For the Paramount+ With Showtime series “A Gentleman in Moscow,” composer Federico Jusid says he tried to think of the limited series less as a grouping of episodes and more as a seven-hour movie. The approach fits the material, an adaptation of the decades-spanning novel by Amor Towles about a Russian Count (Ewan McGregor) in the 1900s sentenced to house arrest following the revolution.
“The themes developed progressively, and something that is light at the beginning tends to be more intense by the end of the show,” Jusid tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “The music was approached from a big-picture point of view.”
Created by Ben Vanstone and starring McGregor and his real-life spouse, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “A Gentleman in Moscow” tracks the Count’s life following his sentence, jumping through time to meet him at various points in history. Throughout, and as played by McGregor, the character learns deep and meaningful lessons and family, responsibility, romance, and fatherhood, and Jusid’s score compliments the material with a light touch.
“The score evolves with the characters more than with time,” Jusid says. “Because when the Count starts this saga, he is a young man. By the time you get to Episode 8, he’s a grown-up man. And not only is he a grown-up, he’s gone through a lot of really great and sad and difficult moments. So in the same way the score tends to be less candid or naive eventually and becomes more profound in the same way that the Count establishes more profound relationships.”
Jusid – who in addition to being a prolific composer of film and television, is also a pianist and conductor – says he was influenced by Russian music of the era, particularly in terms of using instruments like the balalaika. “But we didn’t go all the way there,” he adds, about the Russian sound. “The Count has this elegant aristocratic manner and he’s always humorous. His way of approaching his dark fate is always to be humorous, discreet, and elegant. So in that way, his theme tends to have that and eventually gets more complicated as the score progresses as the show progresses.”
But despite its humor, “A Gentleman in Moscow” is also a heartrending story about love and loss and the passage of time. It’s easy to imagine another score manipulating emotions from viewers, but Jusid’s work avoids such cliched themes and shortcuts.
“This is something that we talked about very early on in the process, that we didn’t want to add something that is already there,” he says about the nuanced approach. “It’s very common that in my work, a director or a filmmaker would ask me to bring more emotion or agitation or something that he or she feels fell short in the performances or the editing. In this case, it was exactly the opposite. This show could go without music at all. The performances are so strong, the text – the novel and Ben’s writing – that it doesn’t need music and that’s a great premise. So when you’re going to do something, you do something that adds more layers to it…. There is a great respect for the audience. We’re not pushing the audience to feel in a certain way.”
“A Gentleman in Moscow” streams on Paramount+ With Showtime. The score will be released at a later date.
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