Zdenek Liška
Malá Morská Víla
The Little Mermaid
Finders Keepers Records
/
2020
LP (splatter)
19.99/22.99
FKR040LPC
Edition of 500 copies
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1Malá Morská Víla 4:03
2Witch's Firewall 1:29
3Pearls From The Deep 2:46
4King Of The Ocean 3:38
5The Pendant / The Little Mermaid (Theme)2:21
6The Song Of The Siren (Theme)1:19
7The Sixth Sister 3:12
8Statue Of Salt One 1:39
9Aquatic Babicka (Theme)1:23
10In Safe Hands 0:48
11Statue Of Salt Two 1:06
12Aquatic Babicak (Song)2:32
13The Black Sea 2:05
14Carodejnice's Castle 1:31
15The Song Of The Siren (Song)1:11
16Prince Of The Southern Empire 0:11
17Games / Echoes 3:25
18The Kiss 2:07
19Ascension To Fireworks 0:31
20Bird In A Cage 0:46
21The Voice 1:16
22Behind The Rock 0:24
23Sunken Dagger / The Little Mermaid (Song)5:58
24The Pendant 0:21

The original orchestral/electronic score from Karel Kachyna’s 1976 Czech film adaptation of Hans C. Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, composed by Zdenek Liška (The Cremator / Fruits of Paradise) featuring Lenka Korinkova.

Liska’s legacy in the history of European cinema is huge in volume but relatively modest in it’s celebrity. Having already composed nine scores for Kachyna’s films to add to his 1976 filmography of 150 completed soundtracks.

Back in 2005, five years before Finders Keepers Records released Zdenek Liška’s soundtrack to Malá morská víla for the first time, folklore and fairy tale fanatics around the globe celebrated the 200 year anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s most celebrated children’s authors of the published era. This Danish born writer’s stories have been translated into over 150 languages and have continued to enchant and inspire children and adults, arts and crafts, film and theatre, providing a creative binding substance in modern society’s social fibre. With a life story that entwines equal measures of tragedy, mystery, intensity and majesty to that of his own written work, Hans Christian Andersen’s early years balancing contradictory roles as a weaver’s apprentice, a soprano singer, a fledgling poet and an abused grammar school pupil with speculative links to the monarchy, manifested themselves in his written world of fantasy and fiction. His running themes of mutation, metamorphosis, rebirth, prejudice and class distinction are none more prevalent than in what are perhaps his two best known tales The Ugly Duckling, first published 11th November 1843, and the bittersweet surrealist tale of The Little Mermaid, printed in the third booklet of the first volume of Eventyr, Fortalte For Børn (Tales, Told For Children) in 1837.

One of the most idiosyncratic and haunting undiscovered scores in the annals of European cinematic history, Liska’s forward thinking score has all the hallmarks of a Broadcast record, some 20 years before the band first committed sound to vinyl.

Beautifully remastered from the original mastertapes with the full cooperation of the seminal Barrandov studios in Prague.