Tennant / Lowe – Battleship Potemkin

Tennant and Lowe of Pet Shop Boys’ celebrated score, remastered for the first time, released on CD and 2LP Black Vinyl, (Vinyl for the first time) by Parlophone Records to mark the centenary of Sergei Eisenstein’s legendary silent film Battleship Potemkin.

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content. Battleship Potemkin is renowned for its dynamic compositional strength and editing of such frame-perfect precision that it’s hard not to be swept along. The set-piece massacre on the Odessa Steps still packs a sledgehammer punch.

First revealed at a free outdoor live performance and screening in front of an estimated 25,000 people in London’s Trafalgar Square on 12 September 2004, Pet Shop Boys’ score, performed with the Dresdner Sinfoniker conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer with orchestrations by Torsten Rasch, blends electronic beats with orchestral grandeur to create a rousing contemporary cinematic experience. Since the premiere, Pet Shop Boys with Dresdner Sinfoniker have performed the music with the film in European cities including Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, and Segovia, Spain. On May 1, 2006, Pet Shop Boys with the Northern Sinfonia, performed the music with the film at a special event at Swan Hunter’s shipyard, Wallsend. The first UK cinema screening with the recorded Tennant/Lowe score took place at BFI Southbank as part of the 2013 Meltdown Festival curated by Yoko Ono.

Format – CD & 2LP