarkovsky is a 5cd boxset of fully remastered and reissued soundtracks to 5 of the legendary Soviet director's films. The first two films Ivan's Childhood (1962) and Andrei Roublev (1966) are scored by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov and the other three films Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979) are scored by Eduard Artemyev. I will admit not having seen all the films or know exactly what they are about, even having the films outline in the press release, I have opted for what the music evokes in me through my reading Russian literature for the last 40 odd years. This review quotes from The Kobzar of Ukraine by Taras Shevchenko, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Russian Conspirators In Siberia by Baron Rozen, Fathers And Sons by Turgenyev, The Last Poet in The Village by Sergei Yesenin, Farewell To Matyora by Valerie Rasputin and Apostles Into Terrorists Women And The Revolutionary Movement In The Russia Of Alexander II by Vera Brodo.
The first soundtrack on the album is Ivan's Childhood and having no idea what the film is about, I imagine it to be about Ivan The Terrible's Childhood, opening on scenes of his birth the orchestra sounds like it took place in a bucolic setting, before the timpani and woodwind signal the first childhood trauma's that could have set Ivan off the rails. The slow flutes and timpani signalling they are getting ready for little Ivan's christening.
As Ivan grows and starts to explore his world the chimes and piano signal that not everything is quite what it seems an obsession with the Peter And Paul fortress model he plays with. The trumpets blast out a fanfare, he is off on his first big adventure. Somewhere near the Steppes within a forest, we see him treating his mother like a vile woman, making her chase him all over the place to the swirling strings, before the dark bass sounds signal all is not well. The strings get darker with Ivan's true nature starting to be revealed, dark acts that must accompany the double bass and padding down a gravel path sounds, seem like they come from a horror movie. The dread string interventions scream with agonies, a sorrow you will never be able to move beyond. The chimes and slow bass notes give glimpses of the dreadful acts he would become notorious for. The fear echoes through the resonating sounds bouncing of his cell's walls, like a Chinese singing bowl amped to induce a painful malaise in your ears.
The timpani rising slowly in the background, young Ivan is almost ready to start his journey towards absolute power, the gun report style bass timpani notes and strings growing with the realisation his march will be unstoppable. Before the end credits roll Ivan has had most wonderful childhood, while preparing to become a fearsome warrior and dictator.
Andrei Roublev opens with a neo classical piece with deeply resonant strings that seem to signal a new dawn, slowly a church bell rings in the distance, the strings swell around it, like they know it's time for confession, only it is just as likely that you will confess to Yezhov as Zadok, this slowly creeps down through the apse, a lone lady ululates filling the transept with her mesmeric sound chapel reverberating up the spire. A priest plucks strings in meditative prayer awed by the Sirens call.
The bass drumbeats to the slow building strings and choirs of angels surrounded by icons, meditating incantating censers swing, hundreds of candles illuminate the iconography, need to repent and self-flagellate, nose to the grindstone, pain and toil no time to be a kobza player, the troops march past off to another Cossack martyrdom, babbling voices seem distressed, do the columns ever seem to end.
The winds are blowing across the steppes, doomed to exile after the Decemberist revolt of 1825, are you still in chains when the storms start rising, fear of the cold with only thin cabbage soup for days, finding solace in the choral voices you can almost hear from a distant church. Moving into the church, all robed meditations, signalling the arrival of this outposts new ruler, the fear of being the last poet in the village, while fearing the privations of winter in this wilderness.
Chains are rattled, back to pushing that waggon across the steppe at the crack of a whip, is he ready to sing Pendu Pendu exile a Nertschinsk, not yet but the thunder rolls on, are they grinding the Siberian brick tea, singing a prayer for its preparation to their lord and master. Do state criminals get to drink such heady brews, a solo supplication with the full reply describing the sorrow of their situation never allowed to return, living like Kurgans deep in the Caucuses.
The Kobzar player has returned to be treated as hero and villain, claiming his right and never taking no for an answer, your Siberian exile leaving you only memories of freedom down by the Dnieper and cherry orchards, slow gongs of Tartar sorrow, a hymn of exile, begins a prayer for the tsars, these traffickers in blood, that you would put fetters of iron in dungeons deep, storms rise once more they do everything backwards, would there be anything other than potatoes to eat. They slowly emerge from the church to be forced onto the road once more, they have a few more villages to go by to get to the ultimate destination up near Okhotz, the Cossacks cruelty in the bitter winds knows no bounds treating Katherine like a slave, we dream of the abolition of serfdom, even though as exiles we have never been serfs, they have arrived finally in a place that looks full of beauty even if the Cossacks will not allow the enjoyment of that beauty.
Solaris is the first of the soundtracks by Eduard Artemyev whose opening sequence sounds like we are walking down the aisle of a huge church, standing on an isolated piece of land, while an organist plays, suddenly we are plunged into the depths of the miraculous sounds of the ANS Synthesizer, thunder claps, evening light has gone out, plunged into darkness, electrical cackles close to where the Fir Barren was burning, low dying smoke was all that was apparent above the water.
Have they gone from the Delta's shore to the Trubails river in search of Polish Lordlings, will even more of them die than did the Circassians in this pitiful conflict, Solaris slowly moved under them unseen, wanting to avoid the tombs of Vebla, chimes blown every which way by the toiling hands labouring on these stolen lands. Long ambient drones beneath all the revolutionary jargon no such campaigns could succeed while such strange monsters float by the portals. Subotina knocked at our door with a candle in her hand, it was a frosty January Night, Solaris submerged beneath the permafrost the crew dreaming of some buns wrapped in a kerchief, shrank back dreaming of a legitimate reason to reside in a village, rather than be in these bleak unforgiving waters.
A Peculiar circumstance attracted his attention like the tonal shifts, a long sea serpent weaving through the waters, fleshy faced red as a carrot, Mikola cries Take us all with a beast like that, as though you were dead, the church organ plays again while Matyora sinks beneath the waters to exist no more, a eulogy for those lost while the mill burned, with a horrible howl acrid black smoke seeping into the houses making them dough, Klavka's choir laments the destruction.
Bazarov drew himself up haughtily claiming I'm Not a Slavophil, the gong strikes without having the faintest suspicion for the cruel tyrant of her heart, gulls cry in the gloom of Tver a dog barks recognizing his breezy gait in the backstreets loyal to a different kingdom to the organ's supplicants, slowly shift following a giant sledge across the permafrost to a diving hole where the swimmers don't realise the danger they are in from below. Thunderous roars like cracking ice, an old horn is blowing carried on the eastern winds a low strafing aircraft sweeps across the tundra, death comes too soon on the eleventh psalm their brother to his grave will find away, circumventing Bach's conventions pristine visions of sacrilegious events. Blown across in temper impulsiveness and irritability hoping for an unmistakeable way to survive. The final coda leads us back toward the entrance of that church full of sorrow and regret.
Mirror opens with Eduard Artemyev's timpani in a tunnel approaching thunderstorm while a bird calls, while they harvest the wheat, ready for one final party, they rampaged all night like madmen on that long never-ending train. The Spanish flamenco troupe have arrived, getting everyone dancing, wearing long blue kaftans with holes in the elbows, wearing someone else's boots. The howling chorus smashes through the wall, an orchestra awaits, baroque scenes touring the casemates of the fort, only an open confession can save them from this aggravated punishment, slow progress along the whole inner wall of the Kronwerk curtain, timpani rising, a stark wind blows through, while a tenor announces the exile and other privations awaiting the prisoners.
The cold wind on the endless march into exile chills, while pangs of hunger rise, before the joyful strings of finally reaching our destination, eating the borscht finally allowed us, cocooned in the magisterial strings, danger approaches we meet the camp commandant, any last vestige of hope is cleansed in his greeting and treatment of us. We have infuriated the prosecutor he refuses us any contact with the world outside. Will the glistening strings show us a way to survive these travails holding up our newly ravaged faces to the mirror, to see just how much this torturous journey had changed us, The devils choir scream out our agony at the decimation we feel.
The final soundtrack is for Stalker also by Edouard Atremyev whose Tar player feeds back into the meditations, between the skeletons of houses a miller carries the copper bagful of bells, holy meditations now in Soviet Land, the fiercest fellow traveller stalks my every move, until he fell he didn't care about pits, but now pits obsess him, how to not fall in from the small disc in the pitch black dark of this cell, come pit, draped in a shroud strings reverberate, can he trade old fetters for new and bargain his righteousness, while the drips drive him beyond distraction, haunted and hunched down, trying to escape the all seeing eye of the stalker, he'd rather dwell naked in poverty than deal with this never ending anxiety, pulsing though the drones and shaken boards a mystic haze greets the dawn of his alleged freedom, he walks beside the Dnieper hoping he is finally walking alone. He crosses the train tracks catching a glimpse in the distance, his stalker is still there like the KGB just can't let him wander away to escape a term of forced labour.
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