I just saw The North Face (Nordwand) at the NZ International Film Festival. It is a new film that's come out of Germany, Austria AND Switzerland and is fantastic ... but I'm not here to talk about the plot!! The score was by a Austrian composer, Christian Kolonovits. Oh my. It was quite something. I got it off iTunes as soon as I got home and I'm listening to it again now. Far out. It is a fully orchestral score and he does a great job of suiting it to its 1936 setting, but still, musically it is so fresh and very relevant to today. It is very nice to hear the orchestra still being used purely by itself, with no modern technology helping it along. The BEST thing is that there is no Hollywood influence in his music, which is so refreshing. Perhaps I need to be keeping an eye out for more European film composers. In the film it adds so much to the already hugely powerful scenes, but listening to the music now, it could so easily be moulded together to create some sort of 45 minute masterpiece in it's own right.

Here is the trailer where you get a sneak peak of the film, but as for the music ... it's a trailer, so uses other music ... you might notice the opening passage is from James Horner's score to A Beautiful Mind. This is the original trailer (not english version with subtitles):

Christian Kolonovits really did a great job. I can't wait to hear more of his work. If anyone has heard of him or knows any of his music I'd be interested to hear from you. Go find some music online from this film, it's worth it. Here is Christian's website: www.kolonovits.com.