I can't quite believe that I stumbled across Freya Arde four years ago courtesy of her accomplished debut EP, Spirit Awake. I'm not always a good friend though and lost touch, although looking back through her Bandcamp page I see she's been keeping busy, mainly composing scores and dropping the odd single, so perhaps it wasn't just me who was too preoccupied to pick up the phone?
Just in case you weren't aware, Arde is a (still) young, classically trained composer and guitarist based in Berlin. Pleasingly she's developing a very nice line in thoughtful, minimal neoclassical composition that she augments with some light touch processing and electronic adornment.
Her latest score is an intriguing one to say the least, as it soundtracks the Andres Veiel directed documentary exploring the life and work of the infamous artist and filmmaker Leni Riefenstah, who also happened to be Hitler's film director of choice.
Needless to say the subject matter is not light and the score reflects that. Arde wisely eschews the musical bombast that the subject used to aggrandising effect during her film portrayals of the Third Reich's figureheads, relying on her naturally minimal and more measured compositional approach, which gives the viewer time to reflect on the gravity of the times and the effects of Riefenstah's consummately crafted propaganda.
Arde takes on most of the heavy lifting playing percussion, piano, electronics and abstract cello (whatever that is?), but does draft in the real cello of Benjamin Arnold to assist, as let's face it every good score needs some serious strings, although they're used more often than not for creating tension rather than drama. Somewhat surprisingly for a score, it also works very well as just a home listening experience, which not all scores manage - a testament to Arde's atmospheric neoclassical inclinations.
If that wasn't enough my girlfriend just walked in the door noticed the subject matter of this blog and said she'd seen the documentary and that it was incredible, so perhaps kill two birds with one stone and check the documentary too?
Playlist Companion
You can find Freya Arde and other forward looking classical music in the Slow Neoclassical Playlist.
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