"Burghoelzli," the first cue on this album of
Howard Shore
's score for director
David Cronenberg
's film A Dangerous Method, begins with a slow, calm piano theme before moving into stirring, adventurous orchestral music. That turns out to be a good representation of the music in miniature. Set in pre-World War I Zurich and Vienna, A Dangerous Method concerns the relationship between psychoanalytic pioneers Sigmund Freud (
Viggo Mortensen
) and Carl Jung (
Michael Fassbender
), and of a woman who is a patient of both, Sabina Spielrein (
Keira Knightley
).
Shore
supports the setting and plot line with restrained, contemplative music in a classical mode suggestive of the late Romantic Era. His brief tracks suggest the troubled moods of sophisticated people in a period on the edge of extinction. And they are meant to fit in with the soundtrack's major section, a 32-minute version of
Richard Wagner
's 1870 work Siegfried's Idyll, arranged for piano by
and played by
Lang Lang
. The piece is a more delicate and personal effort than one associates with
Wagner
, written as a birthday present for his wife after the birth of their son. Again, it underlies a film concerned with complex emotions and psychological discoveries. ~ William Ruhlmann