Black Swan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

iTunes Review

In scoring the acclaimed Darren Aronofsky-directed 2010 thriller Black Swan, composer Clint Mansell and conductor/orchestrator Matt Dunkley brilliantly paid homage to selections from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's classic 1876 ballet score Swan Lake. “Nina’s Dream” opens echoing Tchaikovsky’s score before those familiar string movements are altered and remolded with electronic flourishes that fluctuate and groan to illustrate the protagonist’s abused and tortured character. Deviating from the ghost of Tchaikovsky’s melodic reveries, brilliant moments of originality surface in the cold and foreboding ambiance of “Lose Yourself” and “Opposites Attract”, the former mirroring the uneasiness of sleepless paranoia and the latter implementing a sublime trill that nervously builds to approximate Nina’s snowballing anxiety. The maddening bombastic bounce of “A Swan Is Born” takes its cues from the end of Tchaikovsky’s “Danse Hongroise” aptly followed by the swiftly simmering “Perfection” which boils over into the bookending “A Swan Song (For Nina)”.