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Alternative Titel:
Serengeti Shall Not Die
Ao Leste do Congo (Brazil)
Serengeti non morirà (Italy)
Serengeti (USA)
Alhambra Records proudly presents on this new CD the world premiere release of the German Golden Age soundtrack SERENGETI DARF NICHT STERBEN (SERENGETI SHALL NOT DIE) from 1959. Probably many older film enthusiasts may still fondly remember the spectacular wildlife documentary by Bernhard and Michael Grzimek which not only brought home the magic of the African continent to millions of spectators, but also raised the awareness of the population above all in Europe and in the USA for the difficult situation in which the wild animals of the African Serengeti steppe were living at that time. In 1960 SERENGETI DARF NICHT STERBEN even won – as the first German movie after the Second World War – an Oscar as "Best Documentary Feature" of the year.
For many years the original recordings of the music by Wolfgang Zeller (1893 – 1967) for SERENGETI DARF NICHT STERBEN were thought to be lost forever. After several months of extensive research, with the help of the Grzimek family (who were also the producers of the film) we finally succeeded in locating the complete original tapes of the music in pristine condition so that one of the most beautiful and expressive scores written for the German cinema during the 1950s can now undergo a magnificent resurrection on this CD as an expressive and lavish symphonic poem which even without the images of the film stands up as a self-contained musical work.
Wolfgang Zeller had already been a pioneer of German film music during the silent movie era and was one of the most excellent and technically skilled craftsmen of this art form for more than three decades, although his artistic work during the time of the Third Reich even today has to be considered as being at least partly problematic. His score for SERENGETI DAR NICHT STERBEN was his very last film music in 1959 and therefore can be regarded as his musical legacy. It is a colourful and thematically rich composition which captures the listener's imagination through its sweeping romanticism as well as through its gripping dramatic passages and which can now finally be rediscovered.
The CD with a duration of about 80 minutes contains a 16-page full colour booklet with extensive liner notes about the film and the score by Stefan Schlegel, Carsten Berger and German conductor Frank Strobel as well as numerous film stills.
- Alhambra Records
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