Gustav Mahler, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Sir Edward Elgar – Tár

180-gram vinyl

Music from and inspired by the motion picture starring Cate Blanchett

The TÁR soundtrack is a concept album with music from and inspired by the motion picture including works by Mahler, Elgar, Guðnadóttir and more. The film, set in the international world of classical music, centers on the fictional character Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett). This is Hildur Guðnadóttir's first and exciting new film project after her Golden Globe, Grammy and Academy Award-winning Joker score and Emmy and Grammy-winning soundtrack for the HBO hit miniseries Chernobyl.

"TÁR is a film about the rarefied world of classical music as seen from the perspective of Cate Blanchett's Lydia Tár — conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and, we are meant to understand, one of the most celebrated (and feared) figures in a world steeped in power, protocol, and respect for the past. ... To judge by its sumptuous visuals and stately soundtrack-composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir, who is just a Tony Award away from her EGOT (a distinguished honor that Tár herself has achieved in the film) — you might just call it an ambient tone poem about creative genius and personal torment.

"Much like her solo recordings, Guðnadóttir's soundtrack work until now — most notably for the HBO series Chernobyl and Todd Phillips' Joker, which netted her Academy Award — has been defined by its dark atmospherics and glowering strings. But TÁR takes the Icelandic cellist and composer's ambient instincts to subliminal new depths: The score is so subtle that even the most diligent viewer may not be conscious of her contributions. (The film is filled with music, but it's mostly heard in orchestra rehearsals, as Tár prepares the Berlin Philharmonic for what is meant to be a historic recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 5.)

"Guðnadóttir's scoring supplies the undertone of dread that runs beneath director Todd Field's ominous tableaux-some 40 minutes' worth of sound, she says, much of it all but imperceptible. 'Just believe me!' she says over Zoom, laughing, seated on the floor in a corner of a spare, white-walled room. 'There is a lot of music in the film that's working on a very delicate, subconscious level, and if you took it out, it would be a completely different animal.'" — Pitchfork