Caldera Records proudly presents Zbigniew Preisner's score for Gianluca Minucci's Europa Centrale.

It is the early months of the Second World War. An exiled communist couple is on a train to Ljubljana. Driven by their fragile ideals, they are on a mission that might kill them. Their fellow travelers might not be their allies. One false step and their fate is sealed. The atmosphere is dense with fear. Outside, the war is raging. Does humanism have a chance of survival? Will they be able to make it?

Zbigniew Preisner decided to use a choir, a string quintet and electronic instruments for a quasi-opera that provides the atmosphere for individual scenes and also captures the mood of the film as a whole to draw out its meaning for the time we live in. While the choir is mostly wordless, the composer in specific instances gave them a few carefully chosen phrases such as “pianto” (“cry”) and “pianto antico” (“ancient cry”) as well as “silenzio” (“silence”). The haunting finale uses words by Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

Make sure to check out our sound clips!