this is music for a piano quintet, written to accompany selma lagerlöf's epic tale, filmed by mauritz stiller and featuring the silver screen debut of greta garbo

the many haunting winter scenes in the movie inspired composer matti bye to find new ways in string writing, creating woven textures of transparent string sounds, but the floating atmosphere of these moments is beautifully contrasted by some of his strongest melodies, reacting to the epic drive of stiller's direction

some parts of this score inspired legendary director jan troell during the making of his latest feature, maria larsson's everlasting moment, and led to matti bye eventually writing a complete score

recorded at stockholm's kingside studios in spring 2006, the score has since been featured on dvd editions of the film on both sides of the atlantic, notably those of kino international and the swedish film institute